Book beginning: Chapter 1 Age 9

It was March 28^th 2010, just after Relay, and a decision needed to be made. Either end it all: that total unexpected path or move to Minnesota and pursue a career with the American Cancer Society. So as I parked my van in my west Ames apartment lot and walked up the stairs to my quiet household thinking back: I soon recalled the first memory I had where I knew that my life was going to change for either the worse or the better and was this situation the same. I had come a long way and even if life’s obstacles seemed to hit me at such a young age, here I was again feeling the same. It was just after Thanksgiving 1995, about 5 days before my birthday…

You always remember your first; your first kiss, your first love, your first bike, your first out of body feisty I wanna fight someone that I love experience.

1995

As mom returned from the store, she honked the horn. At the time, pops was laying in bed in his lilac colored walls bedroom watching TV, as my brother and I laid on the burgundy carpeted living room floor watching Doug. My brother went to the blue ledge window seal to see if the horn was for us. What do you know, it was mom. My 10 year old brother (Andrew Sturdivant), who is a year and a half (542 days) older than me, yells “yeah mom, what’s up?”

She replied only saying, “Don’t say anything to your father, go get your sister and come get groceries from the car.”

“Ok”, he replied nonchalantly. Not paying any attention to the weird feeling inside, I hadn’t realized that mom, while leaning over to open the passenger door of the ’94 burgundy Chevy Lumina, was crying. My brother must not have noticed either because he was already down the porch stairs and yelling, “Come on Nasia,” to me. We head to the Chevy in the driveway; Angie (my mother) was stationary in the front seat while the two of us climbed in the front passenger seat alongside her. My stomach began to sink as I saw tears roll down my mother’s face. All I could remember was walking down the stairs with images of cartoons in my head, how “Crazy Sexy Cool” (TLC)¹ was on it for Charita (my bff) and I earlier that day, and smiling because I was living life without any clue. What was to come of this I thought to myself? Angie popped in a cassette tape and as it played we heard an all too familiar voice, it was Otis (my father). The tape continued to play and my life began to change quicker than popsicles melting on a hot summer day.