Ailsa has created a staging area where she is putting everything she wants to take to college.

 

She has had her closet organized for weeks — these stay and these go to school. 👗👟👕👚👖👢

 

 

It’s both ripping my heart and making it swell with pride all at the same time.

 

I go back to when I left home 2 days after graduation. The mixture of fear and hope mingled — I was told I’d fail at life. That I couldn’t make it on my own, and what I was good at my family needed. I was selfish, they said.

My bank account was cleaned out more than once which is why I don’t use the typical questions, like my mother’s maiden name. When I moved back home because they took all my money out of the bank they pointed out to me my failure at not being able to provide for myself, I was supposed to be thankful. I wouldn’t move back in the house so I lived in a trailer in the front yard.

I wasn’t familiar with the term gaslighting then, but I knew what a lie was. I left for Alaska and once there, I thought I’d never leave that paradise on earth. Alaska to me represented a place where even misfits could find a place.

 

I was a misfit.

 

Aren’t we all?