My mother died in childbirth with me at the age of 30. My father remarried one year and a month later, and I acquired a step-mother. There was a lot of shouting in my house growing up and nothing in the way of love. Through the pain and anguish, I knew that I was different. From the youngest age, I felt a hunger for I didn’t know what. I just knew that I wasn’t like my family.

When I was five-and-a-half, we moved to Cook County, Illinois: dirt road and a house that needed a ladder to get to the second floor. There was a cornfield at my backyard. My favorite color was red. I was a monochromatic kid, a red top, and red sneakers all the time. It was my only stability.