There wasn’t much to pack as I left my childhood home forever. My room had been mostly emptied when I’d first moved out, taking anything I didn’t want stolen. It made the final clear out much easier now.  

It was far from the first time I had packed up all my belongings, even if just to see that it all fit in my suitcases. I had always been picky with what I kept and what I got rid of, knowing I couldn’t take all of it with me. My mother used to call me an anti-hoarder, unsentimental, throwing away her meaningless gifts the moment she turned her head.  

This was, of course, an outrageously false assessment. My mother didn’t know what I kept hidden away in the deepest part of my closet. She didn’t know where I hid my money, or where I kept my journals, written in my well-developed secret language. She couldn’t invade what she couldn’t see, so in the dark corners of my room, I hoarded my most precious possessions.  

Still, there were some things I couldn’t justify bringing along, knowing they were more likely to break or get lost with the chaos of college life. Back in that first semester, I still came back home, grabbing a few spare things whenever the need came up. I hadn’t known how I would live without her, a child still reaching for their mother in a crowd of unfamiliar faces. But my own mother’s face had grown unfamiliar, a mere shadow of who I thought she was.  

Jordan, my college roommate, was with me even when the rest of the house was empty, looking over old recipes to steal before they were lost forever. I took pictures of what I could and wrote down the names of the books which held too many recipes to count. I would save them, making sure that even this cursed family would have something to pass down to its next generations.  

And I had always been like this. My mom had tried to cut ties with my dad’s side after he passed, but I kept those relationships tightly bound around my finger. I visited my grandma whenever I could all the way until her death, cherishing the stories she told, now only existing in the corners of my mind. I kept every artifact she gave me, stowed away in the treasure chest which even now I emptied out, ready to haul to the storage unit.  

“You okay?” Jordan asked, concern written over their face. I knew I was acting too happy at the prospect, gathering everything I had saved until I could finally, finally leave. I had done so much to preserve all this, to preserve myself. My mother couldn’t take anything more from me.  

“Yeah,” I responded, though my feelings were indeed much more complicated than that. “I’m glad to be leaving. I don’t want any more reason to come back here. Though I guess I’m still upset. Not at leaving this, but at the fact that I have to.”  

I had spent many years in therapy by now, and everyone had always come to this same conclusion. I should leave. I should cut my mother out of my life. I should do anything I could to get out of there. They didn’t understand how hard that was. They didn’t understand what it was like to live as a disabled person, who up until this very year, was never healthy enough to work. They always expect that you can care for yourself, and if you don’t, you’re just being “lazy.” It was like my umbilical cord had not yet been cut, that my mother pulled me closer and closer into her womb, grinning each time she yanked too hard.  

But now it was cut; I had the scissors. I would never see her again.  

As Jordan and I drove past the gate into the rows of storage units, I looked over my shoulder at all the stuff we had pushed in their car. A table and chairs were stacked on top of each other, extra bedding and sheets crammed into boxes, and all the treasures I had kept from my grandma, the keepsakes from old friends, the journals documenting my childhood adventures. I had always promised myself I would one day have someone to share this with. One day, someone would see me for who I was, they would know my history, and they would love me not despite it, but because it was part of me.  

Even when I was depressed and lonely, lying sick in my bed from disorders no doctor could name, I looked to the future where I would one day write this, never believing it would come. I thought the days would never end, watching as the sun rose, then set, marking each wretched day that passed. Even now, when I see myself for who I once was, I wonder how I made it. I see myself as a college freshman, scheming, latching onto any semblance of friendship I could form. How did I support myself? How do I stand here now, and see something beyond finishing my degree? Am I still the same person if everything about me has changed?  

I’m still figuring out who I am without the abuse. All I have ever been is a survivor, never allowed a deeper identity. How long have I been afraid to call my own name and see who emerges? Like a patch of grass beneath the melted snow, I am whole and new, despite always hiding underneath. I can breathe, I’m alive, I can see the other side.  

The office of the storage unit was closed when we pulled into the parking lot. I sat with Jordan and spoke about our classes, trying to distract ourselves as we waited for the worker to arrive. We checked the website again and again, sure they should be open.  

It was fine, I thought to myself. If all else failed, we could bring the stuff back to our apartment. It would congest our common area for now, but we could always come back after the weekend.  

