Chapter 1: Perfume and Ashtrays

She left me when I was nine, dropping me at my father's doorstep like I was a box she didn't need to carry anymore.

For fifteen years, she never came back. She never called, never texted. But I saw her on Facebook, posting pictures with her new family, smiling with the daughters she decided to love.

I was her first child. The one she left behind.

Now, I'm 24, trying to break free from a father who only knows how to scold and a mother who only knows how to forget.

This is my story. A story of learning to live when the people who should have loved you never did.