Forbidden Crush: How My Mother's Secrets Changed Everything - A Coming of Age Story Shepherd’s Pie By Earth Angel It all started when I was 10 years old, the year my parents got divorced, a normal age for a lanky, soft-spoken only child to have his obsession with Grand Theft Auto blindsided by his first crush. I had just started junior high, where they made us read boring stuff like Romeo & Juliet, though I was too young to understand the dangers of forbidden lust, yet old enough to notice how my mother would often do the sexiest things without knowing it. Things might have been different had my mother been more willing to let me out of her sight. Instead, I was treated more like a pet, expected to literally follow at her heels everywhere she went. Naturally, by forcing me to spend all my free time with her, it wasn’t long before I started observing some of her more peculiar tendencies. She had an extensive shoe collection, most of which were high heels. She loved wearing heels so much that even when she took them off, I’d often catch her walking around on her tiptoes, like she was purposely training her leg muscles around the house, by practicing in invisible stilettos. No matter what she was doing, she always seemed to need something inside her mouth. When we went out to eat, she couldn’t drink anything without a straw. …and then things took a turn