When I was born, I was born addicted to meth. It's a hell of a sentence, but I was. My mother and father were addicts, both of them party animals. Drunks, and mentally broken from the very start of their lives. My mother, Melissa, was a fish market worker with my aunt Kristen. They were best friends, inseparable. They were practically sisters and did everything together. I never got to meet her. She passed from a heart attack before I was born, and I think that was the event that broke my mom. She explained to me in detail how Kristen reached to grab for her soul before she passed in the ambulance, and how she was never the same mentally. My father worked with my mom and Kristen, and despite Kristen's hate for my father, my mom loved him. But he had a wife and two sons. My mom had gotten pregnant. My dad left his children and abandoned them and his wife to be with my mom. I still hate him for it, and I hate that his sons don't even know who I am. My mom and dad had been pregnant with multiple children, none of which made it. She had six miscarriages before she had me. They tried so hard to have me, and when I was born, my mom said my name would be Kristen. And so it was.

About a year into my life, my mom was sent to prison for welfare fraud. She took food stamps under my name, trying to care for us. I remember sitting outside the prison with my dad on visiting days and bringing my mom a plumeria with a drawing I made for her. Everyone in the prison loved me, and I was very close with everyone. My father had told me that since I was around adults often, my vocabulary was very good. I was never baby-talked, and I always felt like I fit in with all the guys my dad hung out with. It was like I was part of a family, my ohana. After my mom went to prison, me and my dad lived with my grandma Suzie, Kristen's mom, for around 3-4 years. She was always there for us, and I can remember her so well. She always wore a blue Hawaiian hibiscus dress, and her hair was always put up in a bun, with her iconic chopsticks holding it all together. She took care of me and my dad. We lived in a small house surrounded by tall grass at the end of a dirt road, a gate out front stopping me from seeing my neighbors house across the way. I remember being so upset that i couldn't explore, and hearing kids my age made me feel lonely. I could hear dogs and chickens on their property, and it made me long for some sort of connection with them, but i never got it. Instead, to occupy myself, i would hunt for geckos. They were my friends, and i would catch them and kiss them, but they always ran away, or shed their tail, leading them to die. I never meant to hurt them, but in my mind they just fell asleep.