After my mother killed herself, I lived with my aunt for a year. I got the bedroom of her one-bedroom apartment and she took the foldout couch/bed, though the mattress was only as thick and cushioned as a little girl’s thigh.

I was six and my nightmares began as soon as I put on my nightgown. They were vague and huge and plotless and never-ending, filled with all of people I’d ever met, all of the people at her funeral who couldn’t even look at me without crying like a baby. When an adult cries like a baby, you never see their face the same way.

Obviously sleep was hard, so I was awake mostly. When I couldn’t stand to be alone anymore I’d knock on the inside of the bedroom door and hope my aunt would ask me if I would come out to the couch with her for a sec. She usually did.

After a while she decided it would save us a lot of trouble if we’d just share the real bed. And even then we didn’t sleep much.

We’d talk instead. Or she did. She’d tell me stories about my mother and her when they were little girls. She remembered everything—street names, middle names of boys they had crushes on, days of the week. It seemed crazy the way she could recall things, though now I realize she was only thirty-two, the exact age I am now. She’d draw each scene—down to the color of the tap shoes they wore everywhere, even though they weren’t supposed to. Usually she’d cry off and on throughout. She could be telling a story and weeping and smiling and sniffling and laughing at the same time. Crying was something we just did. It didn’t slow anything down.

Actually, when I met someone who wasn’t crying, it seemed awfully strange. My adopted mom told me that when I first moved in with them, people would smile at me, just smile, and I’d ask, “Are you OK?”

It was in our blood. My birth mother, and everyone else, called my aunt Crazy Ann. Like she was the only crazy one. And just like my mother, she was going through a big, long, sad stretch of life that began when she was born and got worse from there. But the reason my aunt survived (and survives), and somehow I knew this when I was five (probably because she told me in words and a million other ways), was because she could have fun. It sounds so stupid and basic. But she could have lots of fun, mostly when she was drunk, but even when she wasn’t. And when she was having fun, she wasn’t sad. And that’s how she knew that sadness could end. Or, at least, it could take a break.

“Have as much fun as you possibly can,” she told me one Tuesday morning, a school day, as we drove around trying to find an ice rink she was sure she’d been to a million times before, “and don’t worry about going too far because it’ll never make up for all the sadness. That’s life’s guarantee.”

* * *
My mother was always sad, even when she was happy. I say always because I have exactly ten clear memories of her that are my own and not connected to pictures or things my aunt or other people told me. Ten memories that are all mine.

In each and every one, she was sad—usually crying or trying not to.
* * *

Here’s the clearest of the ten:

About a month before she died, we saw Bambi at the mall. It was fine, I guess, until the hunter’s gunshot went off. Then my mother’s body shook like she was testing the chair to see if she could really sleep in it—then she sat still, paralyzed.

She didn’t take her eyes off the screen even after the credits rolled and the screen became gray like a fall morning and the lights came on and the workers came in to sweep the floor. And she didn’t move.

When they finally had to clean our row, I leaned into her ear to ask if she wanted to watch the movie again. She didn’t answer. She just turned her face to me, which pressed our eyes close together (her pupils seemed divided into a billion sad black dots), grabbed my hand and stood up.

It felt like the entire world was watching us as we walked out into the mall, through the lines of people, down an escalator, past Santa Claus, who had just gotten to town, and over to Orange Julius. She got us a table in the back and gave me some money to order a large Orange Julius, which is like orange juice but with an egg and foam in it.

I carried the giant cup with two hands, but I didn’t put it down. She had her head on the table, hair flat all around it like it had been arranged to show the perfect shape of her head. (Not that it matters, but she was perfect looking, one of the most beautiful faces that ever existed, everyone who ever saw her agrees about this. Being pretty should save you sadness if anything can. But it doesn’t. Not at all.)

I stood watching her, holding the cup, which was warm and cold at the same time.

