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Dedication: I’ve been called shy all my life. It's about time they hear what I have to say.



Chapter 1



I've been called the "Quiet Girl" for as long as I can remember. I wasn’t always like this, but for the life of me, I can’t remember the “before” of all this. I’ve only learned of the past in snapshots. I don’t have enough memories yet to complete the picture. But little by little, I’ve been able to get an idea of how things used to be in order to get them back that way.



I was born on July 31, 1986 to Cuban immigrants. My parents had a shotgun wedding when my mom was three months pregnant. So basically, they are married because of me. They are miserable because of me.



Our family was small. Which was good. It provided more of an opportunity to be close-knit. But despite our attempts to be close-knit, there were too many knots for it to happen.

My grandfather on my mother’s side had died three years before I was born. He wasn’t exactly a prize husband and father. He was a drunk, quite bluntly. He didn’t beat my grandmother or mother. But words can sometimes be more painful.



My living grandparents only spoke Spanish. While my first language became Spanish as well, it quickly became obsolete once I learned English when I started school. Language and cultural barriers may be the hardest to overcome, I’ve found.

But as soon as I was familiar with the English language, I was in love. Words became my best friend. The written word, that is. When I spoke, words did not quite flow out of me in the same way. They more like tumbled out.



The only other family I had was my mom’s sister and her family. My cousin Melissa was exactly a month older than me but might as well have been my twin because we spent so much time together. Our mothers dressed us similarly, but that’s where the likeness stopped. I had blond hair and pale skin; she had black hair and olive skin. And personality-wise, we were opposites. Much like our mothers. My mom, like me, was shy. My aunt and Melissa were outgoing and friendly. The intelligence factor was reversed though. I had my aunt’s brains: the knack for technology and the hunger for knowledge. Not to say, that my mother and cousin aren’t smart. Just that they have different priorities.  



The knots that tangled our family dynamics were jealousy, regret, and a touch of insanity. But we’ll get to all that later. Enough about them, this is MY story, after all.