Disrupt the Balance

I was three years old. When I first started realising things were different. I didn't even know other children or hardly anyone besides my parents and grandparents. I woke up and all the furniture was gone. I was sleeping on the floor. I can't remember now if I was sore from having been there or not.

All I know is I was confused.

I learned from a very early age where my place in the world was. I couldn't tip the balance by asking too many questions or behaving inappropriately. So I never asked what happened that day. With a certainty, I can say now that not everything was gone. But when you wake in a room that was once filled with stuff and there's nothing there, even as a child, you wonder what's amiss.

It was pawned... And like so many other times in my life, it was the things that I had grown accustomed to. And taken for granted.

I still don't know if it was only for booze money or a need to pay bills because the booze had taken too much money. Or if there were other things involved like drugs. I never asked. I probably never will.

And that was only the beginning...

I'd get money for birthdays. I don't remember spending it. I loved to save. I wanted to save for specific things. Nothing I can think of now, though. I just remember liking to know the feeling of having cash in some form. I would never have it long, though. Not once did I spend my own money until I got my own job.

It's a funny thing, though. I used to find myself asking for a book and getting it. I suppose at the time it was a matter of, "I owe her this one thing." But as I think about it, I didn't even actively start doing that until I was a preteen. Disrupting the balance, you see?

Even as I type this, I feel the urge to just delete it. Speaking of such things was certainly a disruption, and it wasn't until my senior year of high school that I spoke anything of it. I didn't realise that most people already knew what I thought I was hiding. Funny thing, life. The things you think are a certainty aren't always such.

This is only a taste. And it's not even the worst part. And funnily enough, I still don't think I had it bad off. But from time to time, the memories come rushing back. For the time being, I'll document what I can. It might cure my overwhelming writer's block...