When I was a teenager, I just wanted to get away from everyone in my family.
I legitimately couldn’t stand being in the same household as my mom, my brothers, or my sisters.
Everyone was so full of chaos and drama, and I simply wanted to be left alone to gossip with my friends and play with makeup. It felt like I could never get peace and quiet in the house, especially when my brothers and sisters were continually bursting into my room and harassing me. I tried locking the door and even barricaded myself inside, but nothing would stop my younger siblings from breaking in and bothering me endlessly. Eventually, I talked to my mom and convinced her to let me move into the basement. At the time, this was paradise. I moved into the basement in the dead of summer, when the outdoor heat and humidity was unbearable on a daily basis. My mom was running the central cooling system every day, but she never utilized the air conditioner enough to fully cool down the house. The basement, on the other hand, was inherently cool and moist from being underground. All summer long, I slept like a queen in the continually cold conditions. I thought I had solved all my living problems… that was, until winter emerged. Suddenly, my basement paradise was not so comfortable. The cold air was unbearable and I couldn’t increase the air temperature even with a dozen electric space heaters. I shivered every day, and honestly worried about hypothermia as night settled in. After a month of cold torture, I begrudgingly moved back upstairs to be tormented by my younger siblings until the summer heat returned again.
