And so that’s where I was when I started hearing and knowing things I otherwise shouldn’t have known. That’s where I was when the whole world started to make some sense, become a little more focused and narrow. That’s where I was when I really saw and understood where I was in the world, in the order of things. I wasn’t a mote in God’s eye. He probably couldn’t have even found me had he looked for me through a microscope. I was living on the South Side of Chicago. I was barely passing school. I was poor but didn’t know it. I was never happy, or around people who were. I was going through slow motions that had already been set for me and that nobody was trying to accelerate. I was dreamless. I was unable to imagine me beyond the day I was in at the moment. I was sad about all the sadness around me. I was indifferent. Then I found out I was pregnant.

I look far back to remember our stories. And though my mind knows I am not looking back centuries, my spirit feels like it was that long ago. I always felt like a grown woman and an old soul, even before I became a mother. A grandmother used to always say, “Girl, I swear you act like you been here before.” Here was America, the North, Chicago. Now that I am no longer there, but here, with mature and wiser eyes I have a new perspective on just what being there meant, and I now know I was tougher than I gave myself credit for. I confess. I took advantage of youth’s luxuries: sulking, learning, misbehaving, dreaming, falling in love. I was always a sassy little thing and a treasure chest of contradictions; I straddled the fences between being rambunctious but withdrawn, brilliant but inarticulate, spirited but defeated. And now, finally and only after much time to think about it, I can laugh when I think about those last couple months of my life in that foggy and crazy-weathered city. A new perspective makes it hard to tell the story how it really was, because maturity wants to twist the details into a version of the truth that lets me off the hook. But I can’t leave out all the mistakes I made and the wrong I did. Despite even the parts of the truth for which I’m ashamed, I still feel like life turned out alright.