I pulled out my phone, looking back at the email they had sent me regarding my move in day. There was a singular phone number written at the bottom of the message, a call center we could reach if we needed extra assistance. I called as we waited in the parking lot, the sun shining in through the windows of that unusually hot October afternoon. So all Octobers had grown as of late. Hot and unusual.  

I waited as it rang, looking over at Jordan as we waited in the boiling car. How many problems I had pulled them through lately. Even a few years ago, I would have had no one to call in such a situation as this, and here they were, happily suffering with me through unfamiliar territory.  

At last, a posh voice answered me from the other end. I explained my situation, that I was unsure where my unit was, or how I could get in. I didn’t have anywhere to pick up my key, though if we didn’t get this done today, who knew when we would?  

Jordan and I drove through the rows of units as the nice lady reassured us on the phone. She explained that our key would be inside the unit, and that we would be able to open it from the outside without much trouble.  

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” she exclaimed as we reached our destination at last. I couldn’t help but smile at her excitement, though I couldn’t really tell what I was feeling. Is it possible to feel all emotions at once? With an overwhelming sense of stress and anxiety accompanying it for good measure?  

I mumbled my thanks to the woman on the phone, clicking the button to hang up. I looked up at the unit we had stopped at, the green roll up door towering overhead. I’m sure Jordan must have asked if I needed help, but I probably brushed them off. But as I opened the car door, finding my footing on the gravel below, I left my body and was transported to another world.  

Let’s pause. I’m aware that leaving my body isn’t exactly the most truthful way to express this account, but I ask you to suspend your disbelief for just a moment. When you have PTSD, time and space seem to shift beneath you. You must never assume your senses can be trusted, that your eyes cannot lie. As you hold my hand and see these events as I remember them, I only ask that you take this detail into consideration.  

So, under the blaring sun, through the buzz of cicadas, a man and his daughter walked hand in hand down a pathway of crumbling concrete. From the spot where his silver Sunfire was parked, crowds of dandelions split through the cracks, revealing their sunny faces to the sky. The man and daughter approached a nearby storage unit where their own treasures lay in gathering dust. The father was a hoarder, much to the chagrin of his wife. She often wondered how the homeless man she had married could have so much stuff, enough that it overpowered her own belongings. Now the basement of her three bedroom townhouse was flooded with the tools of an amateur handyman, the tarps laid down by a painter, and the beginnings of projects that would never be finished.  

I blinked, aware again of my own hands and feet. The man and daughter were still in front of me, walking into the feverish heat between concrete and sun. The cicadas sang in the back of my mind, lulling me further into the vision, and when I looked back to where I’d left Jordan, their car had all but disappeared, leaving only the jagged homebound road.  

I whipped my head back to the man and daughter who were now disappearing into the distance, their voices echoing amidst the unit rows. I reached out my hand, my feet stumbling after them before I could think to command them. Their words grew clearer as I grew closer, my father’s gruff midwestern accent and my own broken English mixed in with spare German phrases.  

“I want not today zu school gehen,” I made out as I grew closer, my chest heaving as the vision continued to swallow me. I caught a flash of my counterpart’s white-blonde hair, my little face scrunched up in utter dissatisfaction.  

“You can’t come to work with me, Anja,” my father said, looking down at his daughter, her fingers still tight in his grasp. “There would be nothing for you to do.”  

I watched as this phantom, this younger version of me, pulled her hand from his, waving her fingers up at him in a great spectacle. “I brauche no toys! I habe meinen fingers.” She smiled up at him, forming shadow puppets with her hands against the door of their unit. I watched as a little wolf took its form from the shadows, howling at some nonexistent moon.  

My father unlatched the lock of his unit, pulling up the door until the image of the wolf disappeared into the darkness beyond.  

I sighed, slumping against the wall. I had always hated going to school. I always thought I knew how to make friends — the neighbor kids had been friendly enough, if not a little rough at times. Still, they would talk to me. At preschool, no matter how hard I tried to engage, the other kids would just give me a confused look whenever I tried to speak. It wasn’t until much later that I realized how hard it was for them to understand me. By this time, I could understand both English and German fluently, but speaking one without the other proved much more difficult.  

As my father pulled out whatever painting supplies he needed for the rest of the day, my younger version crept in between the junk on the ground, staring awestruck at the materials he kept here.  

