The beginning...

It all started on June 24, 1986 at around 10 in the morning. My mother was wheeled in to the OR for a scheduled c-section to deliver me on my due date. I emerged from her womb at 10:08AM, apparently screaming at the top of my lungs and purple from the anger of being pulled from my safe place. There I was...Michelle Elizabeth Gallagher; 10 lbs 2 oz; 22 inches long. And so began the story of me. Our house was in Paradise Park on a street named Hoover Creek. It was a quaint duplex, just big enough for mom, dad and myself...and the cats Erika, Katie and Alex. I spent the first few years of my life in that house until sometime in 1990. My brother had been born just days prior to "the blizzard of '89". At that point, my mother apparently went a little crazy and tried to (or at least threatened to) kill my dad. She had SERIOUS PPD after Mike was born and even went away for a few days for observation (at GA Regional). My parents needed a bigger house, so after lots of looking they settled on a house on Chesterfield Dr. in Windsor Forest. It was a nice neighborhood with nice houses and nice looking people, and then "Here come the Clampetts (well, pretty damn close anyway)!" My family and our house was always the trashiest in the neighborhood. For some reason, the teens in the neighborhood enjoyed hanging out with my dad "Mr. G" in our garage; listening to Nirvana, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and the like. We had an above ground pool in the back yard around the time is was 6 or 7, and we had a basketball goal on the side of the house in the cul-de-sac (the Little Circle). There were stick ball bases spray painted on the street in the Little Circle. It seemed like a good situation on the outside. Looks can be decieving. To be continued...