My Crazy Life
        I found it hilarious how someone’s life could change in the matter of seconds. Everything they knew could be gone. I thought it was the earth’s way of rebooting, until about three years ago when it happened to me. But I’m getting ahead of myself, in order to tell this story correctly I must take you back in time to a bitter cold Tuesday evening in the horrid month of February.
        Three Years and Two Months Earlier
The fire crackled in the fireplace, my mother was holding a cold glass of Bloody Mary up to her pounding forehead, and my father was drinking beer; lots of beer. Peter and Celene conceived me in some bar by San Francisco Bay eleven years ago; I’m pretty sure it was a dare. The only love they share is their love for drinking. It amazed me how they stayed together throughout the childbirth and countless fights. And then it hit me. They really loved and cared about me. I still look back and laugh at my innocence and wild imagination. Now of course nothing of the sort would ever cross my mind, but I was a child. And one of the perks of being young is, you get to be totally immune to the obvious dark world you’re living in.
Oh yes back to the what-I-thought-was-normal scene. The fire and the drinks. I was used to it. My parents refused to send me to public school, and only now can  I see that they were hoping to stop me from seeing what normal really looks like. I was never properly educated, but still I loved to read. And when you love something, that you were born loving, it really is very hard to not do it. I taught myself to read at a young age. My mom would take me to a child daycare center in the gym that she really didn’t belong to. I remember the people would walk up to her and say, “How are you Celene?” or “Did you put the pool into the backyard yet?” My mother was an extremely talented actor. Anyway, there were books at the daycare. Dr.Suess and The Purple Crayon and Good Night Moon. These magical inanimate objects contained everything I had ever wanted. There were perfect worlds, that I didn’t know actually existed. Where the father would go to work in the morning, and while the child and its brother were at school the mom would make dinner. Then the dad would come home and kiss the mom on the cheek. Oh how much I wanted that. I vowed when I read those books that I would grow up and raise these children and have that cheek-kissing husband.
        “I’m going to raise a perfect family and have a two boys,” I would excitingly exclaim to my mother.                                                                                                                        
        “That’s crazy talk,” she would respond. “There’s no such thing.”
        I never gave up though. That was my biggest mistake.
        
Present
        Now we get to the part when my life, my messed up, one-of-a-kind life, changed. And I can tell you it did not change for the better.
Mother’s Day 1984
        Mother’s Day had never been real to me. I wouldn’t even know it existed, if I hadn’t gone to the library-which was now what I did six hours a day-and seen a sign that read, “Closed for Mother’s Day Sunday will reopen Monday.” Of course I didn’t have a mom to celebrate, but I had Celene. So why not try to celebrate her. Usually she goes up to Los Angeles to visit her mom, just as drunk as her. But this year grandma was out of town, so she stayed.Instead we went to the park and watched as the mothers received gifts from their families.
        “Hypocrites,” I had said to my mother angrily.
        “Why are you talking,” she groaned. Which was her way of asking me to explain.
        “That happy family is going to go home and not be so happy, at least we don’t sugar coat it.” That was the only time I saw her smile.
 She was holding a coffee cup filled with vodka, her usual way to drink in public without stopping the police. She shifted her back to the family, to face away from me. She kept clearing her throat and staring at the mom who had a growing tower of gifts at her feet. If she wanted a present to celebrate her, she was going to have to be a mom to celebrate.
When Celene is thinking, it’s obvious. Her face will get all screwed up, and the only way to know if she’s thinking happy or sad thoughts is by how much she drinks. I should have noticed how little she was drinking; when she’s thinking she’s never thinking happily. I should have seen something was off, something was different. I should have been suspicious when she left me. But I was only ten, and I wasn’t suspicious.
The dead give away should have been when she hired a sitter; she never hired a sitter. Peter had been gone for three weeks, and frankly I liked it. And I thought she had to.
Usually she left me home alone for the day. There was tuna in the fridge and the library right around the corner, so I was fine with my situation. I hadn’t even thought twice about it when she hired someone to watch me. I hadn’t thought about it until the second day, when she still hadn’t come back. By then I started to think, and obviously the sitter had to. By the one-week mark the police were called and I was taken from my home and put in the local station.
Five months after I was abandoned
Foster care wasn’t supposed to be better than my other care. But it was. I was fed and taught and put to bed and loved. Then I would wake up and be fed and taught and put to bed and loved all over again. Foster homes were supposed to be filled with little girls with curly hair who tried to sneek off in the laundry. But it wasn’t. There was big girls with straight hair who did the laundry instead of trying to escape in it. Nana was in charge. And of course I didn’t like her. And she didn’t like me. In fact she still dislikes me.
Now
You just heard a story of a girl who loved to read, who was nice, who cared for others, and who still ended with no one to care or read or be nice to her. I’m only twelve so who knows maybe, very unlikely, but maybe I’ll grow up and have that perfect family I’ve always wanted. I bet you think you know this girl, for you’ve just read the story of her life, and yet you still don’t even know her name.