Member-only story
What Lockdown?
It’s just my life…
I may seem to be an extrovert but I’ve always stayed to myself for the most part.
When I was younger, I was the fat girl in the corner with her nose in a book. Books were a retreat from a physically abusive, shaming father and a silent mother. Escape from my sister who was younger, thin, and pretty.
I would pretend that my bed was a magic carpet and it could take me anywhere I wanted to go — what I wanted was out of that small four room house in Maryland. My bed would be piled with books.
I didn’t have the happiest of childhoods, bullied, teased, and shamed because of my weight. In books I could be anyone — from Rebecca to the Wicked Queen. I usually took the villainess role. Stronger female role models better than the prissy girl lying in a glass coffin — glass because she was sooo pretty — waiting for some stranger to kiss her.
I didn’t want to share the small bedroom with my sister. I didn’t want to be ashamed of how I looked. I didn’t want to stay awake at night, wondering when my father would be coming home from his time out drinking. Twenty years later, I found myself doing the same thing, lying awake, but listening for the sound of my husband’s car in the early morning.
Books were my escape and then writing became an escape and continued through many years of being…
