SNEAK PEAK - Life on the Carousel

PROLOGUE
I have been through a lot in my life. I have moved over 37 times before graduating high school and lost my dad to his alcoholism when I was 5, and then to a heart attack when he was 41. I watched my Mom go from being an abused wife, to a practicing witch who would put a hex on your boyfriend for $20—hey, Christmas presents don't pay for themselves. She would leave the witchcraft behind when she married a 19-year-old soldier from the South, and became a born-again evangelist with a penchant for orange-colored Presidents despite having the world's most liberal daughter.

As for me, my marriage to my high school sweetheart ended a week after he threw me a surprise 40th birthday party by giving me another surprise that I will tell you about later.
But nothing in my crazy life prepared me for losing my youngest daughter at 23 to a rare cancer.

I think I need to "checkout" for a while. That's why I'm sitting here in my Hyundai Elantra with a full tank of gas and a need to run far from here. Wanna come? Jump in. But a warning. This ain’t no Eat, Pray, Love. I gave up praying. And it's not some Long Walk in the Woods. I do not enjoy nature. Being
homeless for a while takes all the fun out of camping.

No, this story is just a series of incredibly stupid, incredibly idiotic decisions. Mostly by yours truly, but those that have shaped who I am. Climb in, I'm in the car with the Patriot plates and the McDonald's Diet Cokes, and join me while I try to make sense of this life I have been given.

One more warning. I'm an English teacher. I don't think my life is a romance novel, or even a hero's journey. Good lord, it's looking more and more like a Greek tragedy. But time will tell. Right now, it's a detective story. Who the hell am I, how the hell did I get here, and whose book am I in anyway?

Up first, how my dad tried to throw me off a third-story porch.
My only promise—this entire thing will be 100% true if my family can be trusted to tell me anything with any honesty, and the names won't be changed, because frankly, I am not that creative. If I get any facts wrong, let's call it artistic
license. It sounds better than I am getting old.