8 Personal Narrative

Heading North

by Kaycee Clark

I was born in Chowchilla, California, on August 29, 2006. Eleven years later, my family packed our bags and escaped to Northern Idaho, Potlatch to be precise. Why would I use the word escape you might ask? To answer that question, I need to explain my situation as I was growing up. While I grew up in a two-parent household, my home life was filled with a lot of tension. My parents had developed a strong addiction to drugs prior to getting married. The influence of narcotics had been around them for most of their lives, and as such, they had fallen victim to its tight grip.

When my parents got married, my dad worked extremely hard to kick his addiction and managed to do so, but my mom struggled with her addiction for an extended time after they had agreed to fight their addictions. They would wake me and my siblings up arguing late at night about her drug use, and sometimes their arguments became physical. One of my duties as the oldest, I felt, was to comfort my siblings. I was continually thrown into a

game of tug-of-war with my parents. My dad would interrogate me about what my mom had been up to, and my mom would bribe me with things so that I would not snitch on her to my dad. The mental stress and suffering that situation has on two ten-year-olds and a seven-year-old was horrendous. This pattern continued for years: getting clean and then relapsing. Eventually, to protect us and stop the cycle of drug use in the family, my dad decided to move away from California. He wanted a place where we could start fresh, in a safe, close-knit community with a lot of support and love. This place ended up being almost a thousand miles away in Potlatch, Idaho.

We had one small connection to this tiny north Idaho town, my aunt Randi. When she graduated high school, my parents visited her, and then we all went back to attend her wedding. I loved Potlatch because it was filled with all nature’s beauty, and it was new. It felt like an escape from our everyday reality. But what I loved most was how quiet and serene it was. I was not the only one who loved North Idaho in my family. One day while my family was relaxing, my dad said five words that would change all our lives for the better, although we did not know it at the time. Those five words were “We are moving to Idaho.” We did not believe him at first, but on the way home from school one afternoon, we saw a For Sale sign in front of our house. In that moment, we all knew without a doubt that we would be leaving Chowchilla.
Getting ready to leave California proved chaotic. At the time, all our family lived in different parts of California and came to help us pack. We had rented the largest moving truck we could get our hands on and crammed all of what made our house a home into it. After countless bittersweet goodbyes, we hit the road for 16 hours straight to make it to the small town. Our journey there had its fair share of bumps in the road, pun intended, including being stranded in the sun with a flat tire, bamboozling a hotel attendant, and riding in a minivan with no A/C in scorching summer weather, but we made it there safely.

We did not have a house yet, so we cozied up with my aunt for a month or so while we looked for one. On Halloween, we moved into an old, floor creaking house, and we loved Its character. My favorite part was the stairs because we had never had In California. It took some time to settle in, but over several months, we adapted to our new home. That year Idaho experienced one of the harshest winters in recent years. The freezing temperatures were one of several things that took a long time to get used to. School had started in September and like any new student, there was a lot of attention on me from everyone, all of them trying to determine what clique I would fit into, whether that be the sporty kids, the drama kids, the nerdy kids, or the super laid-back kids. I settled into the laid-back group because they matched my personality most closely. I did not really like anyone, but in that group, we had some things in common, like the fact that we saw through the fakeness and stupidity of other cliques. Having come from somewhere so far away, I was nervous and did not want to interact with anyone, but I had a teacher who could see that I was not happy or comfortable because of how new I was. We quickly developed a good friendship because it was also his first-year teaching.

As my years in school at Potlatch went on, I developed more and lasting friendships and became a part of the community. I participated in several sports and volunteer programs. Living in Potlatch changed my life for the better as well as strengthened my parents’ relationship with each other. As we continued to live our lives in Potlatch, our family’s bond became extraordinarily strong. My mom is no longer suffering from addiction. She and my dad just celebrated 18 years together, and their relationship is as strong as it has ever been. Sharing my story with others has been something that I have struggled with for an exceptionally long time because I tend to hide my story or not tell anyone about my past. I hid my past because of all the bad things in my life and I didn’t want anyone to think differently of me. As I am growing older, I have realized that everyone’s story makes them who they are, and I am stronger because of mine.