Part 1 - CaCa's Story

**This is a guest post by a reader who chooses to refer to herself as CaCa**

My mother got pregnant out of wedlock, married her high school sweetheart (my biological father = BF) shortly after, slapped by the reality of the person she thought she vowed to love and see forever with, regretfully entrusting the same person with her daughter, and shortly after divorcing looking back with no regret and facing a hopeful but scary future “alone”; just her and me. That’s the beginning of my story all wrapped up into one long winded sentence.

One long winded life belongs all to me. My mom learned of my BF’s drug addiction after they were married, which increasingly worsened over their sort time together. It was like a roller coaster from everything she has told me. He would try to get better even sobering for a while until the roller coaster fell and he crashed harder, then he would start to climb back up again. There were times when she didn’t realize the gravity of his addiction; she would have to entrust me with my BF. My mom was in the kitchen, I in the living room with my BF when she heard a heart dropping scream. I had bit my tongue in half. She says I tried to pull myself up onto the footstool my BF was relaxing on, she thinks I slipped and fell, but wonders if he moved his legs causing me to fall; either way not watching close enough – he wasn’t. He never did.

‘We never had much money so I would have to wait until Friday when your dad got paid to get groceries. This became a Friday night ritual; we would meet at the door. I always took you with me but this night it was a blizzard out and I didn’t want to take you out, so regretfully I left. I knew I wouldn’t be gone long; there wasn’t much money to spend. When I would get home from the store your dad would meet me at the bottom of the stairs to help me carry the groceries up. We lived on the upper level of an apartment house. Only this time he didn’t come down. I filled my arms, climbed the stores and tapped my foot against the door….nothing! When I got inside he was passed out in the living room, you had pulled the knife drawer out in the kitchen and locked yourself in your bedroom which must have happened right after I left because you had been crying for some time. I made it through the night, we waited until he left in the morning for work, called your uncle K and he came and packed us up. We left, never looking back. Your dad would call telling me he changed begging me to come back, he stole my car your grandpa bought for us, he would drive by all the time but I couldn’t go back.’ This is the story in a nutshell.

Over my 29 years of life I have heard so many stories about him. Two years ago I passed him in the corridor at a local gas station in our hometown – I didn’t know him he was merely a stranger in passing, he may or may not have recognized me. How do I know this? …. My aunt, my mom’s younger sister was behind me. She would never forget his face.