My name is Rebecca, and I am thirty-five years old. If you had encountered me a year ago, you would have seen a woman anchored in what she believed was peace. I lived in Nashville, Tennessee, a city where music bleeds from the brickwork and hope hangs heavy in the humid air. My life was steady: quiet mornings with my husband, Steven, and the sound of my little girl, Lorie, giggling over silly games in the living room.
I thought I had outrun the chaos of my youth. I believed I had built a fortress high enough to keep out the cruelty that had defined my childhood. But safety is a trickster. It lulls you into thinking old wounds have healed over, that certain people have lost their teeth. I was wrong.
I wasn’t the daughter my parents, Susan and Harold, wanted. I was the reliable one, the static in the background. My younger sister, Vanessa, was the sun around which they orbited—their golden child, their pride. If she breathed, it was a triumph. If I bled, it was an inconvenience. Growing up in that house was like walking barefoot on broken glass; every step hurt, but stopping wasn’t an option.
I left at nineteen, not out of bravery, but out of a desperate need to breathe. Steven was my lifeline, the first person to love me without asking me to shrink. When Lorie was born, I vowed she would never know the coldness of being second best.
