The Formative Years
Part I

Growing up the daughter of a divorced home, I spent half my adolesent life believing I had been cheated from living the American Dream. Instead of a normal family life, I shuffled back and forth between two households, always unsure of what my position was in each. While all my normal friends did normal things with their families, I was always concerned with saying or doing the wrong thing. The type of little girl who cried when anyone else cried, I always worried that the adults were more sensitive to our situation than I was.

I was far from being the good daughter however, occasionally my good nature took a tumble, leaving a little grizzly bear in my place. My feelings were so easily hurt, that sometimes I imagined injury where there was none. Competition with my sister was fierce. I was the baby of both families, and expected all attention to be diverted to me, as I thought was my right. My older sister Amy unfortunately, was of a different opinion. Proclaiming then, as she still does, that our Father was "Her" Father and our Mother, was "My" Mother. She was Daddy's little girl, and darn me if I thought I was going to be even the smallest distraction to her title. Somehow we managed to cope, despite the constant battles for attention.

Weekends normally found us, ensconced within my Father's family home, where our grandparents only served to inforce the Principessa complex that seemed to come naturally to us both. With Daddy, we learned to appreciate good music. Often times jumping on his bed, with his stereo full blast, as we crooned into our microphones. Back then Billy Squier and Billy Joel were a couple of our favorites. Daddy had been in a band since before we were born, and both Amy and I were groupies to his rock star. Daddy always gave us the things that Mom never would. (A subject that to this day, still manages to burn my Mother just a little.) We spent the weekends playing in parks, chasing butterflies, and squeezing into his tiny Fiat for long car rides. Rides which my sister enjoyed far more than me. Being the smallest, I was often the one who got stuffed behind the front seat to ride like a sardine in his small can of a car. To this very day, I still am not too keen, on what I consider pointless joyrides to nowhere.

When the weekends ended, Daddy took us home and our weekly lives resumed. By the time I was four, Mother had remarried and Daddy Chick came into existance. Marrying in the living room, the younger version of myself, tried to halt the proceedings, by locking myself into my room, where I was purported to have played "The Eye of the Tiger" as loud as possible on my Strawberry Short Cake record player. The wedding despite my best laid plans went on without a hitch.

Daddy Chick was a loving but tough father. His household was not for the weak of heart or the open hand. If you wanted something, you were expected to work for it. There was no free ride for anyone, not even the baby. Chores were a daily thing, no matter how much you got done, it always seemed that there was more to do. With the passage of time, I became somewhat clever on how to weasel my way out of some of the more nondesirable chores. Time, I had figured, was the key element ... and if I wasted just enough of it, someone else would pick up my slack and do it for me. A trick that much to my chagrin, did not go unnoticed by anyone in my family and continues to haunt me to this day.

During this time, I learned a lot from Chick. I learned the joys of camping in real tents, canoeing on peaceful lakes, respecting the wilderness around me and how to be self sufficient. If we were his sons, he could not have taught us more. Yet within the teaching, every day life still brought problems to our home. Years passed, and we grew older. Amy's introduction to her teenage years brought confusion, intolerance and pain. In such a rigid household, Amy's new attitude did not go over well. "I want to go live with my Father!", she would scream, staring down my Mother, teenage hatred lighting a fire in her eyes. It was only a matter of time, before she finally got her wish, leaving me alone to cope with the disease that slowly began to invade our home.

When Amy left to live with Daddy, Daddy himself, had been remarried for a few years. My stepmother brought with her a much younger daughter of her own and soon after added yet another sister into the fold. I loved all my sisters just as much as I was jealous of all of them. Alone, I didn't have the solace of companionship to seek with my sisters. Amy, I had felt, had betrayed me and abandoned me, leaving me to suffer in a home intent upon collapsing in on itself. In a sense, I became an only child.

There is a reason why marriages don't last, but families must persevere. A connection once made, though severed, continues on for eternity, in bonds forged beyond blood. You don't spend 10 years calling someone Dad and then divorce him when you Mother does. It's not possible, even though I tried for the longest time. Consumed by bitterness, grief and confusion of my world turning upside down, I fought back this time with anger. I blamed Chick for everything that had ever gone wrong. I blamed him for yet another security net failing to catch me in the fall. The hottest anger often burns with the brightest love. For the next 4 years, I cut off all contact with my stepfather, as I presumed to go on with my life as normally as possible.

Enter Ken. My Mother's third and hopefully last husband. A good man, although a bit dated when it comes to old fashioned beliefs and opinions. It used to drive me nuts, when the phone would ring and ring and ring, and yet even though he was sitting right beside it, he would never answer it. In his mind, since it wasn't going to be for him, he was excluded from the answering. This and other oxymoron's in his character were enough to keep me hiding out in my room or finding some sort of trouble with Brenda. In the presence of new love, I often felt invisible.

Meanwhile, weekends at Dad's were becoming troublesome. Most of the time, I felt like a visitor in his home. Although he never intended me to feel that way, I felt much more comfortable next door at my Grandmother's house. Nonni always made room for me, as I was still her darling one. Every weekend, she would teach me something new to cook and then we would settle down to watch her favorite programs, ranging from Sunday morning Mass to WWF Wrestling. With Nonni, no matter what, you always knew that you were loved.

In 1993, I gradutated from high school and in the fall of that same year enrolled in a local community college. Brenda and I, were inseperable and so it came as no surprise that we decided to continue our education together. But schooling, it turned out was not for Brenda and by the end of the first year, she had no plans to continue on to the next semester. That fall, I moved into an apartment that I shared with 3 other girls. What I didn't know, was that the girl I was, would soon cease to be and a new woman would be left in her place. A place, where darkness was danger and trust no longer existed. One picture remains of that girl, doe eyed naive and innocent, taken on the very night she stopped from being. Safe on my mantle now, she is a constant reminder of what can be lost in the minute you forget to be aware.

There are certain things I associate with this time. Rain falling on October leaves, the soft yellow glow of streetlights, wet pavement and the sense that locks could not be counted on to keep all things out. I remember turning on my radio, seeking the comfort of a human voice, as I holed myself up in my empty apartment, and hearing the soft, haunting strains of "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas. All I was, was dust in the wind.