My thirteen-month “awakening” was terrifying for a variety of reasons. This is not your traditional breakdown. My ability to endure the first 12 years of my life and somehow find the ability to immediately move forward, I’m learning what a miracle that really was. I now understand the odd questions and strange looks I would get when anyone would ask me, “Where are your parents?” I always quickly responded with something sarcastic such as, “No idea. Where are YOUR parents?” In reality, I was over 900 miles away from where I grew up and I was only 12-years-old. Completely unattended and eager to figure things out. But it never dawned on me why people found this to be so odd. Until the last 13-months.

The most terrifying realization was that if I gave in to the emotional roller coaster after my sister and mother died, there would be no stopping what would follow. The emotional oppression I spent my entire life sentencing myself to, that would have to end and the emotional fallout would likely be out of my control. I spent 13-months fighting it. It wasn’t just about my sister and my mother. It was about everything I brushed off for 37 years. Every person I had lost and the opportunities, like basic education, that I was never given. Grieving these things never appealed to me. But freedom and advocacy do appeal to me, very much, and I have spent the last 20 years advocating for victims who have no idea just how much I identify with their trauma. I have only been candid with victims about my past when I felt it was absolutely necessary. Those who do know, tend to say that this isn’t “fair.” I never saw it that way. I never saw myself as a victim or even remotely “robbed” of anything. But, that was just another tactic that would have to come to an end. It wasn’t fair, I admit that, and I still do not enjoy the word “fair.” 

Making the choice to allow myself to breathe, be free of the wreckage, and acknowledge that, “this happened to me,” would also bring very real safety concerns that I was not ready to address. I needed to slowly acknowledge that I was also in the middle of a standoff that could ignite with gunfire at any moment. And this time it was not a threat from a predator or a murderer that I was investigating, it came from my father, Adrian.

A 17-year feud with my father was about to erupt. This feud is simple, yet complex. And I think it’s time to talk about it for the first time in 17 years. I never talk about Adrian, and I think that has worked out to his benefit for many years. Until today. The reality is, I have assisted in finding many victims who have crossed paths with their own “Adrian.” And maybe this will help, to know that someone who has been relentlessly strong, no matter what the personal cost, has not escaped the brutal realities of complex trauma. It’s all still there and always has been. I escaped nothing. The survivors I have found have taught me more than they think I have taught them, that you can be strong while also allowing yourself to heal. No matter how messy that may look to the world around you. 

This phase of healing would absolutely be messy and perhaps fatal, I had no doubt. Adrian is a man of his word and he declared almost two decades ago that his daughter was now enemy territory. We managed to stay on separate ends of the map for many years, aside from one mishap where Adrian attempted to kill his best friend, my adopted father, Antonio. Once Adrian found out how Antonio and his wife treated me, it was too much for him to be conscious of and he decided that Antonio and his wife would have to be dealt with. Despite my hesitance, I stopped the deadly clash from a studio green room 1,200 miles away. I got the call that Adrian’s men were outside of Antonio’s house for hours. I knew what that meant, and so did Antonio. Our paths crossed one more time that same year, Adrian was fully armed and prepared to make his move when he had a clear shot of me. He was unaware that I was working on a case of a missing person and that my backup security was standing right beside him. It was enough to spook him and we have not laid eyes on each other since that day, ten years ago. So, as freeing as it will be, confronting and cutting off any and all associates who I have appeased for the sake of safety, such as my dead brother’s baby mama, is terrifying. We’ll get back to her at a less enraging time. 

My father, Adrian, was born into an Irish family in the Midwest, his curly dark red-ish brown hair and blatant disregard for the rules was an instant giveaway. He’s the oldest of his siblings, but none of them call him brother. Adrian is not the type of man that most people would willingly associate with. Not now. But back in the 1980’s, Adrian had a lot of friends in the oddest places. He still lives in that reality, the 80’s. Back when he had the ability to control the world around him and feel a sense of power that he never had over himself as a child. His inner torment and genius mind spilled out onto every single aspect of his life, and then our lives, and the lives of innocent people around him. My brother and I both had mixed emotions about Adrian. We both admired him, loved him, hated him, and hid from him all before we were 7-years-old. Our father lost custody of both of us. My brother was adopted by his maternal grandparents and I was adopted by Adrian’s high school best friend and criminal right hand, Antonio. 

As a child, Adrian and his mother, Lily, lived with Lily’s mother, Adrian’s grandmother. His father had obligations that kept him from being a father to Adrian, such as his wife and kids. Lily was young and their relationship was not meant to last, or even be known about by anyone. After Adrian turned 5-years-old, Lily met and quickly married a ship Captain and they began a family outside of Adrian’s grandmother’s home. He never felt like he was a part of this new arrangement. His relationship with the Captain became one of pure hatred. And the feeling may have been mutual. In Adrian’s perspective, it absolutely was. He believes he never felt loved by his mother or his step-father. He wasn’t even given the benefit of calling out the obvious. Lily insisted that the Captain was Adrian’s real father. Despite him questioning her for years and insisting that he knew the Captain was not his father. His relationship with the Captain only became more volatile throughout the years. Our family has never admitted to this, but many people outside of our family claim it is true. Friends and neighbors claim that the Captain severely physically abused Adrian.  And I personally believe them. I have performed as much investigative research into my own family as I have into the families of victims that I search for. And I know without a doubt, Adrian is not lying. And Lily? Well, she’s worse than the Captain. One must have a soul in order to utilize it. Lily is and always has been morally bankrupt, to this day. Despite the lifestyle she shows her friends and family, one thing is undeniable, Adrian and I know the truth. I have my own experiences with Lily that we will get back to later.

