The Sky Isn't Visible From Here

My parents messed up a lot throughout my childhood. Don't they all? With all the good they did, there was also a lot of bad. And while there is a lot that effed me up and a lot that I will always be dealing with and getting over, I think that damage on me was minimal.

Even now that I'm a mother and am dealing with so much stuff that having a kid has brought to the surface, I don't judge my parents, particularly my mother, too harshly. I go back a lot to the thought that for all that was bad, a lot was good; or, at least, a lot really was done with the best of intentions - which doesn't lessen how messed up I am about some things, but at least eases the sting a bit. My parents, whatever their faults and mistakes, made choices that placed our health, education and general well-being as the highest priorities in our home.

My point is, despite whatever issues I have, it's really hard for me to imagine parents who are unable or unwilling to truly place their kids first. So as I read Felicia Sullivan's The Sky Isn't Visible From Here, her memoir recounting her relationship with her drug-addicted mother, who disappeared from here life about ten years ago, it was really, really hard for me to believe that this was a true story.

I'm morbidly fascinated with true crime stories, so I'm no stranger to the horrors adults, including parents, can inflict on children. But in this case, what struck me, what haunts me days after putting the book down, is how thin the line between love and indifference, between abuse and protection, seemed to be in Sullivan's life.

Her mother seemed almost unreal to me (to an extent, I would have preferred more background information or detail about her, but I understand the author may not have had that information, given the circumstances); I can only imagine what it must have been like to witness your own mother's decline, to be able to know life before drugs and after drugs.

Sullivan's childhood - throughout which her mother puts her in dangerous situations - could not help but set her up for some of her adult experiences. Reading the words of someone who had no real childhood, who was abandoned by her mother, who repeated her mother's behaviors only to find the strength to pull herself out before it was too late - was a sad experience for me. I felt for her and wanted to know more about her deeper feelings.

This is the kind of story that merits a sequel, and I hope there is one.