The only things a family’s mother cared about was grocery shopping and watching people die on TV. Anything that got in the way of that was a problem.

One of her daughters can drive, and every Saturday and Sunday, she’d drive the whole family to Stop & Shop, Walmart, Target, Costco, another Costco, another Target, an international market, another international market, a Chinese market, an Indian market, Aldi, Lidl, BJ’s Wholesale, and Sam’s Club. These grueling journeys would last 15 hours.

Bringing in the groceries and trying to fill an already overfilled refrigerator with duct tape from last week’s journey took several hours. On Sundays we had to take out trash, which included old meat and produce that family’s mother over-overbought for herself and let rot while blaming the same people she vilified for eating some of. Taking out trash was always a five hour slog, but on Sunday it was a longer slog.

By the time the trash is out and that family’s mother’s groceries are in the fridge and freezer, everyone would need to rush to get ready to go to school or work. I always had to skip a shower on Mondays as me washing myself was seen as a waste of resources and time by everyone in that family as I don’t count as a real human being.

And yes, Monday NIGHT. Not afternoon, night. There were dogs that family’s mother brought home and neglected and skimped out on everything for so she could buy more groceries and watch more rich people pretend to die. We would need to walk them, not in the afternoon, but at night, and we were not allowed to sleep before walking them. She found it funny and would come up with some other excuse for why we needed to wait to sleep.

Same thing happened on Wednesdays but without the grocery shopping. Can’t sleep before walking the dogs or taking out the trash, the latter being started at 1AM and taken out at 6AM.

Childhood is prison. Literally it’s being raised to be clean and healthy, then being bullied and humiliated for doing the right things, then being punished and reprimanded for not doing the thing you were literally bullied and humiliated for doing. Fuck childhood.

I should add that my life was sitting on a short bus for 2 hours, then sitting in the same desk for 7 hours straight, then sitting on the short bus for 2.5 hours to go isolate myself from my original bullies and their mother.