Chapter 1.1
My mother has schizophrenia and my father is living in a truck
Just this title alone gives me anxiety. A pit in my throat and stomach. Am I really ready to write an autobiography? I’ve protected you from this pain for so long, but now I’m ready to share because I feel it will touch your heart. Its too big a story not to share. It’s not all pain and sorrow, but there is a lot of it. So now you’ve been warned. It may just be the most inspirational thing you’ve ever read. My life, here goes…
My first memory was the 89 Loma Prieto earthquake . I am outside, the sky is blue, and the eucalyptus trees are swaying. I feel calm amidst the chaos.
I don’t really know if this was the earthquake as my first memory. But I think it was. My biological parents didn’t allow us to outside as a child in my earlier‘s years, (what I refer to as my first life) so I assume because we went outside it was to get away from the buildings.
I lived my first four years in that house. No school. Minimal interaction with the outside world. My parents didn’t teach us how to speak, so my sisters and I would make our fingers into ducks and make the movements of the ducks talking. It was silent communication. It was my warmest memory of that time in my life. Those brief exchanges with my sisters.
I don’t remember a lot of those years, as I blocked most of it out. I’ve relied on my abnormal responses to certain things indicating something bad must’ve happened. My sisters and I were in the newspaper after CPS rescued us finally after all those years. I have to rely on those newspaper descriptions which play a role in to how I remember those years. It is painful how they described us as malnourished and looking like "mangy feral animals.“
They probably thought we’d never read the articles and that we never stand a chance of a normal life. But I’m here to say yes I fucking did! From rags to riches, baby.
OK… I may be still Working on the “riches” part, waiting for that crypto currency to hit the moon ;)
[My sisters and me talking with each other]
(Photo credit: unknown just googled 3 ducks)
