Prologue

There are deep secrets that every family holds onto for dear life. Deep, ruining secrets that remain hidden but stay visible enough to remind everyone that the fabric of their family was once tested, nearly destroyed, and will always remain flawed.

Seven years, that’s how long I’ve held onto this secret. Seven years, thirty days, and twenty-one hours, to be exact. The worst part about burying a bunch of painful memories and pretending like they’re not there is that they uncover themselves at the worst possible times and in the worst possible ways. I can be sitting at the dinner table with relatives or on my way to see a concert with friends, and outta nowhere, something hits me deep inside, and before I know what’s happening to me, I’m swimming in tears. Of course, I can’t tell anyone the truth about why I’m crying, so I quickly hide my face and pull myself together and bury the stuff even deeper into my consciousness.

The unbelievable part is that there’s really no reason to hide anymore. There’s no reason to lie and cover up and pretend. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been—but that’s just it. I deceive because I don’t want my happiness to end. I deceive because I’m afraid that if people find out who I really am, they’ll never look at me the same again. Naturally, they’ll pretend like what I did doesn’t matter, but I’ll be able to tell just by looking into their eyes that it does. And that’s the last thing I want, for people to feel sorry for me or feel like I’m inadequate or troubled or untrustworthy because of a bunch of old painful shit that I did when I was completely different. So I chose to deal with my demons the best way I knew how—by avoiding them altogether.

Then, my wife told me over the phone a while before we got married that if a person gets to be a certain age and doesn’t have something to be ashamed of—then something’s not right. I forget what we were talking about, but when she said it, I knew it was my chance to come clean. I just couldn’t keep lying to her anymore. She deserved better. Although we’d just reconnected after years and years apart and had only been dating for a month at the time, I still wanted her to be the first one to know. She had to know the truth—the truth about what happened to me in high school and why I skipped town and why nobody had heard from me for so long. It was eating at me, that damn secret of mine. I had to tell her.

“I was a heroin addict. No, I am a heroin addict,” I began. “The whole time we went to school together, I was going into bathrooms between classes and shooting up and stuff. That’s why I disappeared. That’s why I fell off the face of the Earth, because I was a heroin addict. No, I mean, I am one, but I’m better now.”

I paused for a second before continuing. The silence was deafening.

“There’s a lot more to it than that, of course, but that’s the part that stings most, I guess. If you never wanna talk to me again, I’ll understand. I’m sorry I never told you.”

I stopped again, and she still said nothing. I started to panic, and I started to sweat, and I wanted to cry, all at the same time. I was sure that I’d lost her. I just knew it.

And that’s when she said it.

“I love you.”

It was sincere and heartfelt and unexpected and breathtaking. I knew right then and there that it was time to stop running. It was time to uncover my demons and face them head on with everything I had. That’s the moment when I finally became, well, free.