I understand that examples are a good way to demonstrate your point.

For example, I haven't felt safe around cops since one of them burst through my front door and took my father, screaming, on the claim that he had hit my mother.

For example, I haven't trusted my mother since she whispered in my ear that we would leave the rest of the family behind one day, while I was sobbing over the shattered remains of what she still called a family.

For example, whether my family is together or separate, I've never felt whole. If it wasn't for the sickeningly similar looks I have to the rest of them I would have known I was adopted years ago. The only other thing I share with them is my ability to disappoint.

Disappointment is easy. My family consists of alcoholics, gamblers, coke heads; cigarette burns, multiple divorces, food stamps, cut open palms from shards of a Coors bottle, bloody noses from the bathroom sink; these are examples of our heirlooms.

This is the family trade. But when I got a fake ID and sold alcohol to my classmates, my father told me I was better than this. He doesn't understand what my blood is whispering to me when I drown it in alcohol.

He doesn't understand that his examples of who not to be, made me who I am.