You are seven. You are sitting on a standalone patio swing, on a concrete patio that doesn’t quite match your yard. Your parents were young when the house was purchased. They couldn’t afford a real deck. So, instead you have a concrete filled square in the middle of the grass. You are looking up at your bedroom window and wondering if your toys are moving around in there while you can’t see them. You have a book in your lap, it’s R.L Stine. The spine has spiderweb cracks of white coming through, and the pages are a worn and tattered yellow brown. It’s a hand-me-down from one of your older cousins, or a cousin of a cousin, or a friend of a cousin, you don’t even know anymore. You are devouring books with such reckless abandon that aunts and uncles bring you collections from their attics in wobbly plastic Tupperware that have “BOOKS,” written in fading black sharpie on the sides. You pick up the book and are swinging absentmindedly, lost in the horror of a book that offsets the summer day.

I want to tell you not to do it, to resist the temptation to bend your legs under the swing to swing harder, faster, higher. But you are not here. You are only a memory. So of course, you do it. You stick your tiny legs and toes under the swing and bring your knees up. One of the swing’s legs lifts off the ground from the force of it, but you don’t tip over. You don’t tip over because your big toe drags against the concrete underneath the swing, effectively halting the momentum, but not so effectively that the unforgiving concrete doesn’t also skin much of your big toe along the way. Your blood drips down staining the endless gray below you. You will have a scar on your big toe for the rest of your life, even still when you are twenty-five.

Mom-mom Shirley runs out of the house to comfort you. She puts a dirty kitchen towel on your toe with a loving amount of pressure. She sings to you and strokes your hair. You cry harder than is probably necessary, watching as the tears make tiny puddles on her pink striped t-shirt. You don’t know it yet, but colon cancer is devouring her from the inside out in this moment, and still she is worried about your toe. When you do learn about the cancer, she continues to babysit you. Dad drops you off in her hospital room before work and you sit there with her all day. You read while she is sleeping, you make snow angels on the dust covered floor while her physical therapist instructs her to make them in bed for mobility. You think if you both work hard enough at it that she will live. She does not. She puts on the Price Is Right and remarks on how much she loves Bob Barker. A nurse sits with you whenever she needs to “go down for a test,” because she has no other options, because you are seven.

And then you are nine, and full of hurt and fear. You read more now as an escape, but books end. You hate that they end. So, you start writing extensions so that they don’t have to. You write so that you can give characters better endings than the ones you’ve gotten so far. Your other grandmother, Mimi, steps up and raises you while your father is too sad, and while your mother would simply rather be doing anything else. She fosters your love of reading and writing. She reads you Stephen King and Danielle Steele because “there’s no such thing as age appropriate when it comes to good books”. She lets you eat pizza for every meal and stay up until four in the morning. You don’t see anything strange about this, because you are nine. You pass your first novel around to Mrs. Berkley’s class. A gory Stephen King-esque continuation of Pet Sematary where a cat comes back from the dead and eats its humans. The book gets confiscated, because everyone else is nine.

When you are eleven, you learn that things are more complicated than you were led to believe. “Mimi is a drug addict, always has been,” they tell you. But that’s impossible because your D.A.R.E teacher tells you drug addicts are found passed out at bus stops, and they go to jail, and they don’t have teeth. But Mimi has teeth. She doesn’t even go to bus stops. She is not in jail. She gets you a library card and takes you to get ice cream. She asks you to hold the steering wheel straight on the way home because she “has a headache,” but really because she is so obliterated on painkillers that she is the only one who can see stars in the middle of the day. But you think nothing of this, because you are eleven.

Suddenly you are twelve, and things have gotten harder, but at least you have writing. You write an essay for that D.A.R.E teacher telling him what you understand about your grandmother. Everyone who reads it cries. You think this is embarrassing because you do not cry. You do not understand why everyone is always crying. You do not realize that your strength as a writer lies in your ability to make people feel hard things. Your parents tell you to give the essay to Mimi. You say no. You think she will be upset and embarrassed, and you feel guilty for writing about that which you do not fully understand. And for making everyone cry. The school asks you to read it at graduation, where she will be, and you agree thinking that somehow this is the better option. They tell you that she will get help and that it will save her life. She does not make it to graduation. She dies 3 days before the event at the age of 59, of a drug overdose. You think this is all your fault, because you are twelve.

