Eight Dollars
I know exactly where it started.
I wrapped myself in the drapes I took off the windows and tried to sleep.
Someone was kind enough to buy me some NyQuil the next day.
It knocked me out.
I was in so much pain.
My tonsils were so swollen they were touching.
The night after that my friend threw a party at the house. I was still really sick so I drank a bunch of NyQuil, wrapped up in the drapes and lay there on the floor while the party went on around me.
Great friends.
About a year before I ran away my mother had given my bedroom to a couple of gay men that were in the cult. There was no discussion. I was just told I’d be sleeping in the living room from now on. I was 15. I was working 45 hours a week and going to high school. I didn’t have time to argue. I knew it wouldn’t help. I just gave every dime I made to my mom and Evelyn and slept on a futon in the living room.
When I finally ran away I didn’t have that thing people have where they become homesick or miss their parents. I never had it. Never. Not then. Not decades later.
A few days later I was still sick but I was angry. Angry enough to grab my skateboard and ride miles back to her house. I found the spare key and let myself in.
Nobody was home.
I walked through the house. I had no real reason to be there. I went into what used to be my room and saw a bowl of change.
I picked through it and took about eight dollars.
I shouldn’t have.
It wasn’t mine.
But I was young and desperate.
And hungry.
I used it for food.
They didn’t come home. So I took the eight dollars and I left.
My mother found out.
She was ashamed of me.
There was no concern for my wellbeing.
No asking if I was okay.
Just shame.
She did tell me she would call a doctor. Which she did. I skateboarded there the next day. Miles. Still sick. The doctor gave me shots and cleaned out my ears.
Six years later, I found out the bill had never been paid.
It stopped me from getting my first apartment in Hollywood.
I have a sort of PTSD response to stress now.
I know where it started.
When I think about a stressful situation, my body reacts.
I have a Tourette’s-like tick.
I hide it well.
Sometimes I don’t.
I know it worries my wife.
Being punched in the face by Evelyn.
People taking all their clothes off at cult meetings.
The pressure.
The way they attacked people.
Sleeping in the back of a skateboard ramp.
Always being hungry.
Feeling less than everyone around me.
And years later I confronted the people who put me through all of it.
They met the version of me that all of it created.
I would not have wanted to meet him.
I was direct, angry, and cruel.
I was a tool of their own making.
I had become someone I didn’t recognize.
In my early twenties, I found alcohol-fueled rage.
It worked.
Until it didn’t.
— Neon