Reflections on the Reverberations of my Mother's Suicide.

Content warning: suicide, addiction, trauma.

It’s been a hard week. I say that knowing that I have all my needs met, which is a privilege. I have a job, an apartment, a comfortable bed, food. I don’t take these things for granted. Last night while driving home I saw a man sitting next to a small fire he’d started on the sidewalk underneath a bridge, warming himself. He was situated in between several tents, most of them connected by a complicated series of tarps and plastic bags. I am glad to see the tents, because I want people to be able to shelter themselves. The tents are terrible, because I want everyone to have equal access to housing, whether or not they can afford it.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m meant to be in Seattle. The city is saturated with memories. That park in Pioneer Square where I got jumped when I was thirteen; that movie theater where someone much older than me kissed me when I had run away from home; the road leading to the house my mother rented in the last years of…