Teen Ink

Preface

When most people think of their childhood years, they think of bikes, swimming lessons, kindergarten and the simplicity of life. When I think of my childhood, all of those aspects come to mind with an addition to one other: the climax of my mother’s problems that culminated in my disappearance to Portland, Oregon for three months, when I was eight. Not by a stranger, nor was I was subjected to any physical trauma. I was taken by my own mother, at a time when I had thought life may have finally been getting brighter. Little did I know that the light had not been a light of hope, but the light of the growing explosive fire that I’d been born into.