I’m thrilled to share that my essay “The Between Space” has been published in Issue 8 of Marrow Magazine.
I wrote this piece in the same vein as my memoir, with the narrative oscillating between the past and present, as I try to find my footing in both realms. In the memoir, I'm yearning for my mom to be sober. In this essay, however, her sobriety prompts me to question everything—our relationship, our love, and who I've become as a result of living a life shaped by dysfunction.
The essay delves into the depths of addiction, redemption, and what happens to our identity when it’s built on chaos. I explore the complexities of redefining myself and my relationship with my mom as she navigates her sobriety and the uncharted territories of rebuilding a life.
It’s filled with yearning, like everything I write, and I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but I can tell you that it’s true.
The Between Space
Mom’s Walmart name tag hung around her neck from a faded lanyard and her dark curls fell around her face like an overgrown garden. I stared at her over the German chocolate cake I’d made with the single candle notching her one year of sobriety, and a deep longing spread through my chest. A longing for her to be the person I’d spent my whole life trying to change. A longing for the reckless uncertainty that she had colored every moment of our life with. Now, her eyes looked muted, and I hardly recognized this new version of her. Everything was gray. A sense of loss weighed heavy over me. I fumbled around searching for pieces of who she was, pieces of who I was—who I am—because of her.
***
In one of my earliest memories, the cops are breaking the door off its hinges and raiding our little house on Michelle Lane in the desert of southern California. The sound of clicking filled my ears as the notches on the handcuffs closed around the tiny bones of Mom’s wrists. She shouted curses at the sweaty cop with a red mustache, and her wild, dark eyes looked like starless holes. But I couldn’t stop thinking how pretty she looked in her moss-green housecoat. What I didn’t know was that she had a bag of meth jammed into its pocket and that she’d made it in the newspaper for being a wanted criminal. The fingerprints they’d found all over the burglarized homes in San Bernardino County belonged to her—three hundred houses and counting.
THE BETWEEN SPACE, published with Marrow Magazine, read the full essay here.
Want to read more stories like this? Order my little book of short stories, From the Dust. You can buy it on my website and if you’re a paid subscriber you can get a discount code for 25% off here.