I'm a Survivor I grew up the youngest in a family of five. My mother and father divorced when I was a few months old. My mother struggled to care for five young children on her own. Since her parents died when she was little, she never thought of giving us up for adoption or to relatives. My birth father never kept in touch with us. He never helped my mother take care of us and so I never knew him and have no memory of him. My mother did her best to ensure we had a good family life by marrying twice after divorcing my birth father, but neither man in her life served as a model for my three older brothers. My siblings suffered the most from the breakdown of my parents' marriage and my father's abandonment of his parental duties. All three have ruined their lives through drug abuse and crime. My older brother lives day after day without any hope and with the constant internal battle against drug addiction, which he often loses. My second oldest brother has been in and out of state mental institutions for over fifteen years. He is forty-two years old and schizophrenic. My third oldest brother is somewhere in New York City and doesn't want to be found. He calls my mother from time to time to let her know he is alive. I'll talk about my brothers first because even though they had problems growing up, they managed to protect me and keep me safe from their troubles. They made me believe in fairy tales and tried to protect me from the ugly reality of the world. It was because I lived the fairytale life of a child that I would later learn that fairy tales don't come true. I would learn to fight, suffer and survive. When I was eighteen my mother moved away and left me in New York with my friends to attend college. I guess my mother thought that I would succeed easily and become the first college graduate in our family and that I would easily learn to be responsible and independent. He must also have thought that since I had never fought for anything, I would do well and undoubtedly succeed in becoming a lawyer.