Self-Inflicted Wounds: Heartwarming Tales of Epic Humiliation Read Online Free

I had moved into a two-bedroom apartment in a decent neighborhood in the hills
     of Oakland, California. Safe, quiet, walking distance to the bus stop. A nearby 7-Eleven
     provided easy access to neon-blue frozen drinks when needed. A secure underground
     parking spot offered protection for my mom’s badass 1974 Mustang. 1 Not too shabby, considering the solemn circumstances under which we made the move.
    I can’t say I was happy about my parents’ separation and impending divorce, but I
     honestly can’t say I was sad, either. I was a kid, for chrissakes. I didn’t know how
     the fuck to feel. People often lament about divorces and what they do to children.
     There is a lot of handwringing about nuclear families and dual parenting and kids
     needing continuity—and about the damage divorce does to their sense of stability,
     their belief in the permanence of things, their tender, nascent optimism, and a bunch
     of other misty-eyed laments.
    But I’ll tell you what else fucks with a kid’s optimism and sense of stability: when
     your parents fight all the time. That shit can really suck. Listening to your parents
     yell, or cry, or stomp off in anger, or worse, that deafening silence that falls over
     a home when the two biggest residents aren’t speaking to each other, and only reply
     in jagged monotone when the kids ask for seconds or beg to be excused from the dinner
     table 2 — that is damaging. That shit is no fucking fun at all.
    This may be heresy, but as a child of divorce, I can say it wasn’t that big a deal. I’m sure at the time I found it a bit more traumatic, but looking back,
     it all seems much ado about nothing. My parents didn’t get along. They wanted different
     things. They broke up. They both seemed moderately happier afterwards. That was good
     enough for me. 3
    So. Was I sad about the divorce? At the time, I couldn’t say. What I did know was
     that all of a sudden I had a lot more unsupervised time on my hands, and that time
     was ripe for getting into trouble. Epic, thunderous trouble.
    Starting with setting some shit on motherfucking fire.
    I didn’t actually mean to set anything on fire. This was not some destructive act of rebellion. I just liked
     to cook. Or, more accurately, I liked to eat. Cooking was a means to an end, and that
     end was eating awesome shit. I have always loved to eat. I am a large person and I
     have been this large, essentially, since birth. A big baby. A robust toddler. A giant,
     stumbling kindergartner who could destroy a roast chicken in seconds, crack the bones
     for their marrow, and come back for more. I looked old enough to buy beer when I was
     thirteen. I am the go-to in any group when some shit needs getting off a high shelf.
     A girl this big needs sustenance.
    And when I was a kid, my favorite thing to do was the thing I was absolutely forbidden
     to do: put a big pot of oil on a flaming stove, and fry shit up. Let’s face it, kids
     love crispy foods. 4 They are always in search of a chip, or a fry, or a crunchy extruded shape of some
     kind. Once I figured out that crispy food did not come exclusively from the store
     or drive-through, that one could make these morsels of delight in the comfort of one’s own home, in almost unlimited quantities,
     I was hooked. No matter the time, I was always down to get high on my own supply.
    Maybe I was drawn to the danger of it, too; the irresistible lure of the forbidden.
     Because while I was older now, and entrusted with more responsibility, I was still
     a child of only eight years, prone to accidents both unforeseen and entirely predictable.
     And each day I was given very specific instructions by my mother, repeated slowly and with meticulous diction every
     time she left the house.
    No oil. No stove. No fire.
    So of course, the second my mother would leave the house, I would find a pot, fill
     it to meniscus-challenging capacity with oil, and turn that bitch on high.
    I never had a problem,