seri lantowski

Seri can recount with great detail the way her parents met. Not because she'd been a bystander to this unforeseeable connection, but because she'd been told the story more times than she could actually count. Esti was thirty with a thirteen year old daughter, Felicity, when Stephen Lantowski walked into the picture. It wasn't necessarily love at first sight, but it was attraction at first sight.

Stephen claims it was the way Esti danced in the rain, uncaring about the uptight New Yorker's hovering under their umbrellas trying to get taxi's. She was an enigma, he says. A water nymph that he couldn't take his eyes off of. It wasn't love that brought them back to his apartment that afternoon, but it could have been fate. Whatever it was, it didn't matter. From that moment on they were together at every chance they got. Felicity didn't mind Stephen stepping into the picture, nor did the businessman feel at odds with acting like a quasi father figure to a teenager. For the most part it worked out in all of their favors. Esti and her daughter were provided for without having to compromise who they were, and Stephen got the family he'd been missing.

A short year later and the pair were getting married, much against the rest of the Lantowski family's wishes, but their son's happiness meant more than their own.

And then there was the arrival of Seri. Felicity wasn't expecting to become a sister at fifteen, nor did Esti plan for the little accident to happen. But it did, and Stephen was over joyed with the news. The couple could only be described as giddy when a little girl with jet black hair came wailing into the world. She had a button nose and big eyes, a spitting image of her mother. Unfortunately, Stephen's job took him away from his family more than he could help. Buying and selling businesses wasn't exactly a nine to five career, and Esti found herself home alone with her two girls more often than not.

Going back to her former artistic nature, the mother of the house started up her "hobby", as Stephen liked to call it, of photography and painting. Seri grew up in a house where strangers posed nude in the drawing room and liquor was found in abundance in the bar across the hallway. Sex was a free subject when the man of the house was away on business and Felicity was no better an influence on Seri than their mother was.

With her mind so exposed to different facets of life, Seri became a very self-aware individual. At thirteen she held her first cigarette and at fourteen she lost her virginity. Without a lack of money or attention, the Lantowski girl was easily getting into trouble on the weekends. Drinking, drugs, and sex were apart of the norm. She was in high school trying to seduce her teachers, sleeping with her mothers muses, and rubbing cocaine along her gums. It had never been an act against her parents. There mostly was just a lack of supervision and boundaries. Seri wanted to be liked, mostly, and found herself sneaking out and getting into trouble because of it.

Nothing felt out of control, and yet Seri found herself being forced into rehab by her father shortly after high school graduation. Stephan had found his daughter strung out on the floor in the bathroom after a Christmas party. It was his last straw, but one that he needed to keep under wraps. Esti agreed to sending their daughter away for help and the rest of the family was kept out of the loop. There was already enough awkward tension between Esti and her husbands parents - she was, after all, not what most people expect out of a daughter in-law - and Seri's condition would no doubt only make things worse within the family.

At the time it felt like the worst thing to ever happen to her life, her social life in particular. Seri was missing out on parties and dating, both very critical parts of a young woman's life. But her health was important, of course, and she knew that. It took some time, but she finally managed to sober up. Seri has been clean for the last three years and after a great amount of pressure from her old friends to get back into things, she made the decision to move out of the city. Stephen agreed it would be best for his daughter and has even offered to help support her entirely for the first year.