You are fourteen, and you are the kid who killed her grandmother. You don’t have any friends because you are 250lbs in the 8th grade. Because without Mimi you learned only to eat what you could microwave when you were twelve. No one will let you sit with them on the bus, so you sit in the aisle on the floor and cry while people step over you. The bus driver says nothing. When you get off, a kid yells out the bus window that you’re so fat that your Ugg boots bend when you walk, so you forget to put them up so that the dog will pee on them, and you will have to throw them away. You ask your dad to buy you Converse which you hope will not bend when you walk. You think this will solve your problems, because you are fourteen.

You are sixteen and you are crying in your bedroom because no one asked you to prom. “Go with friends,” your only friend says. “But not me, I’m going with a date.” You know better than to say you don’t have any friends out loud. “Of course you do!” your only friend will say, but he can’t name any of them except for himself, because there are none to name. You get good grades but sit alone at lunch. You wonder if this is a fair trade. You listen to bands that nobody else listens to, like The Smiths, The Clash, and The Limousines. You have given up on writing because you think it somehow makes you even weirder, and because your lack of faith and embarrassment at your own written words killed the woman who raised you. You think your lack of friendship diminishes your worth. You think that being strange equals being nothing, because you are sixteen.

When you are seventeen, your mom overdoses on heroin on the night of the Oscars. You remember this, because you are watching the Oscars in your bedroom alone when your dad sends you a text from work to go check on her because she sent him cryptic gibberish. It hadn’t even occurred to you to check on her. You rarely speak to one another. She is sweaty and warm, throwing up into an orange Home Depot bucket right in the middle of her bedroom. You’re not sure how or when the bucket got there. You practically carry her out to your car, which is a used 2013 Hyundai Elantra, but is brand new to you. You promised your dad you would take care of it when he gave it to you. She pees all over the front seat. You’re more angry about that than the heroin, because you are seventeen.

At eighteen, you get accepted to your dream college for a professional writing program. You think you can handle writing for businesses and websites. You think you could still be happy. You can’t afford it. Your father doesn’t get approved for the loan. He spent all of his money on your mother’s rehabilitation over the last year. You are broke. You go to community college for Public Relations because your father tells you that you won’t make any money as a writer anyway. He tells you that you don’t want your kids to face the same struggles that you face. You spend hours circling the lot at Camden County for a parking spot, while “LOT FULL,” signs laugh at you. You sometimes park a mile away at a daycare and walk with arms full of textbooks that you had to work overtime to afford. Your advisor tells you to come earlier, or carpool with a friend, but you are tired, and still lacking in the friend department. You were supposed to have a roommate and a dorm room, and instead you have a car, a backpack, and a full-time job. You spend time between classes crying in said car and pinching the skin on your knees to feel something. Your boss convinces you to drop out and work more, so you do. Because you are broke, and because you are eighteen.

When you are nineteen you go on a string of bad Tinder dates. One guy stands you up after you spend 3 hours putting on sweaters in various hues. One guy pushes you up against the wall of a convenience store and tries to kiss you. You wriggle away when he paws at your breasts and run to your car. The next guy asks you if you’d like to see his favorite place in the world, and takes you to a fur coat closet in a Macy’s, where he proceeds to smell the fur coats for 15 minutes. You watch him do this, too uncomfortable to do anything else. The last guy is rude to the wait staff at the Olive Garden and tells you that you actually owe him $13.89 and not just $13.00 when you slide the money across the table to him. While you’re watching Blade Runner 2049, he makes the mistake of trying to put his fingers up your skirt at the movie theatre where you work. You shoot a quick text to the security guard and he comes to your rescue. You’re not sure if this is what dating is supposed to be like. Because you’re fat. But also, because you are nineteen.

