Zykia: The Wee Little Woman

I was born November 14, 1985 in Silsbee, TX to parents Pamela Sam and Chucky Ray Johnson. For my parents, this would be a familiar experience being that they were both already a part of another family. At the time, my dad had six other children, three boys and three girls. My mom only had one son but was dying to have a baby girl. Somewhere in the equation of two adults, seven children total, and two separate households came an added addition. I would forever be known as "the baby girl." In the beginning of my life, being the youngest of seven children, I would assume my acceptance was a hard pill for my siblings to swallow. Most of them were attending elementary school and even junior high school when I was born. This however, did not take away from the fact that everyone was well taken care of financially. After attending college, my father deemed himself a "business man," owning several private businesses. He was my hero, or so I thought... My mother, on the other hand, was never stable. She always had a variety of jobs and was always moving from one place to another. On the weekends, I would go to visit my dad and his family, and during the week, I would most often stay with my grandmother and sometimes my aunt. The first week out of the hospital, I remember my father told me that he and my mother were arguing because she was going out of town and I was sick. Being born to a father that had six other children to be concerned about and a mother that was always on the go, from a developmental perspective several individuals might assume that I would face a life of great adversity.