#sketchjournal

very conscious of utility usage, and generally tries to minimize it as much as possible whenever he’s at somebody else’s home. he shares this habit with steph, who also grew up knowing the danger of unaffordable utility bills

due to costs, his parents forever stuck to budget phones with prepaid phone plans and minimal data coverage. things like fancy tvs, entertainment subscriptions, wifi devices, and videogames were just not on the table, and the monthly allotment of prepaid cell data was rationed carefully for emergencies only. this, in turn, led to catherine introducing jason to libraries early - they had free wifi she could connect her phone to, they offered free educational programming for kids, hosted and facilitated free services for the public, and best of all, gave jason access to books - an unlimited form of entertainment that was safe, transportable, required zero electricity, and could be done solo without adult supervision. what had initially been a trip of pure practicality turned into one of joy and bonding, and cathy and willis were insufferably proud of how jason’s passion for reading translated to academic success when he was finally old enough for public school

money was scarce, and jason was bright, and cathy and will instilled in him early-on to strive for academic success no matter what, because “Nobody’ll ever be able to take that away from you, and the more school you get, the better your chances of getting out of here.” his 6yo dream, before things got bad, was to become the smartest doctor-astronaut-scientist ever (between being a world-famous accomplished author of course) with a bazillion dollars so as to buy his parents a big humongous house with looooots of rooms and central air, so that they’d never have to go out and work again and could instead spend time with him

willis and catherine loved him and loved each other. that doesn’t mean they were functional, stable, or ready to take on the challenges of parenthood. they messed up a lot, and some of jason’s sweetest memories are juxtaposed with some of the worst hurts, a dissonance he’s never quite managed to reconcile. books were a hobby, but they were also an escape

willis and catherine were full of contradictions. they told him to never do drugs, but stress, pain, and hardship drove them both to separate addictions, which terrified and confused him in equal turn. they begged him to never turn to crime, while openly engaging in survival crime themselves just to keep a roof over their head. jason once accidentally stepped on a used needle catherine had dropped while trying to wake her up, and the ensuing freakout - which was rooted in concern, but came off as rage - instilled in him a deep fear of needles that had less to do with drugs and more to do with how scared of her he’d been. for him, the people he’d loved most and the people he’d feared most had always been one and the same. love had always, implicitly, been interwoven with terror

for a long time, jason didn’t fully understand the details of catherine’s decline. at first she’d told him she was sick - of what, she never said - and within the span of a few years he’d watched as addiction took her body, mind, and finally life away. it wasn’t until he was much older, when he finally mustered up the courage to pull up her old health records, that he learned she’d been diagnosed , among other things, with advanced hiv/aids, and had been summarily refused treatment due to inability to pay