When you are twenty you and your father start taking yearly cruises. In one week, you make memories that start to heal the lifetime of hurt that has consumed both of you. You laugh, dance, drink, and play slots together. The salty air surrounds you like a hug while simultaneously making you feel lighter. You are sunburned in all the right places. You see places you never would have seen otherwise. You laugh when people ask how long you’ve been married and look for ways to slip in the fact that this man is your father into conversations with strangers earlier on. You are aware of how strange it looks to cruise with your dad. But he is your best and only friend, and you do not care anymore, because you are twenty.

On the ship you turned twenty-one. On land you joined an online Creative Writing program at a college far away, but somehow it feels closer than any of the ones at home. The promotions have stopped coming in at work, and your yearly reviews are average. You do not mind, because you have some core friendships that you think are going to last a lifetime. You have a lot of laughs and share a lot of love that moves you when you feel stuck. You are awkwardly close to all of your female bosses, looking for a mother in them. You often find one. You are not sure if this helps or hinders you. You meet an incredible man that you are in love with. You kind of think he feels the same, but that professionalism is the problem. When you accept a transfer you don’t want and he starts dating an underwear model, you learn that professionalism is not the problem. You are the problem. And still, you are twenty-one.

At twenty-two you accept a random snapchat request that has been sitting in your request file as a “quick add,” for two years. You don’t typically add people you don’t know, but you are lonely, and you are bored. The man sends you a video of him breaking into his own apartment after a night of drinking, and you laugh. You meet him for the first time a week later, standing in your backyard whispering in hushed tones in the middle of the night, because you don’t want your dad to know you snuck a boy over, even though you are twenty-two.

By twenty-four you take Lamictal every day to get out of bed. You’re not sure that it works, and neither are they. They tell you it’s for seizures, but also probably works for mental illness. They don’t know why. They just tell you that it does. At least you don’t have to worry about seizures, you think. The snapchat man proposes, and you accept, even though he has had an affair less than a year ago. You think that this would have broken you, and in many ways it does, but he is just as broken as you are. He is going to be different, better. You know this because he tells you this. You believe him, because you are forgiving, because you are kind, because you are strong. You switch to Psychology when you only have four months left of college, because you don’t think you are good enough to make it as a writer. But also, because you want to understand what is wrong with you. Everyone is proud. They think you will be successful at helping others. You are not. You are miserable and overwhelmed, and you can’t even help yourself, because you are twenty-four.

At twenty-five you switch back to Creative Writing and apply for an MFA program. You don’t think you’ll get accepted. You do. Your fiancé buys you a balloon and takes you to Outback for dinner. He is kind to the wait staff. He laughs at your dessert induced chocolate mustache. He tells you your eyes are green like freshly mowed grass. The therapy is working. You plan a wedding during a global pandemic on a movie theatre manager’s budget. You walk down the aisle in the ultimate act of forgiveness. You know that you have a long way to go, but sometimes in the quiet grey overcast of a winter morning when he scratches your naked back and asks you if you want to go make pancakes for breakfast, you truly believe that this will work. You will do everything in your power to make it work. You are happy. You are happy in spite of the high school Facebook friends who just had a kid, bought a house, and had another kid. You are happy even though you always feel like you are lacking in some way. You are happy even though your dad, and now your husband, remain your only friends. You are happy even though you are awkward. Even though you are fat. Those same Facebook phonies now send you Linked-In messages asking you to join their gaggle of girl bosses. They didn’t know you when you were fifteen, and they don’t know you when you are twenty-five.

And so, on that summer day long ago, you do it. You kick your little feet under the porch swing and pull your knees up. You do this even though it is the thing that sets all the other things in motion. You do this even though it will hurt. You do this not knowing that you will be kept safe in the memory of a twenty-five your old girl one day, visited often, championed. You do this because you don’t know, because you can’t know, what’s to come, because you are seven.

Rocquel Motta was born and raised in the suburbs of Southern New Jersey surrounded by the Wharton State Forest. She is pursuing a Creative Writing MFA at Southern New Hampshire University. If she could only bring three things to a deserted island with her they would be wild berry Poptarts, iced tea, and a good book. When she is not writing she enjoys playing the ukulele, spending time with her husband and dogs, and wandering the nearest Wawa.