Did I feel bad about outing her to my dad? Yes, but only because he moved out and eventually left to live in another country, which was totally selfish. I’d lost count of how many times since I’d asked the question, who was my birth father? I didn’t have a clue, and according to my mother, neither did she. I was the product of an oops-pregnancy that my mother never wanted. She had a few one-night stands while she was on an op, and ‘oops,’ here I was. Just what every kid wanted to hear, ‘Hey, you were the accident that I didn’t really want but got anyway.’ She said she’d never wanted children because it would’ve stunted her career. It honestly felt like she resented me from the day I was born.

I’d been so angry with her that I cheered when they said they were getting a divorce, but the joy quickly subsided when Dad moved out and told me it was best if I stayed with my mother. He’d never been the breadwinner of the family, and my mother would only make our lives hell if I moved in with him. Then he got a job transfer and moved across the ocean to England with his new fiancé. Now, they were expecting a baby, and I barely heard from him anymore. Not only did I have no clue who my birth father was, but I felt like I’d lost the one I’d loved for years.

The sound of my breath was loud in my ears as I pushed my body harder than I ever had. My arms pumped in time to the song’s beat, and my heart thumped, thumped, thumped along. I leaped over a small log and flew around the bend in the trail.

So here I was, unsure of who I was and what I wanted. And I’d left behind my life and all my friends in Cali. My mother decided to move us out here with the new teaching position she’d been offered. So now I was halfway across the country only to be stuck in a city I didn’t want to be in, with a woman I couldn’t stand and doing a program I was not interested in attending.

I’d rounded the halfway point and had barely broken a sweat. This was the hardest part of the trail, and I pushed hard as my legs climbed the steep incline that sent my heart rate through the roof.