She hadn’t planned on this being her life. The woman thought this as she biked through town, a trash bag full of clothes slung over one shoulder as she wobbly navigated the curb. The bike wasn’t in the best of shape, and cycling with the load she was carrying made it even more difficult. But the woman was used to the broken cycles.

She was so used to it that she could almost do it without looking anymore.

She was biking back to her side of town, and away from the other where T-bone lived. Everybody called him T-bone, but to her he would always be Tom, the scrawny kid that used to be a few grades behind her at school. But they were all grown up now. A lot of life had happened in between those years. Now T-bone wasn’t scrawny, but wiry muscles strapped around hard bone. And he would slug anyone that called him Tom, and she was no exception. So T-Bone he was.

The woman was biking back to her ‘home’, if one was so inclined to call it that. Sunshine Court, the oldest trailer park in town, could be called a lot of things... but home wasn’t one that came to mind. Row after row of skinny house coffins, that’s what she thought of them. A place to die. 

She had grown up there, the last dilapidated trailer on row 3, with a broken picket fence marking its scant perimeter. Back in her Grandma’s day, the fence looked happier. Everything about the trailer park court looked happier, or so said Granny. Her Granny used to talk a lot about how things used to be. The woman couldn’t know for sure if any of it was true. It had already started to decline a bit when she moved in with her Granny, back in the late ’80s. 

Granny always had her flowers planted by that fence. And even back then, when the woman was young, the other trailers did the same. People took some pride in their little patch of grass and would express their individuality with their lawn decor. But pink flamingos and flowers were a thing of the past now. All the folks that remained were there for lack of anywhere better to go.

As she biked by the start of the trailer park rows, she saw police at Rachel’s house. Rachel was yelling at the officer that he had no right to come in there, despite the fact that strong chemical odors had been leaching from her trailer the last week. Neighbors looked through their window blinds. Some bolder ones stood on their lawns with their cell phones out, ready to catch any action that might ensue. 

Trailer park looky-loos. They were the worst.

The woman could hear children inside the house crying. And briefly, the woman almost felt something about the scene. But only briefly.

She squashed down the feelings with cynical but justified rationality.  Rachel had brought this on herself. Rachel had been sloppy. If you cook where you cook, the law is bound to get called sooner or later. Better to be an operation like Tbone’s. Out in some forgotten patch of woods, down miles of gravel road. And soon as the operation was complete, a little ding would go off in the group message. And everyone would roll in to get their cut, and roll out. 

But Rachel hadn’t done that. Cooking in the same place you live was a desperate mistake--- one that was taking her kids from the acrid smog of her trailer, and into the backseat of a social worker’s car. The kids, who had been removed once the year before, looked dirty and tired. At least they’ll have something to eat tonight besides fumes and pizza rolls, thought the woman. 

Rachel was a Sunshine Court lifer too. Her and Rachel used to be best friends.  Rachel, who had grown up in the same trailer all her life, just like the woman. They both grew up without moms… both products of a single mom who didn’t know how to mom. Both had been taken to live with other relatives. They used to stay up late talking about how alike they were. Practically like sisters.

And for a while, they were as close as that. Rachel’s Aunt was different from the woman’s Granny. Rachel’s Aunt was a cold woman that got mad when she drank. And she drank often. Rachel spent most of the nights over at Granny’s house for sleepovers. Granny never said it, but always understood Rachel needed that safe place to be. She always kept her door open for Rachel; even giving her a key to let herself in whenever she wanted. 

The woman remembered many moments of her childhood with Rachel, when things were simpler... or they didn’t know enough to know that it wasn’t. But a lot of life had happened between then and now, and the woman biked by the scene with only passing feelings she wasn’t sure she even felt anymore. 

As she thought about the people that used to be there, and the ones that had gone (to something better or prison or dead), she automatically turned the corner as she had done probably a million times before. She’d done it so much, she could almost do it without looking.

Except that she did look, in a passive sort of way. She maneuvered around the potholes on her street. She biked past trash on the ground, and stink in the air. She biked past windows in trailers that could no longer be looked out of...either from tinfoil or cardboard covering the panes. She thought to herself how people didn’t really want to look out at what there was to see. 

Not unless it was something to gossip about, that had to do with somebody besides them.

The occasional shout could be heard coming from a road or two over, but not loud enough and long enough for anyone to intervene. People seldom intervened on anyone else’s business, because they were so worried about keeping their own private. No need to attract unnecessary vendettas and have the cops called on your ownself in retaliation. The biggest gossip in the world is a tweaker with a phone. And they all had phones. If you snitched, someone would usually find out, sooner or later. Best to stay out of it all together.

