I am going to intentionally skip over the darkest, most degrading aspects of the middle transition. Not because the suffering wasn’t profound, but because allowing trauma to be the focal point of my story gives Caspian and my family too much power.
But for context, there were agonizing weeks where our motel residency stretched into a suffocating month. There was a specific, degrading Tuesday where I ate a sleeve of stale saltine crackers for dinner because I had drained my last twenty dollars on a pair of clearance sneakers for Arlo, who had hit a sudden growth spurt and was getting blisters from his old shoes. There were midnights where I sat on the closed lid of the motel toilet, the exhaust fan masking the sound of my weeping, allowing the absolute terror of our poverty to crush me.
But every single morning, without fail, I washed my swollen face with cold water, painted on a smile, and resumed being their mother.
What I truly want to document is the empire I began to build in the rubble.
My immediate supervisor at the medical records facility was a woman named Terrell. She was a formidable, no-nonsense administrator who missed nothing. She noticed my frayed collars, the dark circles bruising the skin under my eyes, and the fact that I was clocking in an hour early and leaving two hours late just to utilize the office microwave and heating.
One bleak Thursday afternoon, Terrell called me into her office, closed the blinds, and asked me with terrifying directness if I was trapped in a dangerous domestic situation.
