I'd metaphorically, and almost literally, torn the house down that I lived in and as a result was staying in my parents garage. The garage was in the process of being turned into accommodation for them to rent out, but it wasn't nearly done. It didn't have electricity, and therefore light, so my dad had plugged an extension lead into the house and ran it out through a window to the garage. From the extension lead I had a phone charger that I'd borrowed from my sister, because I'd left mine in a crack house, a plug-in lightbulb, and a charger for the iPad my mum had begrudgingly lent me so I could watch tv down there.
The garage didn't have a bed, so I slept on an old sofa that had me waking every morning in pain like I'd aged 30 years overnight. It had a toilet, running water - cold -and a sink in the half finished bathroom too small to stretch your arms out in. I could brush my teeth at least and piss at least.
When I got back from the job in the evening my mum would make me dinner. It was nice to be cooked for, even though the meals were allot smaller than I'd make for myself. It was usually freezer food, like chips and something, or pizza, but it was nice food, especially because I hadn't paid for it. She didn't bother to cater to my choice of diet under orders from my dad, him thinking it was some form of hangover from my days of having anorexia, which it wasn't. I was grateful, though. It was nice to be fed and waited on.
My little sister was 18 and had just passed her driving test, so any free time she had she spent driving to any place around for something to do. She invited me to come along one night, more out of sympathy rather than wanting to spend time with me. I think she felt bad about me sitting alone in the garage every night with my single lightbulb more than anything else.
We got in her mint coloured car and went to a little island not too far away. In its hay day, Victorian times I guess, it would've been a popular destination for holiday seekers from big cities wanting a cheap seaside holiday. Now though, it seemed like a place people went that had nowhere else to go, a place to rot and decay.
The buildings along the front were abandoned, graffitied - they looked haunted and had clearly been neglected for years. The only buildings that were still inhabited were totally run down. Broken windows, overgrown weeds, tired facades - all cracked and peeling paint. We drove past one and my sister said, 'look!' She pointed to a topless man, whose skin colour was that of an old parsnip, with his rib cage showing, hunting through weeds looking for something.
'Oh, yeah,' I said.
That was outside of some flats, where on the balconies above that somehow hadn't fallen to the ground people were lent on the rusting railings smoking cigarettes and looking out to the sea, or just looking. I silently wondered to myself as we drove on what kind of thing I'd have to do to get in there with them and live out my days in a forgotten haze of alcohol and isolation, somehow jealous of their burning lives.
I'd taken pictures of all the buildings and houses on the drive, and even managed to snap the arcade that seemingly hadn't changed since I'd gone there as a child. They were good pictures, I thought. I showed my sister. 'Oh cool - those buildings were scary!'
I wanted to go back there again and get out of the car and explore, maybe get a drink somewhere. I mentioned it to my sister once we eventually got home and she said, perplexed, 'why? It's a shit hole!'
'To take more pictures,' I told her.
She said we could go back if I really wanted to, but we never did manage it. I was out of the garage after a week and back to my former home, again.