{"id":364,"date":"2025-11-13T18:09:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T18:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/?page_id=364"},"modified":"2025-11-13T19:22:45","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T19:22:45","slug":"possession","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/non-fiction\/possession\/","title":{"rendered":"Possession"},"content":{"rendered":"

Madeline Almaroad<\/span><\/p>\n

My mom is so paranoid that she always insists on stocking up on everything to prepare for a possible future doomsday scenario. She had been stockpiling the instant release adderall for a while, saying that she was prescribed to take it, but didn\u2019t because she didn\u2019t like how it kept her awake at night. So she just took her extended adderall prescription and saved the instants, just in case. She was mostly stockpiling it because there was an adderall shortage going on and she wanted to keep some extra in case we couldn\u2019t get our prescriptions filled. In my head that made it okay. I was just taking a few without asking. If I had asked she probably would have given them to me anyway, so what was the big deal? And even though it was a delusional thought, I really believed that I would refill the bottle before my mom noticed. That some vague, far-off version of myself would be able to replace every single pill that I took.<\/span><\/p>\n

And even though I roll my eyes when my mom talks about the apocalypse\u2026 I know I do the same thing. Sometimes I feel like a raccoon or possum. A dirty little thing, close to the ground, scurrying around, eyes scanning for danger. My grubby little hands collecting shiny things that caught my eye or things that I might need one day. I can imagine myself pawing at my twitching nose before sniffing at the ground and digging in the dirt for a place to bury my treasures. That way, if I\u2019m ever in trouble I\u2019ll have a secret stash of all the things I need, rolls of cash, stolen pills, a tiny pair of scissors, a lighter, a knife, a box of cereal. I wonder if that\u2019s how my mom feels.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s probably because of my dad. I remember that day I started saving money for college. I was in the 6th grade and my dad brought me into my parent\u2019s room and sat me on the edge of their four poster bed. My dad was standing facing me with his arms crossed, and my mom was silent like a ghost sitting on the other edge of the bed. She didn\u2019t talk much when she was married to my dad. He told me that I had said some concerning things about my friends and that<\/span><\/p>\n

he was worried about the kinds of people I was surrounding myself with at school. I had just told him that one of my friends had a few different half siblings and that their dad was in jail. I didn\u2019t understand why my dad wanted me to stop hanging out with them. They weren\u2019t mean or bad or crazy, they were just normal kids who I liked hanging out with.<\/span><\/p>\n

My dad said that was how things were now, but who knows what kinds of people those kids will grow up to be. Then he sighed and asked if they were black. I was so taken aback that I just stared at him for a second. I didn\u2019t think that something like that mattered. I didn\u2019t think that my dad was someone who would think that something like that mattered. I said, \u201cWhy does that matter?\u201d and my dad said, watch the attitude.<\/span><\/p>\n

He said I needed to surround myself with people who would lift me up, that someone like me should be selective about the people I associate with. The way he said those words\u2013 someone like me\u2013 made my chest feel weird like there were worms squirming around in there. It made my stomach turn and I started to cry.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBecause we\u2019re rich?\u201d I said, feeling disgusted by the idea.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s when my dad\u2019s face hardened. He leaned in close and pointed his finger at me. I don\u2019t ever want to hear you say that with that attitude again. If I ever hear you complaining about being rich, and all the money I spend on you and all the toys and nice vacations that I work my ass off to give you, I will take every cent out of your college fund and spend it all on a nice sports car for myself. Do you understand me?<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s when I started hoarding money. And for years I felt like I was skating on thin ice\u2013 like at any moment if I made the wrong move, everything could be taken away from me. And if it did I had to be ready. I had to have something he couldn\u2019t take away from me.<\/span><\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until my first year of college that I found out that what my dad said wasn\u2019t true. I mentioned it to my mom while we were driving, saying that if dad gets too pissed off at me he might not pay my tuition and I\u2019d have to drop out. My mom\u2013 who was now divorced from my dad and was now so aggressively herself that it sometimes annoyed me while impressing me at the same time\u2014 said \u201cOh honey, that\u2019s not true. He can\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I was shocked. My mom told me that my college fund was a 529 account and that the money in that account legally couldn\u2019t be used for anything other than my college expenses. She said if dad tried to use that money to buy a sports car he would be in a whole lot of legal trouble he wouldn\u2019t want.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hearing that made me deflate a little. This whole time. All those years. That threat had been hanging over my head. And I had believed it. For all these years I\u2019ve had it in the back of my mind that at any point my dad could take everything away from me if I didn\u2019t act how he wanted. If I pushed him just a little too far. And all this time it just wasn\u2019t true. For all these years I carried that day with me and all this time it was\u2026 nothing. It was an empty threat my dad used on me when I was 11. It was a mean thing he said years ago and never mentioned again. He probably didn\u2019t even remember that day. All this time I had been preparing for him to pull the rug out from under me, and there had never been a goddamn rug in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut you were there.\u201d My voice was a whisper. My mom was there the whole time, sitting next to me on the bed, silent.<\/span><\/p>\n

I know why she didn\u2019t say anything and I don\u2019t blame her. It just hurt that I believed an empty threat so deeply from the time I was 11 years old to my fall semester of college, and neither of them ever mentioned that what he said to me wasn\u2019t true. There were so many emotions swirling around me, relief, regret, anger, bitterness, joy, but most of all I just felt a<\/span><\/p>\n

quiet sadness for the little eleven year old girl who was so scared of the day when he would finally take everything away from her. It was like someone had taken the weight off my shoulders and smacked me in the face with it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I didn\u2019t say that what he said wasn\u2019t true?\u201d My mom said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo. You didn\u2019t say anything.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOh honey.\u201d My mom said, \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\nMadeline Almaroad My mom is so paranoid that she always insists on stocking up on everything to prepare for a…\n<\/div>\n
Continue reading “Possession”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"parent":16,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-364","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":365,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/364\/revisions\/365"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}