They raised Adrian as if nothing had ever happened. As if he didn’t spend the last five years getting close to his grandmother, or the fact that he was now supposed to call the Captain, “Dad.” With no explanation. This didn’t sit right with Adrian. Neither did the Captain’s physical abuse that he privately reserved only for Adrian.

By high school, he got the full story. Finally, Lily stopped pretending that her husband was Adrian’s father. She admitted to Adrian that he was the product of an affair with a married man who wanted nothing to do with her or Adrian after she became pregnant. Confirmation only enraged him. He sprinted past the need for validation a long time ago and had comfortably arrived at revenge. And that is where he has stayed ever since high school. In a perpetual state of revenge.  He became an unstoppable force from that day forward. He started using and selling drugs, guns, and laying out his criminal future while simultaneously acing high school tests that he never studied for. His friends from high school were baffled by his ability to fly through homework or a test without ever putting any effort into it. He would later become highly skilled at building weapons and engineering chaos.

In the early 1970’s, Adrian was set to graduate high school. He didn’t work hard for it, or spend long hours studying. He was often accused by his classmates of never cracking a book open or giving any of it much thought. But he did meet a few friends and they did almost everything together. Good and bad. Adrian was unstoppable in all the best and worst ways.

As a child, I did not live with Adrian, I lived with his best friend. I was rarely seen, but when I was, the questions were always the same.

“Why isn’t she in school?”

Or,

“Isn’t that Adrian’s daughter?”

Anyone who knew my adopted parents also knew Adrian. And they always told wild stories that couldn’t be shared in mixed company. Adrian and my adopted father, Antonio, were friends from high school and criminal soulmates. They lived together, worked together, and tormented society, together. Until they didn’t.

I heard those questions so often that it was likely my first strewn together sentence. I did not talk until I was five-years-old. By then I seemed to have everyone pretty well figured out. Every person that went in and out of the house I grew up in, always asked, “isn’t that Adrian’s daughter?” And the response varied, depending on who was asking. I quickly learned that my presence wasn’t to be known to just anyone, and my origins were definitely a hot topic. I also quickly learned that no one around me was telling the truth about, well, anything.

I was well aware that the house I grew up in was not my home and that the people I lived with were not my family. This was merely a situation I found myself in, not an “adoption,” it resembled more of a botched drug deal and I had a strong feeling that something deeper, something more painful linked me to Adrian. He is a complex man and I was in fact his daughter. He had two children. Me, and my brother who is six years older. My brother has a different mother, the mysterious Lane, she hated puppies and babies. That was her only declaration after my brother was born. Given their mutual disinterest in having a child, after my brother was born they opted to read through classic car magazines to choose a name for my brother at random. “Ford 86 Black” is what they settled on.

Adrian might as well have been a shadowy figure from the past. His name being spoken out loud created mixed emotions, no matter who was present. The chaotic adventures of Adrian were always written on everyone’s faces. A range of Nostalgia, regret, paranoia, and fear was always simultaneously present. My own elusiveness seemed hereditary. I had very little regard for the people I lived with. And not knowing when Adrian might show up kept the past very much alive and most people on edge. Adrian was, above all, unpredictable.

Despite my disinterest in those around me, when I heard Adrian’s name, I always listened. Elusively, never letting them catch me paying attention. I was gathering data before I could count to 100. All the data would be stored for later use, when I was more financially stable than my four-year-old self. Mentioning his name did not clear a room, it created a stand still. A place in time that many thought they might not ever escape. Adrian was charming, and intelligent. He’s addicted to risk just as much as he’s addicted to drugs. But a highly intelligent man, nonetheless, and a very resourceful criminal.

He had opportunities. He didn’t want them. Adrian shifted through stints of professional life by route of the military, where he received a dishonorable discharge for pretending to be insane in order to get out; A fast tracked position on a commercial boat, where he started out as a foreman; and another piece of cake job at a steel mill, where he just didn’t give a damn and left. He is far more proud of his non-tax paying careers. The ones that never see the light of day on an online resume site.

Adrian had a lot of trauma that he didn’t seem to know what to do with. Paired with a chaotic chemical imbalance and a genius mind. His presence as a child was rarely known or validated, and he was on a marathon to make up for lost time as an adult. He would be seen, there was no doubt.

This seemed to be our link. Pain.

A shared interest in carving our own path after another storm of events always left the trail covered with rubble. A shared life of physical torture and abandonment. This seemed to be our legacy.

During one of Adrian’s unhinged but heroic moments, an associate of his stopped by his house and attempted to leave with my mother’s jewelry box. Not on Adrian’s watch. He calmly reached for his pistol and shot the jewelry box out of the man’s hand. He then sat his gun back down on the coffee table and proceeded to roll himself a joint.