June 9, 1983.

Allentown Pennsylvania.

It’s 90 degrees, and I can’t breathe.

But it’s not because of the heat.
Every breath hurts like needles pricking my lungs. 

Even though Mom’s a nurse, she doesn’t want to hear about it.

Not today.

It’s her one day off from her 60-hour week, and she has errands to run and a hair appointment to keep.

She’s driving my sister and me to our grandparents’ house before school, and every bump in the road is agony.
“Mom please. I can’t go. To school. It’s so hard. To breathe,” I gasp with what little air I can suck into my lungs.

“It’s probably just a cracked rib from roughhousing with your sister,” she says. “You’re such a drama queen, it’ll heal itself.”

“We weren't. It’s something. Else. I promise. Mom,” I wheeze.

“Enough Lisa. I don’t want to hear it,” she snaps.

She’s not being mean.

She works so hard for her patients and family and still struggles to make ends meet.

These few hours alone are vital to her as she’s doing her best to hold it together.

And I’m not trying to ditch school.

School is my sanctuary.

So I stagger up the stone staircase that wraps around the school building.

Halfway up, I collapse.

*****

From the outside, people thought my family lived a beautiful life.

But behind the polished door, there was chaos.

My biological Dad loved me deeply and to the best of his ability.

He was also a diagnosed schizophrenic.

When he was on medication, he was the most wonderful man.

When he was off it, well, home wasn’t a safe place to be for any of us.  

He hated that side of himself.

One day when I was 6 years old, he sent my mom, my sister, and me out shopping.

When we came back, he had cleaned every piece of furniture out.

As we looked around our empty home in shock, I struggled to accept he was gone.

And I knew he was never coming back.

My Mom wept with a mixture of rage and relief.

She thought her trouble with men was over.
She was wrong.

The next handsome man who charmed his way into her affections put on a great show of loving us all.

But a man who loves you doesn’t throw you down the stairs.

And a God who loves you doesn’t let that man into the house in the first place.

Why should I have to call 911 and pack my sister’s little blue suitcase and wait for the police to come and be the one to tell her we’re going to stay at my aunt and uncle’s once again?

Maybe it was because I used to dress up and spin around until I was dizzy trying to turn into Wonder Woman.

“Now the world is ready for you and the wonders you can do,” went the old TV show theme tune.

Lying here on these stone steps gasping to breathe, I realized I wasn't Wonder Woman. I was just a girl who had learned when you spend years bending over backward to make others feel better, eventually, you break.
*****

“School is the way to succeed,” stated my grandmother.

“You don’t go steady, you go study,” threatened my grandfather.

Knowing how much my Mom struggled, you’d better believe it was straight-A’s for me, pal.

They had to hire a special teacher for me and three others because by 6^th grade we had already worked through 7th and 8th-grade books, and they put us in a trailer to learn about mindset and positive thinking.

My whole life became a race to perfection.

School uniform cap set just right on my finely combed hair, my clean, second-hand uniform skirt swaying over my one pair of polished shoes.

When I played Monopoly with my little sister, I would cheat to win…

Because I had to be the best.
If someone was doing better than me, I’d let them know about it.

My sister hated having friends over because I tormented them.

Deanna’s clothes were too nice.

Michelle was too pretty.

Brittany’s hair was too long and silky.

So I put Elmer’s glue in it.

Because I had to be the best.

Tommy’s art project was too perfect, and his house was too nice, so I wrote “Fuck you” on his pretty little art project.

Because I had to be the best.

And sure enough, my report card was all A’s.

But my Conduct read “Needs Improvement.”

*****

“Please don’t call Mom, she’ll be so mad,” I begged the teacher who helped me up from the steps.

Mom was indeed mad as all get out.

She drove me home where I lay for a few hours in her air-conditioned bedroom before getting an appointment to see our family doctor.
“Fine. I’ll show you it’s nothing,” says Mom.

I gasp for air in the waiting room for what feels like days.

The doctor examines me and steps out of the room.

“She’s got to get to the hospital immediately,” he tells Mom. “She has a collapsed lung.”

“I’ll take her,” says Mom, her training kicking in.

“There isn’t time. She needs an ambulance right away.”

The ambulance ride goes by in a blur of wheezing and oxygen masks and terrible pain.  
At the hospital, they wheel me into surgery.

The doctors put a tube in my side to pump oxygen back into my lung.

But the daytime nurse didn’t put the tube in right, and my second lung collapsed.

They told my Mom I had 24 hours to live.

How could this happen to a healthy 13-year-old girl?

Spontaneous pneumothorax (lung collapse) was their diagnosis.

Yeah, right, Doc.

I knew better.

The pressure of keeping my head held high and my chest puffed out had sucked the air out of my lungs.
I was being crushed under the weight of the daily pain I had to bear.

But why now?

Well until recently home was the storm and school was my shelter.

But all that changed with yet another moment of violence.

*****

Maria lived in the rough neighborhood where our school was.

By rough I mean she carried a knife to school every day.

I lived across town and walked to Holy Spirit School every morning after Mom dropped me off at my grandparents.

Somehow, we became friends.

And though I looked all prim and proper, I sure could speak back when I had a mind to.

And one day I mouthed off to Maria, even though I knew deep down I was all bark and no bite.

But Maria was primed to react to insults or disrespect in a different way than me.

“I’m gonna get you after school,” she hisses in my ear.

On the way home from school, she grabs me from behind and slaps me hard in the face.

I freeze.

I feel powerless.

Ashamed.

And lucky she didn’t shank me.

But I hold it all together like I had been trained to do at home.  

I’m a master at not feeling.

But I’m scared as all get out and run red-faced to my grandparents' home, pulsing inside from the pain and shame.

Maria didn’t get a chance to get me again because I stopped being friends with her.

I had learned from the violence at home that one beating always leads to another.

That slap was minor compared to what my Mom and I went through at home.

But it was a very pivotal moment.

Home was where the chaos was.

School was where if I worked hard enough, I had control of the outcome.

And now that safe haven was gone.

That solidified me wearing a mask for every situation.

No room in the world for me to be delicate or fragile or vulnerable, because the world wasn’t safe…

I wasn’t even safe with my so-called friends.

If home wasn’t safe and school wasn’t safe now either…

Where could I go next?

*****

Every day of my childhood was pain and suffering.

Too little food, money, and possessions.

Too much fighting, fear, and violence.

I prayed for death and ask the Holy Spirit “Why was I born?”

The Spirit said, “You’re here for a reason.”

I yelled back, “I’m six, what does that mean?”

The Spirit didn’t answer.
A lonely silence descended.

“Oh great,” I thought. “You’re going to abandon me too?”

Still, no answer.

Why was I ever born?

I get my answer years later in that hospital surgery.

Even when my body is shutting down from all the years of abuse, fear, and pain,

God pulls me back from the brink and says:

“No, you don’t get away that easily. You have so much more to do.”

“Please let me go,” I beg.

“I’m not taking you away until the world is a better place,” He replies.  

“Take this weight off me. It’s too much to bear alone,” I plead through tears.
“That’s the point,” God replies. “All of this would have broken you without me watching over you.”

God has always pitted me against a mighty mountain.

Up there where the air is thin and it’s hard to breathe.

But he also gave me a great pair of lungs and a head for heights so that I may show others the way to turn on their own God light too.