I need to tell you who I was before Russell, because who I was before him is the whole story.
Not the version people told about me.
The actual version.
My name is Claire Morrow, and I grew up in a town in central Ohio that had two gas stations and a Dollar General and the specific quality of a place that was adequate for the people who were born there and that was enough.
My parents were not cruel people.
They were people who had been overwhelmed by their own lives in a way that did not leave much space for mine.
My father worked at a machine shop.
My mother cleaned houses.
They were both present and both absent in the way of people who are physically there but whose attention is consumed by the specific anxiety of not having enough, of the paycheck that ends before the month does, of the bill that arrives at exactly the wrong time.
I learned early that I was largely responsible for myself.
Not in the dramatic way.
In the small daily way.
Making my own lunches.
Doing my own homework.
Figuring out which teachers were willing to help and which were not and adjusting my expectations accordingly.
I was not neglected.
I was simply not the priority.
The priority was survival.
I understood.
I got a scholarship to a small state school.
I studied business administration because I wanted something practical.
Something that would result in a job.
I graduated with a degree and thirty-eight thousand dollars in debt.
The debt was not because I had been reckless.
The debt was because the scholarship had not covered everything and I had taken loans to cover the rest and by the time I graduated the interest had done what interest does.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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