I have almost zero evidence that I was born, had a childhood and left home. There are no pictures save a couple my dad gave me just a few years ago before we estranged. One is of me as a baby in a messy room standing in an old crib and it looks as if I’d been crying.

The other of my four siblings and I taken as a family picture and in it I look about 7 or 8. None of us are smiling and it looks like I’d been crying. Probably because I had been.

I don’t remember that day but that’s because I don’t remember a lot. It’s as if I didn’t form memories for so much of my childhood, so I don’t even have those internal photos to draw from.

The first picture I have of myself in life smiling is my wedding picture. I was nineteen years old. We’ve been together 33 years.