My earliest memories that I really relate to starts when I was around 5 and in kindergarten, anything before that is blocked out thankfully. One memory remains vivid, my brother hiding me in the dryer and telling me to be quiet until he came to get me. Our mother was on a rampage, and I was usually the target. My brother was 5 years older than me, my sister was 7 years older, she didn't protect me like my brother did, we never did become close like sisters do.

My brother also was the one who gave me my first drink of cough syrup, it tasted so good and made you feel good too. I didn't know why but I sure did like that feeling. My brother and sister moved out when I was 5, I always waited for them to get off the school bus and one day they didn't. I thought it odd that my mom was home that day, I'd walked home from kindergarten, it was allowed back then, and there she was and she said they weren't coming home and neither was my dad. That's when 5-year-old me knew I was doomed; I found out what it felt like when the bottom fell out. No 5-year-old should know that feeling and no amount of cough syrup was fixing this and it didn't matter because she stopped buying it and it was around this time they quit putting codeine in it anyway. I'm not saying I became a druggie at 5, it took longer than that, but it was the beginning of escaping for me. In our family after the divorce, we 3 kids found our niche in life, my sister turned to food for comfort, my brother grew up to become a work-a-holic and I became a drug addict.

I was left alone most of the time, I spent weekends with my dad, without fail every Friday till Sunday night I was with my dad and brother and sister. This went on until I was 11 and he got custody of me. My mom remarried and had another child, my younger brother who I love very much. The only problem with going to live with my dad was he had rules that I had to follow, and my sister was trying to mother me and I resented the rules, the mothering. I only had a few simple rules at my mom's house, be in when the streetlights came on and do not make a mess. I was basically grown up at 11 and I didn't like being told what to do and when to do it. One more curveball thrown my way and this one hit me straight on. Coming up next, a move from the city to the farm complete with a stepmother, oh joy...