Seeking Small Spaces for the End of the World
When you’re small and unsure of the world around you, the inside of your bedroom closet is the most magical place on earth. Move over Disney Land; this mothball-smelling wardrobe is all I’ll ever need. I am ten years old, and the sound of drunken rambling echoes through our doublewide trailer. Dad’s talking about how amazing of a drilling consultant he is or how much money he made on his last job. He’s boasting to his friends about how clever his children are while we, his children, hole up in our bedrooms because we don’t want to deal with the drunken rambling.
When you are the child of an alcoholic, you learn how to avoid like a pro. Sometimes, like in my case, avoidance becomes second nature, and it will take many years of therapy and self-study in the mental health arena to unlearn this behaviour. A therapist and a pile of self-help books are far in my future, though. Right now, as I sit in my closet, drawing pictures of fat little aliens, I think about how I could live in this place forever.
The closet itself is big for a mobile home’s bedroom. Its structure is strange as well. The bottom of the closet begins about two feet off the floor, those two feet being occupied with the same panel wall boards as the rest of my room. There are two sliding doors that, miracle of miracles, still run smoothly on their top and bottom runners, and the entire thing is about 4 feet wide.
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