I would miss his riddles, his lame jokes, the humor he always tried to infuse into our family even during the most difficult times. One last kiss on his head, then I headed out the front door, where I had already dropped off two duffel bags. I loved Bennett, but I didn’t love how much he had become like my mother over the years. I guess death and depression did that to a person. Changed them. Emptied them. Destroyed them.

I couldn’t watch Bennett’s demise anymore, so on my twentieth birthday, I packed everything I owned, which wasn’t much beyond what I could fit in two large Army duffel bags I’d swiped from Mom’s closet after my real dad died. Then I bought a one-way ticket heading out West, to Hollywood, where dreams either went to bloom or die. Community theatre wasn’t paying the bills—nor was waitressing at a dive bar where I was sick of being groped by drunk guys—and I had nothing else to lose. As I hopped in the cab I had called earlier, I watched the home on Mount Washington that I had grown up in, with its yellow brick green with moss and startling front yard view of a sparkling city skyline, disappear behind me.

The bus station was nearly empty at this late hour, but it was the cheapest ticket they sold, so a red-eye it was. Everyone in my ACA—Adult Children of Alcoholics—group agreed that leaving might be the best decision. Trust my Higher Power. Find something else, somewhere else. Break the chains. Crumble the bondage. Free myself from the past. All those empty mantras that felt meaningless…until now. For once I understood just how powerful they were as each step further away from the brick house that held me hostage crumbled away in the background of my life.

I sat down on a plastic bench, waiting for the bus as red taillights flickered along distant streets that wound through and around the Steel City. I set my bags at my feet and unzipped one. My finger felt around inside, between folds of clothes, until I contacted the hard ridges. Pulling the item out, it was wrapped in my real dad’s gray Army T-shirt. I had never washed it after he passed, and sometimes I held it to my nose and imagined his scent on it. I unfolded the soft cloth and came face to face with the only memory I brought with me to LA.