needless to say, it was a pretty ugly situation and it only really gets worse from there.

it's february of 1985 when the josie and the recently parolled dave welcome a screaming baby girl into the world. they decide that they're going to make the most of out this situation. no one really knows why they didn't just give the baby up for adoption and go about their miserable lives together, maybe they were too stupid, maybe no one wanted it, but whatever the case, the couple decided to keep the baby, to raise her as best they could... which, admittedly, wasn't very well.

the first few years actually aren't that terrible. the boyfriend manages to stay out of jail, to keep his nose clean and gets a job at a the town garage, while the girl gets a job waitressing in a local diner. they save up enough money to put a down payment on a small house in the center of town. eventually, they even decide to tie the knot at the county courthouse. their daughter is bright and full of laughter, always a little on the curious side and getting into things she probably shouldn't be getting into and asking questions pretty much from the moment she can talk.

she's six when things start getting bad. she can remember the first time the police came knocking at her door, looking for her father, and watching them as they dragged him away in cuffs. she can still remember running outside, barefoot, and asking the policemen where they were taking her dad and what he'd done, and the feeling of her mother scooping her up and turning her away from the scene as the car drove him back off to jail. it's only the beginning.

the next several years are rough, to say the least. josie turns to the bottle for comfort and to the open arms of any man willing to give any sort of attention just to pay the bills. the men come and go, but the drinking gets progressively worse. one beer turns into three, three turns into six, six turns into a bottle of bourbon and screaming matches. most nights, marissa is left to her own devices; she learns to cook and to clean up the bottles left strewn around the house, she tries her hardest to do right, to keep her personal life under wraps from her classmates, but it's hard sometimes, when her mother's temper gets the best of her and she has to wear long sleeves to school.

dave shows back up when she's ten and for a minute, things go back to normal and they're a happy family again. he manages to get his job at the garage back and sees to it that the bills are paid and that marissa has new clothes. she doesn't ask him questions, she doesn't tell him what's happened in the years that he's been gone, she's just glad that he's back, that her mother actually seems happy for a change.

but it doesn't last long. dave is arrested again when she's twelve. she understands a little more this time, but that doesn't keep the tears away. there's a part of her that's upset that it's happening in the first place, but more to the point, she knows that things are going to go right back to the way they were the last time he was gone.

later that day, she asks a neighbor for odd jobs. it's partially to save money, because she knows the bills need to get paid and they can't always rely on josie's trasient income from whatever job or boyfriend she has that week or the infrequent prison work checks that get mailed to their home, but mostly, it's to have an excuse to stay out of the house. she picks up whatever jobs she can; sometimes watering gardens or mucking stalls or mowing lawns, sometimes bussing tables at a local diner and taking out the garbage or getting groceries for some of her elderly neighbors. she starts putting money aside, hiding it in random places around the house, but it always seems to disappear. after a year, she takes to hiding her earnings in an abandoned barn on the outskirts of town.

as the years pass, the barn becomes more than just a safehold for her earnings, it becomes a safe place for her to hide, because josie's fuse is growning increasingly shorter and her boyfriends get sketchier. she doesn't feel comfortable in her own home and does whatever she can to stay out of there as much as she can. but she can't always stay away, she has to get clothes and make sure that the house isn't in shambles. when she is home, she's subjected to verbal and emotional abuse, she's made to tend to josie and her boyfriends needs, whatever they may be.

it all comes to a head in marissa's junior year of high school. dave is in jail again, this time for armed robbery, and josie is dating some new guy who wants more than marissa is willing to give. he makes comments and small gestures when josie isn't looking, but he's always met with rejection. it's the night after her sixteenth birthday when he comes into her room and lays down in bed with her, only to get a knee to the nuts and an elbow to the eye socket. she's done, she's had enough and she's not going to back down. she packs her bags while he's bleeding on her floor and leaves through the window. she catches a ride out of town with a friend from school and buys a bus ticket out of state.

