Hiding Under My Bed
When I was six, I asked my mom to take me to the park. She leaned down in my face and screamed at me. I covered my ears. She started slamming cabinets and throwing things at me. She did that sometimes.
Okay, she did it a lot.
Sometimes she threw glasses. Sometimes she threw coffee cups. Sometimes she threw eggs. The day I asked to go somewhere fun, she screamed about how selfish and entitled I was. She seemed to enjoy it.
It wasn't going to stop anytime soon.
I scurried into my room.
I hid under the bed.
Eventually, she lost her steam. She went into her default mode, doing chores while talking to herself. I snuck out from under the bed. I spent the rest of the day in the basement, grateful she'd forgotten about me.
Part of me stayed there.
She's still hiding.
Sometimes the irony hits me like a brick. I spent the last two decades constructing a person from the rubble of that, just in time for the pandemicene and the age of global boiling.
My mom hated me, even before the schizophrenia posses…