My mom’s addiction made some sort of sense. She had been a foster kid after my grandparents died in a house fire. She herself had only made it out of the blaze in the nick of time, and half her body was covered in thick scars. She had never been smart or motivated like I am, and she dropped out of school at fourteen. She had worked as a waitress, a dock worker, in the factories, anything she could do to eat and keep some sort of roof over her head. Then she got knocked up and found drugs. I’d never known her sober. The woman I knew was a shaking, cackling, retching, screaming banshee that
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