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The night I panicked, I practically fell against the chain-link fence surrounding the desk where Officer Rule sat. Something must have wanted me to live that night, because I’d thrown myself at ...

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Many urged me to turn to God after receiving the insane sentence I did. Yet, my hatred towards Him only deepened. If God existed, allowing this to happen to me—on top of everything else I’d alre...

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During the twelve hours I spent in Florence jail, I was at least grateful I had quit smoking—I didn’t have to deal with craving a cigarette on top of the shock of learning the charges against me...

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We had barely been in the house a few days when a knock on the door jolted me from a sound sleep on the morning of January 5th, at 10:30 AM. I peered out the window and saw a cop standing at the...

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The fact that a guy named Steven sold our house for a surprising $83,500—just shy of our asking price of $85,000—only two weeks after it hit the market raised a red flag in my mind and sent my b...

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As much as I cherished my husband, it became evident that we were not entirely compatible in the bedroom. This realization weighed heavily on me, along with the fear of infertility. The thought ...

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By April 1993, after ten months at Vista Ventana, I had enough of the rude residents and management. It was time to move on. I did most of my moving late at night, always making sure to casually...

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Stacey was my biggest problem at the first complex I lived in during my time in Arizona, along with twenty-six-year-old Andrea (Andi), the woman living next to me in Andy’s building. Through And...

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My nine-year-old niece, Lisa, took my departure from New England hard. We had grown so close. I never saw Barbara again. She was never around the few times I went back to the apartment with Dad...

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The Norwich Housing Authority (NHA) projects were arranged around a square courtyard, with four strips of apartments on each side. The courtyard doubled as a parking lot and a playground for the...

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One night in 1991, bored out of my mind, I stumbled upon a fascinating service where I could leave voicemails. I started having fun, leaving edited messages from one machine on others, sharing o...

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I took my second trip to Florida to stay with my parents in late 1989, having first visited them in early 1988. The visit was as I expected—full of my mother’s demands and bossiness. Their home ...

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Stephan (Steve) was my most memorable neighbor of all in a good way. A 34-year-old Black man, he worked as an engineer at a nearby Air Force base. I would have married him, to his delight, if I ...

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Andy and I often went to gay bars, but I didn’t care much for the people. Like in most bar scenes, many were into drugs and heavy drinking. A lot of them also felt phony and immature. The women,...

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As I grew older, my frustration with people and many aspects of my country increased. I was tired of seeing money sent to other countries while people here struggled. I became fed up with conser...

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In June 1987, I moved to Oswego Street, a far cry from Woodside Terrace, though it was just a few minutes away. This area was a rundown, predominantly Puerto Rican section of the city, with vaca...

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Six months after moving into my own place on Locust Street, one of the owners informed me about a fourth-floor apartment available around the corner of the building that faced Woodside Terrace. ...

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A couple of months after I got home and was about 19, I got a job at a concession stand in a movie theater at the mall. It was a total bore, and a very difficult job for me because I was never g...

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When I returned home after graduating from Valleyhead, I wasn’t thrilled to face the double whammy of living with both Mom and Tammy. It was horrible—absolutely miserable. Between the two of the...

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Warning! This part is pretty dark and heavy. Read at your own risk! What I hated most about Valleyhead was its overly structured and hectic routine and the fact that you had no space or privacy...

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In late August, Dotty, a couple of people from DSS, and I all piled into a van together. Dotty told me we were going to get carpet for my so-called new rooms in the new house we were supposed to...

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In April 1982, I became a ward of the state while attending an alternative high school. For years, I struggled with the question of how it all came to be. Did my parents willingly give me up, or...

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The summer of 1981 through the summer of 1984, when I was fifteen to eighteen years old, were the worst years of my childhood. The amount of stress, fear, anxiety, anger, confusion, frustration,...

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In 1978, we moved from the newer side of Longmeadow to the older section. Although the house was much older, it was bigger and I liked it a lot better. It didn’t have much of a back or front yar...

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We had a summer cottage at Old Colony Beach in Old Lyme, Connecticut. As soon as school let out, we’d head there and stay until Labor Day. My family began going to this beach when I was a baby a...

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