Leaving the confines of my lovely home will cause an immediate rattle from a Geiger counter. The asphalt has been kicked up at tattered, I meandered about holes in the sidewalk as I crossed the street and realized that I’ve have only ever seen designated crosswalks downtown. I was conscious of the pollutants I was breathing in coming from the 7 factories within a half mile radius from any point I was in my neighborhood. Large industrial trucks choked the small streets and I held breath when their exhaust poured a thick and charcoal smoke. Walking to the corner store, 3 stray dogs approached me and it is a coin toss if they’re too friendly and will follow me and I would have to leave them abandoned because mom doesn’t want any pets in the house, or they would try and attack me. Walking into the corner store, I was met by a lady that has been inundated with robbing's from kids my age. I walked in with a smile, and she reluctantly greeted me, thinking that she just smiled at a potential thief. She eyed me the whole time and I couldn’t browse comfortably, so I made sure to make my mind up for what I wanted. I went up to pay with 300 pennies I spent all morning counting from the frequently raided coin jar and she rolled her eyes and SLOWLY counted them while saying “after this, no more pennies”. I walked out, with even less money than I had before, feeling embarrassed and choked from what I have to do for my favorite soda, and some Ruffles. I ate some of the chips on the way home as painkillers for the walk back, again, the dogs, the pollution, and when I get home, I will receive a comment on how I’m getting fat and need to stop going to the corner store.

       Crawling into bed, in a repurposed closet, I sit with my knees to my chin to not interfere with the march of roaches that have more right to live in my home than I do. My mother says goodbye at the front door, and I only feel the vibrations her voice made through my thin walls. Separation anxiety kicks in that prompts me to cradle my baby brother that is in the hands of 8-year-old me. I still have Ruffle dust on the ends of my finger that brings me some food security because I know I’ll have a snack for later.

       It is 11AM but my sense of time was abstracted from a perception of when people would be home. I distracted myself by mimicking the recipe for how to make baby formula that my mother relentlessly beat into me so as not to pay for a babysitter, I would turn on the TV and watched TV shows I did not like, I would go outside and catch grasshoppers in a water bottle and feed them to wasps, I would do all these things out of depravity.

       Before I knew it, my father came home, disgruntled that my mother had to work and did not have hot food ready for him, he would greet me with a solemn gaze and turn his attention to his baby boy who does not have the capacity to understand how lackluster he was as a role model. He would sleep early knowing my mother would bring leftover McDonald’s for us to eat.

       Going to sleep hungry, the roaches starved that night too, crawling on me to distract themselves from their hunger. I would shove toilet paper in my ears to never go through the experience of having a bug crawling around in my ear again and to save my younger brother from that, I would shove toilet paper into his ears so he can have one less thing to hate about the confines we had the privilege of calling a home.

       My parents grew up in much worse conditions than I, and this led me to have a Stockholm Syndrome like relationship with my home. This place that would confine me to the living room and my room by setting up barricades of scurrying mice in the kitchen and roaches that have laid claim to anything they can crawl on.

       I understood that my parents tried their best, but that would sometimes satiate my soul and put me to sleep, or it would starve my soul and that sadness alone would put me to sleep.

       I would wake up on Sunday morning by my mother tip toeing around the colonies of bugs that blurred the corners of the room, to tell me to get up and report to my duty of caring for my brother. She said she even got a McFlurry for me that did not melt too much on the bus ride home and it was waiting for me in the freezer. My mother was exhausted from the night before, getting here well past my self-appointed bedtime, because I knew what was coming the next day demanded that I be present for something that is larger than I, my younger brother.

       I lived vicariously through him, he enjoyed the TV shows, he’s never seen grasshoppers get eaten alive by wasps, he loved when my dad picked him up high into the air and gave him a kiss, he would be happy to be fed by my mother in the wee hours of the morning before she had to go to work.

       I let him enjoy that, because I knew those perks of life erode with the waves of responsibility my parents instilled in us. The moment they saw a glimpse of autonomy, they would invest heavily in that ability to have one less thing to worry about.

       I am grateful for my family, if not for them and any implication of their rhetoric, I would have never been the person I am today. Getting lost in narratives of things greater than me skewed my perception of self, that I did not deserve this kind of life, but these fantasies were just that, fantasies.