From Broken to Boss: Becoming Me

The Night Everything Shifted

The thing that haunted me most as a kid was how fast the atmosphere in our house could change. One minute the walls shook from screaming and slammed doors. I would be curled up in my room, heart pounding, calling the police because I genuinely thought someone was going to die. And then, after the officers walked back out into the night, everything went eerily silent. We would return to our rooms, tiptoeing through the tension, and minutes later we would hear them having sex.

At twelve years old that broke something in my understanding of love. It twisted my instincts. It made violence feel like it belonged next to affection.

For years I carried that confusion like a blueprint.

Years ago, one night after a fight with my husband, I tried to reconcile by being sexual, thinking that was what two people did when emotions got high and now it was time for “makeup” sex. He stared at me confused and gently told me that was not normal. Fighting takes a toll on a normal person and I thought if we made up sexually we would go back to normal. Something inside me cracked open. That was the moment I realized the truth. What I grew up witnessing was not love. It was dysfunction dressed in expensive clothes. I always thought, my poor husband didn’t just have a wife, girlfriend, bestfriend. He also had 12 year old me that was extremely broken and mentally fried.

When my dad read my first chapter, he exploded with anger. He will of course tell me these things didn’t happen or he will admit to a few things here and there but mostly claims this is not the truth or I am not taking accountability for how bad of a kid or teenager I was. I had never told him how I felt when I posted the first Blog.In my mind if I had found out what my daughter remembered or felt, we are jumping on a call or I’m headed there to open this up. He was only upset that I shared it publicly and did not mention the good. And there was good, and that truth deserves space too.

My parents built a twelve thousand square foot home. They threw extravagant parties. We took beautiful vacations. Every Christmas felt like a movie set. Any toy I asked for, I got. One year my brother had a full petting zoo in our backyard. Growing up, everything sparkled. And maybe that is why I love hosting events now – because even in the middle of chaos, I watched my parents create magic.

Looking back, I understand why hosting events makes me feel alive. I grew up watching my parents make everything look perfect on the outside.

But the perfect outside was covering cracks that were spreading fast.

The moods swung between joy and rage so tast it felt unreal. Looking back, the only explanation that makes sense is drugs which was later confirmed. The shifts were too dramatic, too extreme, too sudden. Then came the financial crash. My mom stopped getting out of bed. She cried constantly. She blamed fibromyalgia and neck pain, but the sadness swallowing her was so much deeper. She went from glamorous and put together to barely speaking, barely functioning. I would come home from school, knock on her bedroom door, and find her rocking back and forth on the mattress like she was trapped inside her own mind. It felt like the mom who raised me evaporated. That’s really when I started to lose my mom. Which meant my dad had to play my moms role as well. That would later on get Much worse.

And then came the night that rewired something in my soul.

My room was on the opposite side of the house. I was in bed when I heard screaming-real screaming.

My brother and I bolted downstairs. My dad had my mom by the neck, dragging her across the Carpet toward the door that led to outside . We were both crying, begging him to stop. He snapped at us to go get suitcases from the attic. His voice was a type of rage that froze our bodies, then launched us into motion. When we came back, my mom was in her closet sobbing, telling us he had beaten her with the metal closet rods. The closet looked like a tornado had hit it. Clothes everywhere, hangers twisted, rods bent.

They had close friends coming over that night and up until that exact point Inhad forgotten. The buzzer rang from the front gate-and for a split second, I thought that was our chance for help. Our house was a little under a mile from the gate. That tiny hope ignited in me that we were going to get help. I panicked. Our driveway was long, and the gate was far, but I ran. Barefoot. In the dark. I ran like my life depended on it because in my mind it did. I made it almost to the gate when the car turned around and pulled away. They never saw me waving, never heard me scream their names. My adrenaline was crashing. I ran and screamed so hard. It was heartbreaking them drive away.

When I got back up the hill, my mom’s suitcases were already packed in the car, I climbed into the driver’s seat. I was twelve. I had never driven anything in my life. But adrenaline takes over. I started the car. My mom collapsed into the passenger side sobbing. I pulled out of the driveway shaking so hard I could barely hold the wheel. I thought of the closest hotel l’d ever seen and headed toward it.

But a mile or two down the road she panicked and begged me to turn around. She said we could sleep in the guest room, that everything would be calmer by morning. I agreed-because I didn’t know anything else to do. The other part of me just wanted to leave and never come back. I wanted her to leave him so bad. I wanted my parents to get divorced, I thought that would fix things.

