She traced the scar on my back, one which I’ll never forget. “There’s got to be a story to this one, how’d you get it?”

I’d wager she thought it was another cool war story from my term serving the country. But rather, it took me back to a time when my life wasn’t so happy go lucky. It took me back to my mother.

She always spoke of the devil, taking over our brains and forcing us to do bad, and yet she often became the devil. Her life was just about whatever means it would take to score another high.

One night, I came home after school a bit later than usual, I’d stayed for some tutoring and quite frankly just to spend less time at home. For some reason, she was actually home. Home was a motel room off Route 59. She was sitting on the coffee table with what appeared to be dinner served on plates. This was strange, my mother never cared if we had dinner, she just wanted to get high.

I walked in and immediately knew something was off, the air in the room was thick with tension. She turned and saw me at the door, walked up to me, and grabbed me by my ear dragging me to the table. She threw me into a chair and slammed an envelope on the table.

It was my acceptance to Yale. Fuck, I never thought I’d make it in let alone that she’d find it. She was royally pissed, much like I thought she’d be had I ever let her know I was applying. And just as I’d expected, she was mad. But not the regular kind of mad, the cocaine-induced kind of mad. She ended up taking a pocket-knife to my back and carved a mark in me, it looked like an R for respect to her.

In reality, it looks like a psychotic mess of a mark and looks nothing like she intended it to. So yeah, that’s yet that’s how it came to be.

She didn’t expect such a harsh response, it was nothing like she’d expected. Yet, she was glad he’d trusted her enough to tell her. It was another step in the journey they’d begun together.