The Reason Why

Life has a funny way of twisting and turning until you don't know which direction you came from or which direction you are heading. Just when you think you have it all figured out, 
BAM 
Another freakin twisted moment happens that makes you question everything you've done or anything you were supposed to do.

I was living life to the fullest. Well, maybe not to the extent everyone wishes for their own lives, but one good enough for me now.
I finally graduated high school and was accepted into our town's local junior college. My momma who raised me on her own after her one-night stand disappeared some eighteen years ago, well, she hasn't settled down yet. She had her fair share of boyfriends since then, bringing home another new guy every other week.

I learned one thing from my momma. I will never, ever sleep around with every guy who puts their hand on my ass and tells me I'm beautiful.
It seems that's all it takes for my mom to bring them home and shake the pictures off the wall until the wee hours of the morning with their drunken, sex-driven, lewd behavior. Momma's been in and out of trouble with our local small town police department, with disorderly conduct and public intoxication misdemeanors, but nothing compared to the shitload of trouble she'd gotten into with this last work of art she dated.

This guy had an outstanding warrant. Somehow in their long history together for two weeks, he never told her about. It was for a parole violation on a past drug conviction he'd served two years in the county's correctional facility. He and my momma were out on another beer run when they got pulled over by the police. To make a long story short, boyfriend number twenty for the year was arrested and so was my momma. 

Somehow, without me knowing, momma got herself involved with taking happy pills. You know narcotics...things that make you feel all better even though you know your life is shit. The police found her with a whole baggie of like fifty pills or so, and since she didn't have a prescription, she apparently had been buying off the street.
A week later, the judge said he was tired of seeing her messed up in all this nonsense, so he sent her to jail and rehab for eighteen months.

Since momma was going to jail and wouldn't be getting any government assistance, and there weren't any jobs for me in our town, our landlord told me I had to the end of the month to find another place to live.

My momma's childhood friend, Crystal, the only person ever to keep in contact all these years, volunteered to allow me to stay with her until momma made the necessary changes she needed to do in her life. So, off I went to another small town, to a state I'd never been to before, to live with someone I met only once in my life.
My life could only get better from there, right?