When I was a child my inhaler stopped working, I remember telling my mother and she told me she couldn’t get one until the next week when she got paid, she had bought smokes with the child support money the day before, I remember I was wheezing, and she sent me out the door with my siblings to walk to the bus stop, my chest ached, I only made it across the road and up the road a little when I started crying, my older sister yelled at me, saying how mum would be mad if I went back home, I cried harder and went back home, they continued to the bus stop, I knocked on the door for ages before she opened the door again, I remember crying to her, asking her to call my dad and ask him to bring me an inhaler, he was asthmatic as well, she said no, to stop being dramatic and told me to go to bed if I didn’t wasn’t to go to school, she went back to bed, she had four (I don’t remember if this was before or after my little sister was born so maybe five) children and was divorced, I didnt blame her for being tired, but I couldn’t breathe and I was scared, I remember laying there on the bottom bunk of the bed that me and two of my sisters shared thinking I was going to die that day, I don’t remember who I ended up with an inhaler that night, maybe my dad came back from working in another town early, or called my Nan, I don’t even remember what happened after I fell asleep, it’s just that, I’m getting over a cold and my inhaler isn’t working right so I’m a little wheezy, I’m fine but the wheeze always reminds me of being scared, the memory changed my life, my mother ‘doesn’t remember’ it and I’ve been paranoid about having an inhaler on me at all times ever since