It was a long winter, and the shaky ground I knew was quaking beneath me. Fighting broke out, and every unspoken problem was out in the open. Manipulation, outrage, and eventually the slamming door… a car buzzing into life… and away went my mother and my baby sister. Two weeks, in sixth grade. She was gone without another word.

Before that I hadn’t known that my mother was miserable. I didn’t know that everything could be taken away. The innocence that once fueled my entire body was snatched from me in a heartbeat. At 12 my world shattered. The toxic relation that had given me life, had taken it back without warning. I had known of the unstable ground I stood on, but I never thought it could break.

And then came the divorce and I didn’t think things could get worse, but they did. I moved in with my Dad, only to find that the person I had relied on my whole life was changing. Alcohol raced through his veins every waking minute he was home. He targeted me, insulted me, and when I talked back he kicked me out. I felt what I can only assume my mother had felt. The utter lack of respect he had for me, yet he still demanded me to blindly follow him.

I felt ashamed that for years I had thought my mother was to blame. I was embarrassed at my own naivety in believing every word that came out of his mouth. And I was determined more than ever before to make something of myself, to prove him wrong.