A Life Worth Living

Prologue

I was in fifth grade when I first started my suicide watches.

The routine was simple, really. I’d come home early from school (ducking out of participation in local sports), find a new hiding spot for the knives, and watch as Mom crumbled to nothing under the weight of a mental disorder I knew nothing about. While all the other neighborhood kids were busy building model rockets and playing dodge ball, I was doing my best to plead to Mom that her life was worth living.

Yep, that was my life. Other exciting highlights?

-Visiting Mom in “mental hospitals” (where, in fact, they actually do dress all in white) instead of trying out for soccer.

-Straying from conversation with kids at school since my knowledge of pop culture was limited to what medications mixed well together. As one could imagine, I was never really a “hit” at my friend’s birthday parties.

-Going to the funerals of Mom’s friends who didn’t make it. The ones who didn’t have a son who hid the knife drawer.

Hell, I was a strong kid, but we all have a breaking point sooner or later, right?

My breaking point came much later though, at the tail end of my high school stint. It was the usual story of a downfall: drugs, alcohol, hopelessness.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I want to tell a story. A horrible, beautiful mess of a story that is different than most. It involves a suicidal mother, drugs, a Switzerland emergency room, more drugs, a fridge won on The Price Is Right, even more drugs, a job twisting off bottle caps, a Chinese Wal-Mart, the death of a good friend, and a baby. Sound odd? Believe me, it is. And, unlike other stories about spiraling out of control, this one has a happy ending.

So is the following story about me?

Well, no, not particularly.

This story is really about a small, ten-month-old girl, abandoned and left for dead in the streets of an obscure Chinese village.

This girl is the reason I’m still alive.

And this story is how my family found her.

Or rather, how she found me.