It’s a blur. Flashes of people, of places. We’re living in a tiny camper that is sitting in the driveway of one of my parents friends, yet not friends. My mother hates the lady who lives here. I don’t understand. They used to be friends. There is no place to escape. I play with their kids. We are friends, kind of. It feels uncomfortable. There is no belonging. Then the anger gets worse and we move, again.
   It’s an apartment. I am fascinated that people live in places that weren’t homes. At first it was an adventure. There was space, there was outside. Outside consisted of mounds of rocky dirt left over from the construction. There were no trees, no grass. But, it was outside and I didn’t feel like I was invading someone else’s outside. It was summer and it was hot out on the dry, lumpy dirt. I wasn’t allowed to take my toys outside. Not that I had many. Most had disappeared into boxes that were taken away somewhere. I had no friends, real or imaginary. I just sat and played in the dirt. I looked for bugs, dug up nails and chunks of concrete and stacked them in neat little piles. I looked across the field at the houses behind us, at their fences sheltering their yards. The feeling of resignation bubbled up and I looked back down at the dirt filtering between my fingers.
Summer was over and it was time to start school. I loved school. I was good at school. I liked the organized repetition, the predictability. There was always a steady flow to things, very rarely were there jarring incidents that left you feeling shaky, or so I thought. Day one is a nightmare. I am stuck in not only the wrong class, but also the wrong grade. I feel like the elephant in the room. The class is staring at me while the teacher tries to figure out where I belong. In my mind, I belong nowhere. At some point they find me a home but I’m still that same elephant, only now in a different room. I can hear the snickering of the other kids. I want to be invisible, not a lumbering elephant. Class begins and so does the expected regiment: reading, math, spelling, and so forth. Lunch comes and I hide in the corner. Don’t make eye contact. It’s really a non-issue because nobody is looking at you. Two weeks go by and I’m settling in to my self-segregated routine. I am invisible. Again, or so I thought. I’m standing off to the side of the monkey bars just taking up space. I feel hands grab my arms. They pull at me and I hear laughing. I look around and there are several girls standing behind me, two of which have my arms in a vice grip. I have no idea what the hell is going on but it feels like ice water is running through my veins. It doesn’t get much more cliche’ then to say I spy their girl gang leader. She moves out from among them and circles around to face me. She just stands in front of me with a smile on her face that makes me want to run. Then it happens, she punches me in the stomach, knocking the wind out of me. I start to double over but her henchmen yank me back up and before I can take a breath she punches me again. Things start to go hazy. I hear laughing. I feel the hands let go, and I feel her hand on my chest. She shoves me and I fall on my ass. She puts her face up to mine and smiles, then walks off. I have no idea who this girl is or why this is happening. I lay curled up on the ground trying to suck in some air. I waver between pain and floating. Finally, the pain wins as I breath in enough oxygen before I can pass out. My stomach is cramping and my lungs are burning. I want to die. I want to just turn to dust and float away. The recess bell rings. I force myself to move. I don’t want to get in trouble for coming in late. I never, ever want to get in trouble. I know the rules of punishment. I know how it works and I know how it’s broken because I learned much earlier then this that sometimes you got punished for no reason. Today it was just another Tuesday.
   We only live in this apartment for a few months, while my parents are building the house that they already hate. We spend hours at the house painting and staining and fighting. The entire house is saturated with the anger that is being poured into every inch of it. It was all a mistake. We should never have moved. We can’t afford this. Fingers pointing in every direction throwing fault and blame. It’s too late though. It’s our house and it has claimed it’s first victims. This is where the ending begins.
Years later, I go back to my first and only real home. I sit in my car and I look at this small, somewhat rundown house. It’s now orange and white, not blue and white. I looks all off, like the buildings in Whoville. The front yard is a little ratty looking. The two trees my dad planted are adults and unrecognizable. But it’s the backyard that I came to see. I’m scared to look. If the front yard is any indication of the condition of the backyard, it’s not going to be good. That was the day that I learned you can never really go back home, and that trying can sometimes create nightmares.
   The backyard fronted up against an alley. I drive my car part way down the alley and park it, walking the rest of the way, taking in the dilapidated fence and garage. As I move past the garage I look up over the fence and something feels off. I stand, staring at the sky trying to figure out what I was seeing before it hits me. It was what I wasn’t seeing that floored me. The tree, the giant apple tree that towered over the entire backyard was gone. I feel like I had that day back in school when I had been gut punched. My heart starts to race. In my mind the words ‘please God no” play over and over. No longer feeling nervous that I will get caught spying I walk over and look between a gap in the fence. I feel dizzy and sick and angry and sad and a million and one other feelings all at once. I am looking at scorched earth. Every single tree is gone. Not a single lilac bush still stands. The grass is no longer grass, it is just yellow, scraggly weeds. It’s like someone had just razed the entire backyard. My magical forest was a wasteland. I look away and look again. I can’t stop looking. My brain duels between memory and reality. In that moment I feel like that desolate backyard. Dead, dried up, obliterated. This was the visual equivalent to what my life had become since moving away. I abandoned my sanctuary and it abandoned me. Too many years of neglect, of loneliness. Not nearly enough love or nurturing. It starved as I starved. I feel hollow. I walk back to my car and just sit in the heat staring ahead, seeing nothing but images flashing back and forth. Cherry blossoms and dirt, green grass and yellow weeds, Barbie’s and nails. The tears finally come and won’t stop. Ever. They flow for years and will until the day I die. A part of me died that day I was dragged out of my home, and parts of me have been dying off every since, as if I had mental leprosy. This was just one more chunk of dead flesh to fall away. I was just hardpan dirt now. I started my car and drove away.