The only way I could tell she was still alive is that I could hear her sob every few seconds—weak sobs that only sounded like sobs if you knew her. Very weak sobs since I don’t think she wanted me to see her or hear her cry. She cried like that for days in kid time, which was maybe only thirty minutes. Then she’d sit up and said, “I’d smile if I could, honey. I really would.”

Eventually I put the Orange Julius in front of her. I placed straw, which was still in its wrapper, on top of the cup. She lifted her head up. Her face was even sadder than I’d imagined. “You didn’t want any?” she asked.

“I saved it for you.”

I wish I could describe how sad, or sadder, that comment made her.

But it was so sad that when my aunt woke me in the middle of the night a month later on Christmas Eve to tell me that my mother was dead, I was a tiny bit happy underneath all the other horrible feelings.

I guess I was relived that she would never be so sad again.
* * *

If I wrote the fortunes inside fortune cookies, they’d say things like:

“Everything can get worse.” or “There’s someone worse off than you.” or “Giving up is a cliché.” or “You’re eating cookies made of my bones; I hope they taste good.”

Then I’d sit around my house praying that people took them as a joke. Because if they didn’t, it might just ruin their whole dinner or lunch. I don’t think anyone eats Chinese Food for Breakfast.

Maybe the Chinese, but they just call it food, like the joke says.
* * *

My aunt never explained that she was giving me away.

After a while she’d gone back to sleeping on the couch. Then she’d started mentioning that someone was coming for me, but I had no idea she meant for good.

Some nights I’d go out to find her, and she’d be gone. Sometimes she wasn’t back when I woke up for school. Then she stopped being there when I got home. But she’d always leave a note: Someone’s coming for you.

By someone, she meant a new family. But she never mentioned that. Some things are too hard to explain. Trying will fail, so nobody even tries.
* * *

No matter how nice you are—it’s not easy to meet your entirely new family.

When you shake their hands, you don’t know where to look. When they give you a bedroom, you have no idea what you’re allowed to touch. Eventually you wish you didn’t have a body, because then there would be nothing about you to make a mess anywhere.

At some point you forget that feeling. Actually, you stop thinking about it.

But that feeling probably never goes away.
* * *

Until I was seventeen, I was way too nice.

I didn’t know any better, which seems like an excuse. And it is. But I was nice to whomever I met. You sort of have to be when you’re adopted, but it was deeper than that. I wasn’t really nice; I didn’t care about people the way a nice person should; I was just desperate for people to be nice back to me.

When it worked, it worked too well. When it didn’t, I got depressed. Too depressed. I hate using that word. It’s meaningless and silly.

But if you’ve ever felt it, you know it’s as deep and as impossible to map as the ocean. It’s like dreams that way. Dreams and depression are proof that we are alone in his world. If you don’t believe me, try explaining either to someone and watch her or his eyes bounce from yours to any moving thing. Try it. You’ll see. It’s impossible to not feel alone.

If depression is the ocean, not sinking in it is your only hope.

And it’s also your punishment.

Until I was seventeen, that’s how I thought life would be forever.

And drugs changed all that. Well, liquor first. And pot.

Finally I could do more than float on someone else’s ocean. I don’t want to sound like a heretic, but I was, of course. Every addict has a God-complex that makes him or her think that they can control life (or at least how they feel about it, which is even more impossible). That’s the kind of shit you hear at meetings. But it’s true, I think.

With drugs, I could walk on the water. The higher the tides, the higher I was. And low tide wasn’t all that bad, either, not at the beginning.

When I was high, I was above it all. Surfing like Jesus. That’s what I’m going to call it because maybe then you’ll know how it felt.

And I could stop being nice. That was my favorite part. When I was high I could say no. And I did all the time. Unfortunately, I said yes to all the wrong things.
* * *

One of the great debates that any honest woman could have is whether it’s worse that your man cheats on you with a regular woman or a hooker. I hate that there is a job that could make a regular woman not a regular woman. But it’s the opposite pole to nuns, who aren’t regular women either.

