My boyfriend walked out the day I decided to keep our baby. The bank called to say they were taking my house. And on the hottest afternoon of the summer, I dragged my swollen body across an old widow’s overgrown lawn because I couldn’t stand to watch her struggle alone. The next morning, sirens tore me out of sleep, a sheriff stood in my living room with bad news, and he said four words I will never forget: “Check your mailbox, please.”
Part 1
I always thought rock bottom would make some kind of noise.
A crash. A slammed door. A scream. Something you could point to afterward and say, That was it. That was the moment everything fell apart.
But when I finally hit it, rock bottom didn’t sound like anything at all.
It sounded like silence. The hum of a refrigerator in an empty kitchen. The tick of
