There was a group of boys in my high school who thought their shit didn’t stink. Not only that, they were the textbook bullies that you see depicted in every bully movie out there. They stuck together, went everywhere together, to all the school events, were always together during the school day, and did their tormenting together. They were a pack. People were afraid of them and would walk down different hallways to avoid them.

I had my own encounters with them in their early days, before high school, when I did one year in our tiny Catholic school. I…

Did I ever think, at any point in my life before it actually happened, that I would be in my late forties and married to my high school social studies teacher and writing about it? God, no. If someone would have told me years ago that this would happen later in my life, I would have thought that was one of the creepiest things ever.

I was set in my marriage with my husband that was a comfortable five years my elder and we had our two beautiful children and our white Golden Retriever.

I had written my life already, and my husband had made it clear: “This is as good as it’s going to get.”

There was no more to write…

There are so many pieces of my life that I remember in exactly that — pieces. Moments. And everything in between them is just…blank. I used to think I had a memory like a steel trap. I just felt like I remembered every detail of every moment. It wasn’t until the past few years that I realized, I barely remember shit. And I don’t know if that’s because I’ve lost so much of it, which it doesn’t seem like I have, or if it wasn’t there in the first place. Like I blocked a lot of it out. Maybe it…

I often reflect upon my life and feel as though it has been not one, but many lives. My life as a child growing up seems like a completely separate life from my life after moving away from home and living in New York. And that separate from spending time in psych hospitals for my eating disorder. Then, there was moving back home, which, though I was returning to where my first life was, it was different. It wasn’t the same life. And then I left for New York again and came back again and left again to Illinois. From…

I so loved living in New York. Being a live-in nanny was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Fucking it up was a big mistake, but that’s beside the point. I didn’t live in Manhattan but I dreamed of doing that. I lived with a family in Hartsdale and took care of their one-year-old boy. Couldn’t have had a better job at that time in my life.

I made other nanny friends, so we all had the same schedules and we all had the same lives basically. We understood each other. And we all loved hanging out it…

And it didn’t. But neither did all his money.

It was the early nineties and I was living in Westchester County, New York as a nanny. My other nanny friends and I were out at one of the bars in Mount Kisco where we liked to sing Karaoke and this man of large stature sat next to me at the bar and began talking to me. I had no problem talking with him. I’m a friendly person, but I won’t say there was no anxiety. Men, in general, generated a level of anxiety in me. But I didn’t show it…

I was twenty one and just made it back out to New York from Wisconsin. I was out there and had the perfect live-in nanny job with a wonderful family, but had gotten sick with my eating disorder and was hospitalized, then went to Florida for after-care, which I then left after a week and flew home. But that’s another story…or maybe a book.

So I digress. I flew back out to New York and found this new live-in nanny job in Scarsdale for a sculptor and plastic surgeon who lived in a mansion that I coveted the entire time…

1. Make your bed every morning. I’d heard this before and I didn’t buy it. Seems silly to make something you’re just going to unmake at the end of the day, and I didn’t think it would make a difference, but honestly, for me, it did. I don’t even make it well. I just make sure my covers are pulled up over my bed and it looks like there’s been an effort made.
2. Do your dishes every day. Don’t let them pile up. Even if there are just a few. I confess, I don’t do this one every day. My goal…