after awhile all the houses start to look the same

-Polinder Rd
-Halverstick Rd
-Glenning St
-Central Rd
-[Glenning St]
-West Mayfield
-Ellis Pl
-Bradley Rd
-Evergreen Way
-[Central Rd]
-Legoe Ave
-Grover St
-[Glenning St]
-Allison Way
-Tacoma Ave South
-South G St
-North L St
-Lawson Rd
-[Allison Way]
-Dayton St
-[Allison Way]
-Canterbury Ct

I have moved 18 times in the last eight years. In my life I have lived in 2 workers' tenements, 1 youth hostel, 1 basement, 2 apartment buildings, and 11 houses. But all I've ever wanted was a home.

Really, mom and dad? Workers' tenements, and then a falling-down rental house, that was the best you could do for us? Really? That is PATHETIC. I am disgusted, looking back as an adult; disgusted that you did not try harder, that you were content to squat in squalor and never reach for more, even for the sake of your children. Lazy, incompetent, selfish... it doesn't matter why. It is what it is. It is pathetic. And I will do better for my family, despite you.

It makes so much more sense, now. That they would take that house and move us there, away from my grandparents, away from everyone. Out in the country, no neighbors to poke their noses into our business. No one to ask questions. That they would never request repairs from the landlords, never allow unexpected guests. Never take us to the doctor unles we were on the brink of death, hardly concious, our bones exposed. Wouldn't get me a driver's liscence or a car. We were an island. Alcatraz in a sea of grass and hay.

The house was on the corner of Central Road. And it felt central, there; it felt like the center of everything. Our secrets held us -- a force like gravity, only darker, stronger -- and the rest of the world spun out around us like a glittering galaxy, full of promise, just beyond my reach.