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falling apart in front of everyone. Embarrassed as I was, I was more worried about the connotations for Andy. I was terrified there might be a dark part of me that wanted to hurt him. Why else would I be having these horrible thoughts and images? Finally, I was in such agony that I talked to a professor I’d done independent study with in the area of adolescent psychology. I sobbed into my hands as I explained what was going on, and told her how worried I was about what it all might mean. She recommended I talk to someone who had experience treating post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
    Huh?
    PTSD is something soldiers have when they’ve seen heavy combat, right? Men and women who were in the Vietnam War or Desert Storm. PTSD is a serious condition that stems from having witnessed trauma and death and man’s inhumanity to man. I’m a middle class white chick from Boise, Idaho whose son was born with a few problems. What the hell do I have to complain about? There are millions of people in the world in significantly worse situations. I don’t deserve a diagnosis like PTSD, I told the therapist I’d started seeing.
    I did go through a major trauma with Andy, she pointed out. At one time, his medical situation was so bad that I started thinking about what I would do for his funeral. How big would the casket be? Would I rather have him cremated? What would I do with the ashes? But that’s not what caused me to have all the flashbacks and other problems. The post-traumatic stress occurred years later because I didn’t deal with my feelings when I was having them. I never stopped to allow myself to feel scared, angry, sad or helpless. Anytime I came close, the people around me were there to tell me that I was overreacting. “You’re strong. You can do this. Andy needs you, Kimbo. You can’t fall apart. You can’t get upset every time the doctor talks to you. You can’t get mad at the doctors. I’m worried about you. You’re crying too much. Cheer up, things could always be worse.” It’s the same message I’ve heard since I was a little girl. I feel too much, I cry too much, I need too much, there’s no reason for me to feel the way I do.
    So I stuff my feelings as far down as I can rather than dealing with them as they come, because I’m afraid of them. I don’t want to be an oversensitive mess of a woman. I want to be like other people, and when I look around, everyone else seems to have it all together.
    I dropped out of school when Andy was little because, in light of everything that was happening, working toward something I wasn’t sure I wanted in the first place didn’t make sense. Leaving seemed the right decision for me.
    When I decided to stop fostering children, I did go back to school, but I was angry. I thought I was angry with my parents, but that wasn’t true. I was mad at myself for doing something that I didn’t really want to do. And I was doing it because I was still seeking validation. Mostly I was mad because I was aware how pathetic it was that, as an adult, I was still such a child. Pathetic or not, though, that was how I came to enroll in school for the third time.
    I was exhausted. A psychology degree is useless unless you intend to go to graduate school, and since I knew I didn’t want to do that, the only goal I had was to obtain a piece of paper that said I’d graduated: Tangible proof that I’d finally done something worthwhile. Even so, I obsessed about my grades. I studied every chance I got, but uninterrupted study time was next to impossible. When first semester finals loomed, I started to panic, and on a Saturday afternoon, I made a phone call to my brother that changed my life forever.

Chapter 4
     
    Chuck, who’s two years younger than I am, lived a somewhat bohemian lifestyle. My brother spent most of his twenties wandering the streets of San Francisco and following the Grateful Dead around in his weathered VW van. Just before Andy was born, he lived on a beach