Why I Hate Garages

We’re a house of smokers here and when it rains, as it’s been doing every day, we smoke in the garage. Used to be, when the sun was shining and I’d smoke outside on the patio, I’d take my time, puffing right down to the filter. I’ve been noticing lately that I get fidgety now after half a cig. I chalked it up to the coldness of the garage, mingled with its depressing ambiance. (Guess we should have had that garage sale this summer after all.)

The other day, determined to track down the source of my fidgets, I realized that being in the garage is triggering for me. I don’t like that word triggering—don’t like the implication that anything which taps into memories of my childhood abuse will make me fall to pieces. It’s a word that all multiples understand, so I’ll let it stand.

Now, the next obvious step is to determine just why the garage would be triggering. Ah, ok. Don’t have to give that much thought. It’s where my stepdad took me sometimes, in my sleep, for his perverted pleasure. It’s where my mom used to make us kids play on rainy days (I was the eldest of 6, so you can imagine how much fun this was for me) to keep us out of his hair. For hours we were stuck in that cold garage, trying to entertain ourselves without beating each other up, or doing anything which would incur his wrath.

I remember skating around in circles on my metal skates, the air whooshing cold around me. My hands always felt like ice cubes, and my cheeks stung with the cold. I imagine the garage wasn’t really much warmer than outside would have been. Well, so that’s another mystery solved, the mystery of Why I Hate Garages. I don’t know that figuring this out will be of any help, but I do so hate mysteries. Especially when it concerns why I behave the way I do. If I’m going to be weird about some things, I’d at least like to know the source of that weirdness.

(I don’t feel so cuckoo if I understand the reason for my feelings.)