Because I Had To
by David Bulitt

Genre:
Contemporary Fiction

Jess Porter spent her childhood bouncing from therapist to therapist and
prescription to prescription. An outcast at school and a misfit at
home, the only solace she ever found was in her relationship with her
dad, Tom. Now he's dead. Feeling rejected by her adopted mom and her
biological twin sister, Jess runs off to South Florida. But she can't
outrun her old life. Watching the blood drip down her arm after her
latest round of self-inflicted cutting, she decides her only choice
is to find and face what frightens her most. Because I Had To takes
the reader inside the worlds of adoption, teen therapy, family law,
and the search for a biological family. With a cast of finely drawn,
complicated characters, it asks us to consider: can the present ever heal the past?



My mom must have told the story about a thousand times about me trying to stab our dog, Sonny, with a fork when I was seven years old. She told my grandparents, my teachers and all of my many therapists. Over the phone, at the playground, in the grocery store. Just about anyone and anywhere. I can’t tell how many times I heard that story growing up. God knows how many more times she told it when I wasn’t around. Personally, I never believed it since I love dogs, grew up with them and would never be without one, even now, if I didn’t have to live in a place that doesn’t allow them.
That’s not to say that I was an easy kid. Anything but.
Apparently, when I was in preschool, I refused to follow rules. I don’t know exactly what rules I broke back then, maybe I didn’t put the Legos back the right way or, wouldn’t stand in the right place in line. Who the hell knows? Whatever it was, it was enough for my parents to okay my being evaluated by the preschool psychologist. From there, I was off and running through fifteen years or so of tests, shrinks, medications and therapy that continued until I decided that I had enough and pulled the plug on most of it a few months before my dad died last year.
Even as a kid, I was acutely aware of the growing conflict between my parents over what to do, how to help, how to take care of me. How to “fix” me. While Kasey travelled the easy breezy, walk in the park kid route, mine was a bumpy, angry road. My mom always pushed for medication, while my dad pulled the other direction, wanting to believe that I would be okay and better off without a bunch of prescription sedatives and mood-stabilizers running through my veins. Ultimately, my mom won the battle and I spent the good part of my years from childhood through my teens bouncing from diagnosis to diagnosis, treated with one drug and then the next. You name it, I had it. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Check. Mood Disorder. Check. Anxiety Disorder. Check. Borderline Personality Disorder. Got that one, too. The list went on.
With every diagnosis came a pill. When one didn’t work or caused some sort of unintended symptom, like I couldn’t sleep or couldn’t wake up, another plastic bottle was added to the collection in the cabinet above our kitchen sink. The list could have made some twisted alternate lyrics for a mad pharmacist singing Julie Andrews’ ‘My Favorite Things’ from ‘The Sound of Music’: “Ritalin to Seroquel to Adderall and Dexedrine. Abilify and Focalin and Lamictal and Prozac…”
I was always trying to find my way, walking through a house of mirrors. It was just that the mirrors weren’t made of glass. They were made of drugs.

Family law specialist David Bulitt has been praised as the lawyer who
“epitomizes stability and old fashioned common sense” by Bethesda
Magazine and routinely makes every top Washington DC Metro lawyer
list. His clients say that he is “the best non-shaving,
motorcycle-riding, bourbon-drinking, non-lawyer, lawyer” they know. 

The grandson of a New Jersey bartender, Bulitt was the first member of
his family to get a professional degree. After years of raising kids
and focusing on family responsibilities, Bulitt Bulitt now spends
much of his spare time discussing world issues with his dogs and
working on his novels. His first book, CARD GAME, was published in
2015 to a bevy of five star reviews. His new novel, BECAUSE I HAD TO,
is available now on Roundfire Books.

Bulitt is the Assistant Managing Director of Joseph, Greenwald and Laake,
PA, one of Maryland's largest and most prominent law firms. His
practice focuses on all areas of family law, including cases that
involve complex financial and property matters and property
distribution, divorce, and child custody disputes. He is often
appointed by local courts to serve in one of the most difficult and
demanding legal roles, as a Best Interests Attorney for children
whose parents are embroiled in high conflict custody disputes. He
also has extensive expertise working with families that have children
with special needs.


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