growing up with criminals has it's perks; it's taught her how to fight and how to stay alive, what to do and what not to do if she doesn't want to be found. she stays moving, living out of hotel rooms and nondescript jobs. she spends the next four years on the go, a new name for every new city and every new job, she doesn't have any limits or expectations and does what she needs to in order to make it to the next place. sometimes that means singing on the street or waiting tables in hole in the wall diners where they pay in cash and don't ask questions, sometimes it means robbing men blind while they sleep next to her in a hotel room and leaving them to pay the bill. by the time she's twenty, she's got a beat up old pick up truck and a resume a mile long.

things change when she arrives in austin, texas. it's the first time she's been to a big city and she's scared out of her wits, but she's almost twenty-two and she's tired of running. so she goes about her routine, getting a pay by the week hotel room and singing on the street for any loose change someone might throw into her guitar case. only two days in to her time there, a man approaches her as she's singing outside a corner store. he says his name is zachary and that he manages a bar in town that holds open mic nights every thursday and that she should come perform. at first, she declines, but he comes back the next day and asks her again.

a week passes before she finally comes to the bar and tells him she doesn't want to sing for a crowd, but she needs a job. he agrees, but only if she performs. despite herself, she accepts his terms and when he asks her name, for the first time in five years, she tells someone her real name. for the first time in her life, she's happy, and life is good. she has a good job, friends, and even joins a band. hell, she and zach even grow increasingly closer, until finally, they fall into stride, dating before they really realize what they're doing. eventually, the couple marries and she takes his last name, ridding herself of the weight of the life she left behind.

the years that follow are a whirlwind; between records and tours and life in general, time seems to pass by in a blur. this wasn't ever the life that marissa had envisioned for herself, but she wasn't arguing. but life has a funny way of throwing wrenches in things. in the winter of 2014, marissa is diagnosed with vocal nodes and leaves the band to undergo surgery. she has a hard time adjusting to living a normal life again, falls into a depression, and struggles for a while. eventually, the depression turns into aggrivation and then into motivation. it becomes blatantly obvious that she isn't happy about so many things and the strain on her relationship becomes trying. soon, she and zach begin to realize just how far apart they have grown over the years, that their relationship only worked because they hardly saw one another and no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't stop a sinking ship. the couple split as amicably as possible, in the late summer of 2015, the only things she asks is to keep are the dog and his last name.

with everything that's happened, marissa decides she needs a change of pace and a new lease on life. she says goodbye to zach, to her friends, her former bandmates and the life she's led for nearly a decade, and leaves for new england. she's not totally sure what she's going to do yet, but she has money saved up and has always been good at figuring it out as she goes. so she falls back on old habits and spends the fall of 2015 in salem, massachusetts, leading ghost tours by day and falling back on bartending at night.

but salem is very much a tourist town and the off season means less work and marissa finds herself on the move again. this time, she settles in boston. she's lucky enough to have a decent savings and royalties from records still coming in, but she quickly finds a bartending job at and rents an apartment nearby that she can more than afford on her own, without needing six roommates. the time passes by, and eventually, she begins writing and playing again. eventually, she records an ep in her home studio. somehow, her new album is leaked on the internet, and before she knows it, she's planning a full u.s. tour. but she was never really good at goodbyes, so she leaves boston behind, without looking back... for a while.

when her tour concludes, she has every chance to go back to boston and start fresh, apologize for her absence, and she tried, but something just didn't feel right, so she turned away again, somehow finding her way back to austin. and for a while, things were actually okay. she kept up with her solo career, kept making music, and slinging drinks, but slowly faded into obscurity as the months passed, away from the people she'd learned to love while she was on the east coast. finally, after nearly a year, she's fallen back into old habits, thrown her things into the bed of her pickup, and headed back east, this time for someplace she's never been: arcadia city. we'll just have to see how that goes.