The sicker mother got, the stranger the people surrounding her became. I called them The Garland Freaks.
I had grown up accustomed to living a life of high drama.
One trait of addictive families is that we never recognize our own addictions.
Fabio kept asking me out, but I knew we'd never get his ego through the door.
My mother's suicide attempts were a way to release anxiety and get attention. Some of the attempts were drug reactions she didn't even remember later on.
I have spent much of my adult life flinching with pain as I tried to pull out the threads that bound the shadows of my past to me.