Flippin Love - Tanner Braungardt

one

- Victoria Brookes -

My name is Victoria Brooke's.

I'm originally from Wasilla Palmer, Alaska.

That is until something caused us to pack up and move within a week, moving to Los Angeles, California.

Something happened there too however.

I thought leaving my problems was a way to fix it.

There was no running that time.

Time would pass and 8 months later I found myself packing up again.

This time we were moving to Augusta Kansas.

xxxxxxxxxxxx

You'd think with a mother who was the daughter of some rich white dude, that your parents wouldn't have to work.

We had 5.9 billion in the bank, yet my father Kyle Brooke's has been in the Army for 20+ years.

They married two years before he officially joined up after completing basic.

I'd ask him often as a kid why he joined the army.

After all we didn't exactly need the money and it didn't exactly pay crazy money either.

That said, his response to me would always be a version of 'to protect the freedoms I want you to have growing up, as well as for your family and kids to grow up with'.

I have yet to fully understand what he means by that.

I don't feel like I have freedom.

Not with the strict parents I have.

xxxxxxxxxxxx

After the moving and hardships I decided to start a YouTube channel at the age of 12.

When I did, I'd upload random videos every now in then. I didn't have a schedule or a goal, well other than to help me get through all the stuff in my life I was dealing with.

I'd vlog often but never actually post much if any of the footage.

I saw recording my life as a way to help myself cope with everything going on.

All the footage is just stored on one of my computers. It also holds memories of those I have lost.

I'm 17 what loss could I have faced in the beginning of my life you might ask.

When I was 14, when we were living in Alaska my sister Adeline got diagnosed with lung cancer.

She died 3 months later after a long battle with it.

She's the one who taught me how to ride horses. I stopped riding cause it made me think of her to much.

I miss her a ton.

A year and a half later my father got reassigned to California and was asked to be there ASAP.

It was like a fresh start, a way to get away from all the sorrow, so I thought.

I made a friend, her name was Annabelle.

I knew her for 6 months before the world fell before me.

My mother got a call around 7:30 on a Thursday night.

Very specific I know, but I remember it so well because of what that day brought.