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Like a large portion of the population, I had some pretty terrible teenage years. Drugs and alcohol were never an issue, thankfully, but a lot of other things were. I had an absolutely insane adoptive mother who really should not have been given as much as a goldfish to care for. I also suffered from depression and anxiety, and utilized very self destructive coping methods. Often, my mother would intentionally say or do something to put me in "that state of mind" and then leave me to cope in whatever way I might. If I did something silly, it would simply serve to prove the point she was so fond of making to everyone around us. She wanted the world to know that she was the unfortunate mother of a completely unhinged teenager who made her life miserable. On the plus side, this afforded me a lot of freedom and time alone, as she didn't want to be around me when not dragging me to therapists or telling me what a nut I was.

One particular memory really stands out, though it wasn't all that different from any other day around the same time. I had been living in Puerto Rico with a friend for the last year, and was home in upstate New York for the week. It was one of a couple forced visits home to my mom, who lived with her girlfriend. The back story on that one is an entirely separate can of worms that is best left unwritten, but suffice it to say I hated the girlfriend and the girlfriend hated me. It made for a very tense, uncomfortable family reunion. If I had to be in the house, I would spend most of my time in my bedroom.

The bedroom was done completely in white, much like a room in any mental institution. The white walls and harsh light emanating from fluorescent bulbs served to make the barely used furniture look even less inviting than it otherwise would have. In addition to the visual assault one suffered upon entering the excessively bright room, there was an overwhelming chemical stench of carpet cleaner and Febreze. It would seep into my sinuses in an all-out attack, leaving me dizzy and disoriented, while smelling strongly of what the bottle claimed was a fresh ocean breeze. Obviously, the room was not a place I chose to spend a lot of time.

It always seemed to be gray and raining in Ithaca. Though I've enjoyed the rain since I was a little girl, it has a way of magnifying my depression and back then the reactions to those feelings were very hard for me to control. At the time, I was in the beginning stages of my battle with self injury and had taken to

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