Life has always been a struggle for me. From what I could tell, it wasn’t daisies for everyone else, either. But I never let go of the fantasy that one day I wouldn’t feel so alone and isolated from the rest of the normal world. My dream was what kept me going many nights when I fought the desire to just disappear. It would be easier if I’d never been born.
I’m positive my mother sees things the same way. I know what you’re thinking, and no, she never said those words, but my entrance into the world dramatically changed the course of her life.
My mother had been a beauty queen in the small Arkansas town where she’d grown up. Everyone said she would make it big someday. Maybe her beauty and charm somehow would have opened those doors if she hadn’t met the man who helped give me life. The fact is, she ran off to become a star and fell in love with a very married man. A man who didn’t acknowledge me or help her for fear of tarnishing his social standing in the big city of Nashville, Tennessee.
A one-room shack in the hills of Tennessee is where my mother and I spent the first part of my life. Until the day she up and decided life would be easier in Alabama. On the southern coast, my mother—who I now call Jessica—could find work. And the sunshine would be good for us, or so she said. I knew she needed an escape, or maybe just a place to start over. If anyone could be a magnet for losers, Jessica fit the profile. Unfortunately, she was about to bring another child into the unstable life she managed to lead, where she greatly relied on someone else—me—to handle things. If only she had let me make her decisions for her in the dating world, like she did with the rest of her life. But, alas, we were headed to southern Alabama, where the sun is supposed to shine bright and wash away all our worries . . . . Yeah, right.