I cook on a camp stove because the gas bill was something we couldnt pay. Serving hotdogs bread and maybe mustard more often than is healthy has been reality for 24 months. If im lucky, i get to leave the house more than twice a month. My alter ego is anxiety girl. The slightest noise has me jumping thru the roof. If im touched without prior mental knowledge, at the very least i will flinch. Tensing up, steeling myself for pain. Large crowds and small spaces are dreadful.  

Poverty is something that i have known my entire life. Well, somehow my parents paid upwards of 10k a year for me to go to a Christian School. Until 10th grade, that is. I finished at Sunset High School in Oak Cliff Texas. By the time junior year started i was pregnant. By someone i had met at church a month before conception.

After first grade, my grandmother pay my way to church camp for a week. I remember standing next to her in a line to sign up. Then i remember her driving me a day after the can left. I remember when she got me there, i was asked to let the counselor see the back of my thighs. I  remember what they looked like. Striped. Whelts. Bruises from the back of my knees to my waist.  What i didn't remember, until at the 21 when i asked.  I had taken a stuffed animal and held it over my head and teased my baby brother that he couldn't get it.

I would hear the slaps and momma crying, and I'd call out. 'dont listen' she'd say and then beg me to close my ears. Its actually not that hard. Lying on your side, you adjust your shoulder just right so it blocks your ear canal from behind. I still do it. Missed alarm clocks are normal.

Being 17 with a child and still determined to have a senior year, i got a norplant installed. 2.5 years later it was removed. I was told 'it wasnt designed to prevent a pregnancy. It was designed to rid the body of foreign matter' 2.5 more years, 3 miscarriages and a minor surgery. 6 months after the surgery i conceived the second boy and 4 months into his life i conceived the girl. Tubes were then cut, tied, clipped and burned.

Divorced by age 25. Eldest was 7, girl was 1 and the other was 2. Single mom of 3 with no clue.