My parents helped me move into my first own apartment in August 2014. It was so hot and humid. First thing I did was barf. I’m autistic, I hate change, and my move symbolized a mammoth change in my life. I was 22. I’d just graduated college. I moved to the city away from my friends. I would be starting my first full-time job that following Monday. My life as I knew it was ending, and something else was beginning. I’m sure the heat exhaustion wasn’t helping. I lied in bed, watching the ceiling spin and spin and spin and spin until I couldn’t take it anymore and said my prayers to the porcelain gods for the rest of the night.

I believe I moved on a Wednesday so I had time to get my bearings. Figure out where things were and what there was to do. I was never a drinker so even though the area was lousy with watering holes, I never visited any of them. But I did get to game over the weekend. My first day at work wasn’t too bad, either. I got paid seventeen bucks an hour to sort time cards on my first day. Paychecks were a month in arrears. You had to wait til the end of the following month to collect your first payday so since I started on the 11th and not the 1st of the month, those first few months were rough.

Took me a while to poop with the door open. I only got to do that for maybe a half year before I met and moved in with my now wife. She doesn’t deserve to smell that shit, but she does tell me I the farts I fart in my sleep are war crimes lol