The People Who Built Me: Angelica

Some of the people who build us have been there since the day we were born. Others show up later and somehow become impossible to imagine life without.

Angelica is one of those people.

I've known her for about eight years. She started dating my dad when I was seventeen, and in 2022 she officially became my stepmom. But if I'm being honest, "stepmom" has never really been the title that fit her best. Around here, I call her my bitch—because she's my best friend, and that's just our thing.

When Angelica came into my life, things were chaotic.

My dad and I were in a rough spot. The family I had always known had fallen apart. I was in the middle of the investigation against the man who had abused me, trying to navigate a situation that no seventeen-year-old should ever have to face. I was scared, angry, overwhelmed, and honestly felt pretty alone.

And somehow, a twenty-four-year-old woman decided she was going to help carry some of that weight.

What amazes me now is that she stepped into all of that willingly.

She wasn't some seasoned parent with grown kids and years of experience. She was only twenty-four, almost twenty-five years old. She had two little boys of her own, both under the age of four. Most people her age would have been focused solely on their own family and trying to survive the chaos of raising toddlers.

Instead, she found room for me and my dad too.

Long before she was officially family, she acted like family.

When I was a senior in high school and having a rough day, she would use her own money to bring me food or whatever I needed. If I wasn't feeling well, she checked on me. If I needed something, she found a way to help. Looking back now, I realize how much she was juggling, yet she still made sure I knew someone cared.

More importantly, she knew I felt alone.

She knew the family I had depended on wasn't the same anymore. She knew I was scared. She knew I was trying to figure out who I was while dealing with things most adults would struggle to handle.

And she showed up.

There was one moment that has stayed with me all these years.

While I was in foster care, I ended up in a foster home that wasn't safe for me. When Angelica found out what was happening, she didn't hesitate. She dropped everything she was doing, grabbed her best friend, and drove two hours to come get me.

She didn't wait for someone else to fix it.

She didn't make excuses.

She didn't tell me she'd figure it out later.

She showed up.

The two of them helped me pack my things, loaded everything up, and got me out of there. At a time when I felt abandoned by so many people, Angelica made sure I knew I wasn't alone.

Sometimes love isn't a grand speech.

Sometimes love looks like dropping everything, driving two hours, and saying, "Let's get you out of here."

That's who Angelica has always been.

When I was being bullied in high school, she didn't sit quietly on the sidelines either. She walked into that school and dealt with teachers and principals when I needed someone in my corner.

The funny part is that the first few times she came into the school, people didn't even realize she was there as a parent figure. She was so young that teachers regularly mistook her for a student. One teacher even stopped her and asked why she wasn't in class.

Looking back, it's hilarious.

Here was this twenty-four-year-old woman advocating for me, and the staff thought she was another teenager wandering the halls.

But she never let that stop her.

Whether people took her seriously or not, she showed up anyway.

And that's the thing about Angelica—she has always shown up.

She supported me through every relationship I've had, even the ones she probably knew weren't good for me. She never tried to control my choices. She never gave me the "I told you so" speech when things fell apart.

Instead, she stayed.

She listened when I needed to vent. She celebrated the good moments. She helped pick up the pieces when things didn't work out. Even when she disagreed with my decisions, she made sure I knew I was loved.

She has supported every crazy idea I've ever had. She has encouraged me to chase things that scared me. She modeled for photography when I wanted to learn. She believed in me long before I learned how to believe in myself.

Of course, not every memory with Angelica is serious.

Some of my favorites are the ones that make absolutely no sense to anyone but us.

Right before my graduation, we were in the kitchen dyeing our hair. Like any responsible adults, we were also eating cookies and Twizzlers at the same time. At one point, Angelica shoved an entire Twizzler in her mouth, and I laughed so hard that I started choking on a cookie. The next thing I knew, milk shot out of my nose across the kitchen.

My dad was on the phone with Nana at the time and immediately had to leave the room because he couldn't handle whatever chaos we had just created.

To this day, I don't think either of us finished laughing.

Then there's our shopping trips.

Angelica and I act more like hooligans than grown adults. We'll disappear in stores and play Marco Polo trying to find each other. Except we don't play it normally.

Our version goes:

"Marco!"

"Polo!"

And when you find the other person, you're supposed to yell, "Found you, hoe!"

One day she thought she had found me and confidently yelled it across the store.

The problem was that it wasn't me.

It was an older woman.

I don't know who was more embarrassed—Angelica or the poor lady who had just been called a hoe by a complete stranger.

Those are the moments I cherish just as much as the serious ones. Because somewhere between surviving hard things, navigating life, and becoming family, we also became friends.

One of my favorite memories is that she trusted me enough to ask me to do her hair and makeup for her wedding.

Out of all the people she could have chosen, she chose me.

Looking back now, that meant more than I probably realized at the time.

People talk a lot about blood making a family.

But some of the strongest family bonds are built through choice.

Angelica chose to step into a broken situation.

She chose to care about a scared seventeen-year-old girl she didn't have to care about.

She chose to fight for me.

She chose to support me.

She chose to love me before she ever had to.

The older I get, the more I realize what she actually did.

A twenty-four-year-old woman with two toddlers looked at a seventeen-year-old girl whose world was falling apart and decided, "Yeah, I've got room for one more."

What she probably didn't know was that the seventeen-year-old girl she was taking in didn't really understand unconditional love. Love had always felt like something that could be taken away, earned, lost, or used as leverage. I didn't know what it looked like when someone stayed simply because they wanted to.

Angelica helped change that.

Not through grand gestures or long speeches, but through years of showing up. Through phone calls, hard conversations, support, laughter, and simply being there. She taught me that family isn't always the people you're born to. Sometimes it's the people who choose you over and over again.

Not everyone would have done that.

Angelica did.

And because of that, she became one of the people who helped build me into who I am today.

So here's to my bitch.

My stepmom.

My best friend.

Thank you for showing up when life was falling apart.

Thank you for staying long after the storm passed. I Love You.

— Kayla