#Lex maybe stop smoking sativas when you're supposed to be napping for work

[punkrockisafulltimejob]

Outside used to be my sanctuary. I would spend hours upon hours outside, reading and listening to music on my ancient USB flash drive and whatever crappy pair of dollar store earbuds I owned at the time. I devoured books like they were the only thing keeping me alive. I guess they were. I remember long days on the old porch swing. It was a fabric and metal thing, bought cheap from Walmart after the summer season was over. The cushion was rotted out from being left in the rain so many times, and the thing squeaked every time it moved. But it was my place. I'd bring my pillow off my bed and lay out there until the sun went down and it got too dark to read. It was the only place I wasn't bothered.

Then outside wasn't accessible anymore. I was getting older, and my responsibilities outnumbered my age. I would leave for school before the sun rose, which was so horribly painful. I couldn't see the sun when I needed her. When I came home the sun was there waiting for me, but I was forced inside. I was fifteen and taking care of my three younger siblings, cooking dinner, doing the laundry, helping everyone with homework before doing my own. Never a thank you, never a please, just take care of this for me so I can go to work. My mother slept the days so she could work the nights. My father laid in bed, only yelling out to us when we were getting to be too loud. He never mediated, he never separated us. Just screamed at us to stop. Stop what? Existing as children in a house with too many rules, too little parenting.

Days and days and days of taking care of everyone else. I was the oldest, so of course I was the one to step up. Or I supposed get yanked up the stairs from the basement into the kitchen, the living room, the rooms of my siblings, caring for all the little things. But god forbid I miss the big things. The trash was overflowing and it didn't get taken out. The dishwasher had pinged long ago that it needed to be emptied, the dryer has buzzed and the pot of water was overflowing. Why hadn't I attended to any of that yet? Because Silas was sobbing over math homework, Breanna was holed up in her room, Skylar was outside running around with the neighborhood kids.

The end of the day would come, and I would finally be in my room, the only place left that I could be myself. No door, just a curtain separating my space from the rest of the basement. So easy for sound to get through. So easy to hear and be heard everywhere, not a shred of privacy. I had my furniture, my clothes, little of which I had chosen for myself. The only say I had in my room was the shelves of books. Books upon books, taking up space, each a portal to a world where I could be free. As many as I had, as many I read, it was never enough to pull me away. Every so often, a yell would carry from the kitchen to my room, reminding me once more that there were things that needed to be done, chores and siblings and god knows what else I'm forgetting because I've longed for it to go away. Never ending.

It went from a book a week to a book a month, and eventually, a year to finish a trilogy. Reading my solace, my only peace, had left me. I didn't have time for that which I loved. I barely had time for me. I was working until I slept, drifting off on textbooks and papers because I was struggling so hard to keep up with everything else that something had to give. The little Dutch boy with his fingers in the dam had nothing on me. I was losing all sense of myself. Who am I if not a caregiver, a mediator, a crying shoulder and a pillar, nothing short of a miracle worker?

A victim of circumstance, a casualty of chance. Everything I ever loved ripped away from me. My room filled with water every time it rained, taking with it so many of those otherworldly portals that were all I had to call mine. The water receded and the trash bags returned, marking the next cycle of death, but no rebirth. Some things can never be replaced. Especially not when there was never enough money for the most basic of things. I looked forward to annual library purges, tag sales and boxes of "free, please take" books. Babysitting money went as far as I could stretch it, scouring for any title that matched my needs. New worlds to explore, familiar ones to revisit, if it sounded good I bought it. Stacks of books higher than my arms could carry, always rounded down by the librarians who knew me, letting me add a few more for free, because it makes no sense only taking the first half of a series. How long before the floodwaters took them too?

I long to display my books the way they deserve. Built in bookshelves around the fireplace, shelves a dark stained wood, the bricks a deep crimson, filled with words that carry you away to a world where you're free. There for any and all to take and read, at any time of day or night. It's never to early to get lost in a book, nor too late to fall deeper under their spells. Books shown care and tenderness and love, by showing their wear. Cracked spines and ripped pages and frayed bookmark ribbons and faded covers, everything proving that these books have been read, loved, and appreciated, innumerable times. Books that aren't just mine, but mine to share. To never again get mildewed in cold rising waters, to never again be thrown haphazardly in a plastic bag bound for the dump. To always be just within reach of any pair of hands, old and young. To be read over and over and over again...

Ten years later, I can see the sun again. She's there when I need her, but gives way to the clouds gathering above. The rain graces my face, reminding me again that I chose to be alive, that I chose myself for once. That I can finally feel at peace.