Shawna,
I don’t remember the three times my mom tried to kill herself before I was five. I do remember visiting her in the hospital, and I remember the long drive when dad kidnapped me. He dropped me off with an aunt and uncle as soon as he got home.
Then there was the time dad starved my brother and me. His young wife laughing. Their bed banging against our bedroom wall, her screams, my angry hunger and fear.
I went through relatives fast. I wasn’t a bad kid, I just wasn’t convenient. The schools blur. I didn’t bother to learn names. What was the point? I went to seven different schools one year.
Then there were the years I lived with my aunt. She had four kids and her best friend had four kids. After living there I didn’t think I would ever want children: the snotty noses, the screaming and the gaping neediness.
Then there were my bloody noses from my aunt, days spent in my room for not cleaning the kitchen right, and the beltings for reading smutty romances. I got away and back to my mom.
A year later, when I was 15, mom visited me in the hospital after I tried to kill myself.
I joined the Navy when I was 19. It was the most stable my life had ever been.
Justin and I married when I was 22; we met in high school journalism class. When I got out of the Navy we moved to San Jose, California, which was were he’d earned his degree and were I eventually earned mine.
One reason I was determined to get my degree was that I didn’t want to end up as a sales person. I’m a natural at it, and my parents and grandparents were in sales, but I wanted to do something different, something stable, something where you don’t have to smile at people all day.
I was lucky to find a job out of college. Now I work in marketing. Which is just sales on steroids. There’s no escape from your fate.
Shawna ““ Age 31 ““ Mountain View, CA
From 400 Words, issue 1
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