“Donnerwetter,” she breathed. “Could we live in here, Daddy?”  

My father chuckled to himself, guiding my younger hands away from something sharp. “I always thought about it, Anja.”  

I chuckled too, looking away from the scene. I had seen it for myself in the terms and conditions when I’d signed up for my own unit, those big bold letters that read DO NOT SLEEP HERE. It was funny; it only cost about forty dollars to reserve one of these units, but hundreds, or thousands for an apartment just as unsanitary. So, was it really the space they were renting? Or the power over someone’s resources? Surely it wasn’t safe, but what else was someone to do when they were homeless like my father? Marry into a housed family just to live as unhappily as if they were on the streets?  

After my dad had moved in with my mom, he took on most of the responsibilities of the house. My mom already had two kids from her previous marriage, but she had always seen children as some sort of accessory, god forbid actual human beings. Instead of cooking, cleaning, and raising us kids, my mom ran her translation business out of our home. I found out later that she didn’t even do it all herself, but paid one of my sisters to help her edit her English afterwards. It was just another example of her using other people to her own gain, never giving them the credit they deserved.  

But if this was when I thought it was, my mom wasn’t even in my life right now. The only time I ever went to school was when my mom was in the psych ward after she lost custody of us kids. On those rare weeks when she was feeling well enough to stay in her own distant apartment, we would visit her for weekend taco nights. I found it strange that they could expect her to feel better when she was locked away in some far off room, sparsely furnished, not allowed to see her own family. I remember all the get well cards mailed to our house, just for my brother and I to open them in her absence. It was just me, my dad, and my brother back home, and if I was honest with myself, that’s probably how it should have stayed. If she had never gotten custody back, I would never have been in this situation now.  

When I was about ten-years-old, my grandma offered to let me live with her. That was about a year after my dad died, when I told her how little there was to eat at home. We couldn’t do much homeschooling while my mom was sick, but she still refused to let us go to public school. I couldn’t quite understand the hurt that permeated my grandma’s eyes back then. I didn’t understand why such inaccess broke her heart, or why she thought I needed friends. I didn’t understand how safe I could have felt with the security of daily meals and the promise of a bed not ridden with bugs. It was beyond the reach of my imagination.  

Everything would be different if only I had listened to her. If only I had known what qualified as abuse and neglect, I could have gone out and changed things. There are a few magic words that will make the government intervene, but I didn’t speak their language. Even if I had been allowed to go to school, this was something a counselor could have recognized. Perhaps my mom knew this all along, always threatening me with the dangers of foster care, reminding me how lucky I was to still be living with her.  

But I wasn’t living with her. And it wasn’t because she was hospitalized or because her crimes had been recognized. It was because through all these years, I had managed to save myself. I had saved my belongings, out of reach from my family. I had saved money in secret, keeping what I had left from my dad and grandma’s funeral funds. I had kept it all hidden away, hoarding like my father, knowing I would someday need it again. After that first semester I had escaped, after the countless jobs I held, no matter the burden on my body, I had made it out alive.  

And I was no longer alone. As my father and my younger self faded from my vision, I turned back to find my friend still waiting in the car behind me. All the stuff we had packed up, carried out of my house like a funeral procession, still laid there in boxes, protected and preserved. It would sit in the storage unit now, but one day, I would have a space, an apartment maybe, where I could finally display my treasures.  

And as the memories melted away, no longer holding me like a cage, I could see the rest of my life unfolding before me too. The road that led from the storage unit seemed to stretch on forever, the end too far away to see by the naked eye. I had plenty of time here, and that no longer frightened me. From now on, I promised myself, I wouldn’t hold myself back by what couldn’t be changed. Things could go wrong, I knew too well. All my world could fall apart in mere minutes with just one phone call, one lay off, one shitty person.  

But what if everything goes right? What if each experience will give me a new perspective, a new treasure to add to my collection? I love the people I have in my life, in a way I never thought I was capable of. If I can hold onto that tenderness, if I can carry it throughout the rest of my life, what does it matter what obstacles stand in the way?  

And with that thought still in my mind, I opened the latch to my storage unit, empty and dark, soon to be filled with things upon things. As I pushed the steel door upwards, shaking a bit under its weight, I turned back to where Jordan was waiting in their car. They pumped the air with their fist, a smile breaking across their face. I grinned back, heading to the trunk to get my stuff.