When we pulled back in, my dad walked outside. His entire personality had changed. He was calm. Too calm. He spoke softly, told us to come inside, said things had gotten out of hand. I cracked the window to talk to him. He asked me to crack it just a little more. The moment I did, his arm shot inside and he yanked the keys out of the ignition. My heart sank and I froze. He was no longer” calm”. I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s like faking to be nice and get close to you to harm you in some way.

His voice dropped. Cold. Controlled. Terrifying.

“Come inside.”

We followed him to Inside their bedroom, he told all of us to lie on the bed. My mom, my dad, my brother, and me. He turned on the gas fireplace. He unplugged the phone from the wall. He said we were all going to sleep.

My mom had taken sleep medication. I think he did too. I laid there in the middle, stiff as stone, terrified to breathe too loud. Terrified to fall asleep. Terrified the fireplace meant something unthinkable. I stared at the ceiling and tried not to cry. I thought my whole family was about to die from carbon monoxide poisoning. Why would he unplug the house phone from the wall jack/outlet? Why shut and lock the doors. I laid next to my mom in between him and my dad. He wasn’t going to touch her.

That night, at twelve years old, I truly believed we were going to die. I believed the phones were unplugged so we couldn’t call for help. I believed the gas fireplace was going to take all of us out while we slept. I believed if I didn’t stay awake, no one would.

When they finally drifted off, I slipped out of the bed as quietly as possible. I tip toed to the door. Every second felt like life or death. I found another landline in my bedroom and called my Nana. I whispered everything. Every detail. She told me she would come down from North Carolina the next day.

I’d later come to find out we were no longer allowed to talk to our Nana or Poppopp. That was my lifeline and my best friend. The last person I had was my brother but he has his own issues. I think fortunately he would protect himself mentally and just act like nothing ever happened.

Something hardened inside me that night. The fear I had for my dad began turning into anger. And that anger turned into a promise: protect my mom at all costs. Even if it meant taking the hit instead.

The next day is a blur. My brain shut down to survive it.

My mind blocked out whatever happened the next day. Trauma has its own eraser. I only remember my mom eventually locking herself away permanently.

She rocked. She cried. She refused to leave her room. She became agoraphobic. She stopped showering. Stopped speaking. Stopped mothering.

She was physically alive but spiritually gone.

My dad had locked himself in his closet with a gun at one point in the big house and we would sit on the other side or the door crying for him to come out. He was breaking too.

My dad became the only functioning parent, even though he was unraveling too.He was taking on all the roles of parenting two kids that are emotionally and at the time broken and confused. What my dad went through being abandoned by mom is a stress that I can’t even imagine going through. Especially because the market collapsed around the same time and we lost the huge house they had just spent so much to build, time to design it, custom to the family.

He eventually sold our big home. My mom said she didn’t know she was signing away the house she loved. I don’t know the truth, only that she felt betrayed and broken, and that the house was gone and they had to sell it for way less than it was worth.

We moved to Grayson Georgia, close to her family.

At first it felt like a reset, but the chaos followed us.

My dad and uncle opened a restaurant, and when it started struggling financially and their were issues, the pressure cracked him open again.

On Halloween, we got a call saying my dad was drunk and threatening to kill himself. He wrecked his car. He was hospitalized and we went to go see him and he was apologizing, he was then transferred to a psychiatric unit after the doctors realized it was a suicide attempt. The next day he tried to choke/hang himself with his IV cords because the first suicide attempt didn’t work. My uncle flew in. My grandparents drove in. My mom was mentally gone.

We were kids trying to hold up adults who no longer wanted to parent or even be alive. At one point we picked my dad up from the psychiatric hospital. I do not remember how long he stayed there. I just remember that whatever faith I had left was slipping away. My life stopped looking anything like a normal kid’s life.

On the outside everything looked perfect. We lived in a beautiful neighborhood. I was a cheerleader at a new school. My dad would take me to competition cheer and show up for me the best he could. My mom saw me compete one time and I remember being so emotional about it. It felt huge to finally have her there watching me do something I loved.

In Grayson I know she started trying to get better mentally. She finally went to a doctor and started medications. But five out of seven days she stayed in her bed crying, rocking herself, and refusing to come out. I did not understand any of it back then. I just knew we were children carrying weight that was never meant for us. This was the beginning of seventh grade for me.