Excerpts

I FOUND OUT THE EXTENT to which my childhood was fucked up when I began writing this book. I thought my bed-wetting, inappropriate anger, stealing, and running away were just quirks . . . that I was a bad seed. Of course, my mother's strange upbringing, childhood trauma, and abusive first husband could've only led to horrible things. Nobody could have gone through what she did and emerge unscathed. Even as I sit down to write, I'm not quite sure how to approach my childhood memories. Perhaps as the bomb squad approaches a mysterious package: tentatively, as if any little touch might set off an explosion. But I'll just dive in. Everything that could explode already has I just have to watch out for sparks as I clean up the mess left behind. Okay, it's not as if my childhood was so tragic. There was no big trauma. Just a lot of mess. I'll start at the beginning. My mother met her first husband, George, at an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting when she was nineteen. George, however, was not attending the meeting he was merely waiting outside and drinking. He married and impregnated her soon after. He was always taking out loans and never repaying them. He was always on the run from the law and wanted in different states for unpaid speeding tickets and DUIs. He had moved my mother and my brother, Nevada, to Reno to flee his latest charges. From what I've heard, he was the classic abuser of both my mother and my brother. He would get drunk and beat my mom. He would flick my baby brother in the head, swing him around in a terrifying way. He would watch hardcore porn in front of my toddler brother. He would drive drunk with baby Nevada in the front seat. His crazy roommate shot him in the leg, right past my mother, past Nevada's playpen. My mother finally left him, but before they could get divorced, he was murdered handcuffed to a tree and shot by one of the people he'd ripped off, of which there were many. My father is George's brother, and though his childhood wasn't much better than my mother's, his mental health was. The first sign that his marriage to my mom wouldn't last was that they met in AA. They fell in love, ignored codependency issues, and quickly became engaged. My father adopted Nevada when my brother was still young, and for a while, the three of them looked like the picture-perfect family. Mom converted to Catholicism and they were active in the church. Dad introduced her to the pro-life movement and she became obsessed with it. She used breast-feeding and the rhythm method as the only acceptable forms of birth control. As a result, she had my sister Sarah when Nevada was seven, Rachel three years later, and me two years after that. While we were kids, my mom became increasingly manic, but not in totally destructive ways.She held down a job and raised four children, always being tender and loving to each one of us. She gave us baby massages, sang Bob Dylan, took us to the park and the library. She carried me to the hospital Excerpted from Hannah: My True Story of Drugs, Cutting, and Mental Illness by Hannah Westberg All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.