How To Be A HoRRiBle Person ✅ #TheWattys2017

Ch.6 - Fire

Ch. 6- Fire

8

I have this thing. It's gotten better now, where I can't sleep unless I know someone else is awake. I've had it since I was little, since we moved to firestone, the blue house. I would get scared that everyone in the world was dead and I was the only one that was still alive. The feeling around that time was if something bad happened, no one could help me at night. The only thing that could calm me down was imagining that the neighbors were awake still or somewhere in China it's daytime and everyone is eating breakfast and going about their day while I'm asleep. I would crack the window so I could hear the animals outside and idk have an exit strategy should an emergency arise.

Mom would fall asleep with us sometimes. We had bunk beds and she would fall asleep next to me on the bottom bunk, with like scissors or pens in her hands, doing crafts, blackout mid sentence. It was like she was dead, lying next to me, It was like she was gone a lot of the time actually, even when she was awake.

Dad thinks she was always like that on the meds and that I just got old enough to see it, which is probably exactly how it was, but to me she was my cool neighborhood mom and then just one day she wasn't. She changed, and it sucked. I didn't want her there, but I did.

When my dad was home I would make him promise to check on me every five minutes until I fell asleep, because there was no waking her when she was gone. He would forget and I would start to think that something bad happened to him or maybe he died too, but he would just be watching TV or something. I'd make him promise again to check on me and it would be the same thing. Sometimes he would be watching X- Files and I would sneak out of bed and watch it with him behind the couch, he would pretend not to see me so he didn't have to get up, and it ended up being our unspoken bond. He would make popcorn and leave some by the corner of the couch for me sometimes, it was cute.

If X-files wasn't on he would be in the computer room watching naked girls online, so that was less cute. I was so young I think he thought that I didn't really understand what was going on when I walked in, and I didn't really, but I did get upset that he wasn't checking on me. That was like my main deal. That he always promised and never did, and instead was paying attention to naked strangers, that hurt....so if I have any fucked up daddy issues with men this is probably the source, Im realizing that now. I don't make guys call me baby girl in bed though so I think we made it out of this phase ok. If some dude tryed to make me call him daddy, i'd probably bite him.

About a year after we moved from the brown house to the blue house our house caught on fire, because we needed a symbolic sign to tell us everything was about to go to shit, that or our house was just wired horribly. Our house was originally an old office building or something and so there were wires all over the attic, attached to the blinding fluorescent panel fixtures we had all over the ceiling, so really not a huge huge surprise that all caught fire, but we had to move into the extended stay across town because of it. My mom and dad fought a lot more or it was just so small a space we noticed more, either way it was horrible, you could really feel the energy, and it felt like death, in a way it was, my parents were dying together, while me and rikki watched Zoro and the old school mickey mouse club in black and white.

Static T.V

I tried to pretend I didn't know what was going on or my mom would start to cry and lock herself for hours in her room, which was about five feet from ours. Years later when I brought up the feeling around this time to my dad he was extremely surprised I knew what was going on then. He said that was when my mom had found out about him cheating. He was surprised I had felt that weight and the change of feeling because I was so young, So I guess I did a better job pretending then I thought. I've always been very in touch with my feelings and sensitive to other people's emotions, like when you go to a place that someone has died and can feel it in the air or pick up a used self help book and can feel the person that died in there own way struggling on the other end, but not everyone is like that, so to me it was how could I not have felt that?

I think I knew something was off but no one was talking about it, and when your that young you look to your parents for what to do, and everyone was pretending like everything was fine, so I did too, like if we all just pretended to be like we were then we could coast on it all a little longer before it all fell apart.

We ate Wendys a lot back then because it was right next to the extended stay so I still can't eat wendy's without it tasting like depression, but at the

time the chicken nuggets and soft serve were comforting, and let me know

in a weird way that she loved us.

That hotel was also where mom taught us about sex... at the same time... in bed, which was awkward as fuck, and super innopropriate. She had a book and read it like a bed time story... It was and continues to be one of the weirdest fucking things I can remember about my childhood. After that she would ask me everytime I went to the bathroom if I was touching myself, like we were going to be that open with eacother, or maybe because she told us what sex was all of a sudden I was going to be uncontrolably masterbating in the small hotel I shared with my family.

I would be like braiding my hair or whatever kids do in the bathroom and hear the creak of the floorboards, I could tell she was listening outside the door, id stop and literally roll my eyes in the mirror staring at myself, I would actually do this, like maybe I was on a reality show and that's where the camera was, and one day they would come out and tell me my whole life was a joke. Then everything would make more sense.

Super weird and uncomfortable for all, lucky for us this wasn't a forever situation and we were back at firestone before we knew it. When we moved back in dad and mom lived in separate rooms which was never weird for us and we actually never questioned it, which is weird to me now, I remember going over to my friend haily's house and being like your parents sleep in the same room? A part of my thought every parent had their own rooms, me and Rikki did. Hailey's parents also gave each other an uncomfortable look which I understand better now. I stayed the night at hailey's house more, I liked there family, they were crazy but happy and nice.