If only you were here, I thought, this wouldn’t be happening. My stepfather’s neglect had turned to abuse, and I hated that my biological father had abandoned us and wasn’t around to protect my mother, my brother, and me from him. By the time I was seventeen, my mother had divorced my stepfather, but the imprint of abandonment and abuse had seared itself into my heart. Not knowing what to do with the anger I felt toward my stepfather and my biological father, I escaped to the false comforts of casual sex and drug abuse.