Cher: Part One: The Memoir (The Cher Memoir Book 1)

by Cher

Addiction doesn’t just run in my family, it gallops, and its unhappy consequences have been repeated with dreadful symmetry throughout my life.

Having declared that men are “things you love against your will,” my mother was becoming a serial monogamist.

This constant unpredictability made me hypervigilant about the moods around me and gave me what I call a faulty emotional thermostat as I, too, began to swing between extremes.

Even though I was so young, my mother treated me like an adult confidante her whole life. I will never forget the time she broke down and asked me, “Cher, how on earth are we going to pay the rent?” Unable to think of an answer, a voice inside my head cried, I’m a kid, Mom. How should I know? I was always old beyond my years, maybe because I was treated like a grown-up from the earliest age.

I learned early that most adults were unpredictable, so I couldn’t count on them and had to be constantly vigilant. I never wanted a plain life, but a touch of normality was nice now and again.

Years later somebody asked me if I left Sonny for another man, and I told them, “No. I left him for another woman. Me.”