The Years In Between

After leaving home, life became about survival.

When my mother went to jail for thirty days, I moved in with my aunt. Eventually I reached a point where I didn’t have a stable place to go. I became a nanny because I needed somewhere to be. It was not a planned career. It was survival.

Those years between eighteen and twenty- two didn’t have a name. They were just the years I got through. Sleeping in living rooms. My mother’s couch. Wherever there was space. Stability was always temporary, always borrowed, always one situation away from disappearing.