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Shortly after I promised to help the professor, the hammer fell.

My past has always been a touchy subject. I did not cry at my mother's funeral, did not complain when my dad moved us from the only home we'd ever known to live in the middle nowhere, and even did my stint at the psyche ward until the doctor said (and I quote), "I'll keep her, but you might want to give some thought to the fact - that she is not the one who should be here.)

I did not talk about my past - even when it was my present.

But I wrote.

I wrote here.

Trying to make sense of it all - trying to find the person I was becoming, the person I had been, the person I hoped my mom had wanted me to be.

And it was during this time that things became crystal clear.

It's not that we were spending time together anyway. He would come home from work, eat dinner and head to the basement. I would spend hours tucking in kids, just so I didn't have to be alone. Because when I was alone - I hated my thoughts - hated what I remembered - hated that I had no guideposts - no touchstones to tell me where my life was headed. So I tried to move forward by looking back.

It happened one night when I was sitting in bed, writing on this blog. He stopped in the room to pick up something, and the conversation went like this:

"Whatcha doing?"

"Writing."

"What about?"

I am not sure what possessed me to share this - maybe the thought that it would change things, maybe because I didn't know where else to go with it, maybe because I naively believed that things could be better. So I told him - I told him the truth. "I'm writing about my step mom and how hard it was, and some of the things that happened."

He sighed.

"Do you want to read it?" I asked.

"No - not particularly."

"OK." my head dropped and I went back to my work.

"Hey," he said, "Do you ever just think you're making this stuff up?"

"Pardon?"

"I mean - do you ever just think you are remembering it wrong - and making this up, and things weren't really as bad as you say?"

"Are you serious? No - I don't think that."

"OK - whatever. Go back to your Cinderella story."

That is what he called it. And I waited until he left before I cried.

Because that is when I saw the truth. I knew that it was really over. Despite all of the other things that were happening, I still believed he cared about who I really was. In that singular moment I realized that he not only wasn't concerned - but that he didn't even believe it.

Two months later, when the professor asked to read it - he cried.

He said, "I will take you there. I will take you to that house, and you can say goodbye to your mother the way you were supposed to."

That is when I realized what a best friend really was.