At Least Now I Know (ePub)

At Least Now I Know follows the true story of Tatianna Smith, a Midwest Native with bipolar I disorder whose broken and abusive home environment causes her to hide from her family for twenty-five years-until she receives a call on her answering machine from a brother who has finally tracked her down.

Smith's account details her early years under the manipulative, violent reign of a sadistic father. While her father acted out against everyone in the family, Smith was his only victim of sexual molestation. She recounts her uneasiness and trauma from a young age, as well as the early signs of the damage done to herself and her siblings.

Living on her own in Chicago, Smith experiences the burgeoning of an extreme sex addiction that lasts until menopause. During her addiction, Smith becomes pregnant and opts to have a black market abortion performed, with devastating consequences. Away from the toxicity of her family, Smith begins a personal journey to discover mental health, peace, and fulfillment-even recognizing her lifelong dream of world travel. Even so, the journey is not easy. Smith goes through two marriages and numerous manipulative and abusive relationships, including a terrifying instance of illegal entry and attempted rape that eventually lead to a mental breakdown.

At the age of sixty-two, Smith returns to school to earn her bachelor of arts. While struggling with a new learning system and the college's dependence on computers, she encounters sexual harassment and lack of professionalism from one of her art professors. Smith, already a successful professional artist, refuses to give in to her instructor's attention-seeking behavior and, despite the consequence to her class grade, graduates with honors in 2010.

After receiving the phone call that brings her out of hiding, Smith attempts a reunion with her brothers, each of whom deals with his own dysfunction. She struggles to make the rekindled relationships work despite suffering continual mixed messages, manipulation, and emotional turmoil that almost causes her to have a second mental breakdown. Finally, when her brothers begin blaming her for the sexual abuse she has suffered at one of their hands, Smith makes the painful decision to finally abandon her quest for family love and support.

Adroitly exposed in At Least Now I Know are a multitude of women's issues: mental and physical abuse, incest, sex addiction, abortion and the right to choose, sexual harassment, sexual discrimination, rape, mental illness, and more. At the heart of Smith's autobiography lies the heartbreaking question: Which is more important, family or dignity?