At the end of 7th grade, my mother decided we were moving to Oregon, in a tiny cultural city 15 minutes from the coast.

We were going to live in a hostel. A tiny hostel. We had the second biggest room period, with a room big enough for three beds and a t.v. We also had a luxury: a bathroom. We shared a community kitchen, and we frequently had no car.

This was during the time when my mother was “Passing Tumours”. She would kick us out of the room so she could scream or give herself coffee enema’s, and we would listen to music in the lobby, smiling like angels for the rest of the people who walked by us.

We went to school on the coast, so every morning we ran out the door happily at 6:15 a.m. I loved going to school, I don’t remember missing a single day. It was my only chance to get away, I had real friends, and I was getting a 4. again. But i’ll rave about school later.

This was the period where I realized that there was something not perfectly fine with my behavoir. I didn’t run around at all hours of the night like Alex, but I did other things. Unfortunetly, I soon began to think of these things as being ok because my friend Merrit talked about suicidal thoughts all the time, and how he’d do it. And the girls at camp talked about cutting whenever the counselors were gone, and how they did it, so in my eyes everything I did was justified.

So whenever my mother told me to “Get the fuck out you bitch!” I would go hide in the parks or the Rose Garden, and make plans to run away while scratching myself with whatever I had at hand.

However, I had someone who knew me better than anyone else. Xander.

He could find me no matter where I hid, and I always made a point to go somnewhere I never went with him, but magically he’d always show up and drag me home.

Where I would listen to her moan about how it felt like she was pushing a baby out of her uterus and the idiot docctors must have had bad equipment, or else they were lying to her, because none of their pelvic exams or ultrasounds came up with any tumours.

Then she’d have Xander ask saint germain about the tumour, and she’d have him ask about whether or not our hostel manager had a crush on her. Then she’d ask about her unborn son. (Anderson. The perfect child who didn’t actually exist)

When we left it was because the Hostel manager had let us down by leading my mother on. He had ‘betrayed’ all three of us, and we all felt angry and sad and it was ok to hate him.

In all actuality, he had never led my mother on, he was a decent guy, I never felt betrayed and I never hated him, even though it infuriated my mother that I didn’t.