On that note: If your husband cheated on you with a nun, you’d have to forgive him. She just needed it too bad.
* * *

We never consummated our marriage that first night. It wasn’t my fault. I thought he looked as sexy as I’d ever seen a man. He’d grown a beard for the ceremony. He looked like a doctor or a lawyer or the man I’d been looking for my entire life.

That first month we had sex two or three times, and each time it ended with him losing his erection and me apologizing.

I couldn’t even contemplate what massively fucked up issue he had that made marriage so impossible for him. Before we were wild. The sex was great. And as soon as we’re married, bam.

He was older, twice my age. I was twenty-two. I have no idea why he grew a beard for the wedding; he did it without asking. But I’m sure it had some huge thing to do with his dad or his mom or Freud. All those things I can’t give a fuck about now.

But how I begged.

To say that other men were chasing me was a massive understatement and something I had to remind myself of constantly.

I worked out five days a week. I walked around New York City with men chasing me, taxicabs crashing into fire hydrants, my stalkers bumping into each other. And I’d get home and nothing.

If I told you all the hours I spent licking a limp penis, you’d hate me.

You’d have to.

* * *
My aunt came to visit us around Halloween.

By then we’d been married less than a year and by then it was basically an open relationship. He was honest. Too honest. He’d started going to hookers, and he couldn’t live with the guilt. So he told me.

Eventually it was all I could do to give in to another man, then another, then another. It was amazing how much better it didn’t make me feel. But it was something to do. What else can a newlywed do when she comes home to an empty place on Friday night? No note. No plans. You have to do something.
* * *

As soon as my aunt walked in the door, she took one look at my face and dragged me out. Her purse was filled with little airplane bottles of liquor that she’d stolen off from stewardesses’ carts on her way to the bathroom. We got a cab and drove all over Manhattan finishing them. It was just starting to get dark early and the lights weren’t timed right, so the skyline was glittering even before dusk.

My aunt had never been to New York City before and the cab driver loved us. He was Hungarian, or hungry. His accent was rough. He wore a beret that smelled like salad. He pointed out where every famous person lived, where John Lennon died, where you could score whatever drug you wanted.

I had him drop us off at some club I’d read about in Page Six. We both kissed him on the cheek.

It was only nine, so the place was empty. There were only two women on the dance floor. My aunt checked her purse, took my hand and danced me to the center of the room. The next thing I remember was midnight and we were in the bathroom with those two dancing girls. That was the first time I tried coke.
* * *

My twenties are a blur, the kind of blur that would be fascinating in images, horrible in words.

Of course, we divorced. Of course, he followed me out to California to get me back. Of course, I went with him and left again a week later.

It was all coke and alcohol until my first rehab. That’s when I met my second husband who introduced me to his ex—heroin.

If I tell you I ended up in a hospital with a staph infection that almost killed me and I still did heroin after that—that, in fact, I had him bring it into the hospital three different times before they tried to arrest him—would you get the point?

The point? I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I was trying to not try to kill myself. And I was doing a terrible job.
* * *

And now? And now, it’s Friday night and I’m alone in my little condo in Laguna. I have a kitten. She can only sleep on my stomach.

My aunt is in town. We’re having breakfast in the morning. She’ll have three mimosas before the food even comes.

I’ve been sober a year now, this time, and I haven’t seen her since.

I have things to say. Things that I’ve needed to say for so long that I don’t think that once I say them I’ll be the same person. That’s what I’m hoping.

I want to tell her that I understand why she gave me up. It was the right thing to do.

I don’t think I’ll be able to tell her that. But at least I know I want to.

What I’ll actually be able to say, what I need to say and what she needs to hear is that I don’t think drugs are bad. I don’t think drinking is bad. I don’t think fun is bad.

I want to tell her that I’ll never be able to count all the times in my life that I chose fun over death. And I want to thank her for that, no matter how wrong that might be.

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