I was driving over a rainy and windy Lion’s Gate Bridge, absentmindedly listening to a hockey game on the radio on my way back from a random drive up to Squamish, just to get the hell away from the sickly smell of the house. The smells that brewed in our house made me always feel dirty, even right after stepping out of the shower, they still clung tightly to me. It was a medicinal smell, combined with the smell of drugs and mom’s decaying body. I hated it because it rooted me to the fact that she was dying. I ran from it, tried everything to get away from it. I tried going to the swimming pool, floating in the heavily chlorinated water, but that only made the smells in my nose even worse. I tried smoking, but that only put the fear of mom killing me in my head, and the thought of her leaving her death bed and attempting to kill me always made me nauseous.