The woman arrived at her trailer box. As she stumbled off the bike and tripped past the broken fence, she noticed a few daffodils popping up. Growing despite the neglect of recent years. The woman had inherited the trailer from her Granny, God rest her soul. The woman paused long enough, staring at the flowers, to begin to feel familiar feelings she knew too well...shame, disappointment, loss. Granny would be ashamed at the state of her yard. She would be ashamed of the state of everything. The woman couldn’t look at one point of her life that wasn’t in ruin. 

It’s not that the woman intentionally set out to ruin all she touched. But at this point of her life, it seemed the inevitable state of things, and she had resigned herself to that fact. She had to if she wanted to keep on going in it. She could navigate her life without looking at it anymore.

But dissociating only works for so long. The feelings always find a way to reappear. It became an increasingly desperate pursuit to not feel anything. To numb it all away. 

And numbness was only a broken bike ride away. 

The woman knew full well she was stuck in perpetual cycles of unhappiness and addiction. She had tried to break the cycles many times already, but her efforts had been in vain. She lacked access to good treatment centers... the kind that required things like oodles of money or insurance. And she had already cycled through numerous court-appointed programs. Those all ended the same as they began. Signatures on paper. Boxes checked. But at the end of the day, week, month...once she made it 6 months… she was still where she now was. On a broken lazy boy recliner that no longer had the footrest or handle attached, digging through an endless bag with things in it, looking for the one thing that would make her forget that she might be feeling something again.

She couldn’t help but feel something when she was in this tomb. To see the versions of herself, over the course of her life, running past her all at once. She could see herself eating breakfast by the leaking bay window with Granny. She could see her getting older, and sneaking out the back window where her bedroom used to be. She could see Granny showing her how to change diapers on her oldest, Sam, that would come almost 1 year to the day after she started sneaking out that window. 

She saw the brief periods of time where she was clean, and maybe a good mom... when she had all 3 of the kids there. For a little while, before Granny passed, they were all happy. Or mostly happy. The woman remembered being around more often then. And how she would bike up to the trailer and hear all manner of commotion and children. Those happy sounds that kids make when they’re wound just a little too tight. Her Granny was real old then, and tired a lot, but she never lost her temper. She was never anything but kind. And there. Always there.

But now she wasn’t. And the kids weren’t. The cold, cramped confines of the trailer were silent. Which was probably for the best. It’s only too bad that they didn’t have a Granny to take care of them like she had. They had the state. Last she knew, they were all somewhere together. The oldest, Sam, he was having troubles at school she had heard at the last team meeting. But they were getting him the services he needed. Good, good, she had said at the meeting, half listening and half hungover from the couple nights before of no sleep. She almost forgot about the meeting, but the foster family had called to remind her.

She hadn’t meant to be like this. Like her own mother, whom she called Lyla if she called her anything at all. Lyla had never been there. She didn’t even know where Lyla was. If she was alive. The woman wasn’t sure if she felt anything about her mother being alive or dead. She had quit feeling anything about Lyla a long time ago. The woman had always said she would be a better mom to her kids. Better than Lyla.

The woman was only 4 or 5, and Lyla would bring her to her drug buddy’s house while she got high. “Stay with Uncle Jasper and Ryan.”, she would say. Except these men weren’t uncles. They weren’t anything but men with evil minds and sneaky eyes. The girl was young, but she could feel those sneaky eyes on her…waiting for their moment. And her mom gave them plenty of moments.

A lot had happened to the girl in the short time Lyla raised her. A lot of life had happened. 

By the time her Granny got custody of her, she was already damaged goods. She tried to forget how damaged. There were many things that she worked the rest of her life to forget. Every day she numbed those parts of herself a little more, a little more; until it was like it never even happened. She wasn’t sure if she even remembered some of the things now. She had spent too long forgetting. 

And a lot of life had happened between her forgetting. She had successfully created new traumas, over and over. New things to forget with the old.

The woman loaded the foil boat with the white crystalline powder. She held the pen tube between her teeth and the lighter under the foil, and in one swift inhale forgot it all again. She leaned back into her broken chair, and sank down into her broken life, without feeling all the overwhelming brokenness of it all. 

She knew this feeling was all a lie. But it was a lie she could live with. At least for a little while longer. Because a lot of life had happened between then and now. She didn’t figure she had too much left in her yet.

And it was with that thought she decided to see how far out she could go. How much numbness she could not feel. She decided to try to forget forever.

Five days later someone finally complained about the smell coming from the trailer. Not like the chemical smell of Rachel’s trailer, but something that was both sweet and sour at the same time. Something that smelled so rotten the code of silence was broken by the nearest neighbor, out of their inability to stand it any longer. They found the woman there, in the broken chair. When the emergency workers wheeled her out in a bag, the neighbors looked through their window blinds. Some sat outside with their phones out, posting the news with #thoughtsandprayers. 

That night someone broke into the trailer to take anything that might be worth something... including the broken bike. Because they had broken cycles of their own to go through, and a lot of life that had happened between then and now.