Unfortunate Predicaments.

Throughout my life, I have always been incredibly envious of those with opportunities greater than mine. I’ve often stood quiet while my blood boiled at the erupting sound of a privileged friend complaining about some sort of in minor imperfection in their. Why couldn’t they just be grateful? After all, I’d trade them predicaments in less than a second if offered. The perpetrator of my frequent childhood moves and school transfers is my mother. She stands 5’6 tall with long, dark, medusa-like hair. She has a small, frail figure and is overridden with an anxiety and panic disorder. These disorders cause her to always fear being “stuck” in one spot. Consequently, I’ve been robbed of a childhood. Picking up my life and changing everything at the drop of a dime for her. It is this burden that has shackled me to confinement; a cell of such small and humiliating potential.

I knew my mother’s disorder was swallowing our family whole when she moved us from our somewhat nice home, into a dingy Abbotsford motel a block from the hospital. This was so “just in case” something happened to her, she was close to help. This put her mind at ease temporarily, but that winter she ended up being hospitalized for over a month. She was then transferred into a mental health facility for another. This left myself, my amputee stepfather, our dog and bird in the one bedroom motel room. The motel was the filthiest, most embarrassing scum I’ve ever been subjected to. The buildings exterior looked like a rainbow had violently thrown up on the walls and the other guests that stayed there made the situation no better. I wasn’t able to make it to the room without being asked if I knew where to get some “side” (otherwise known as meth). The motel was grungy and had a displeasing pungent odour. The room was small, but had two double beds and a boxy television that let off an incredibly piercing and annoying ring all hours of the night. It was like constantly having tinnitus and it drove me near insane. There was no laundry, so I had no other choice but to wash my clothes in the bathroom tub and hang them on the shower curtain to dry overnight. I left that motel at 7:15 every morning of that grade 10 semester. I took 2 busses across town to school, immediately went to work afterwards and didn’t get back until almost 11 p.m. I was gone for nearly 16 hours per day and although I was exhausted, it was a relief to be out of there. It was… quite literally, a breath of fresh air.

The motel, though definitely not somewhere I’d willingly go again, taught me to count my blessings one by one. To be thankful for everything that I do have because your situation could always be worse. That someone, somewhere out there is struggling more than you and are forced into unfortunate predicaments that they have no control over. It is these experiences that are most valuable because they motivate you to do better for yourself. To strive for more than a life in a filthy motel. Checking out of the Alpine Inn was like finally being granted parole after serving a lengthy jail sentence.