Personal Narrative first two paragraphs

Toothbrush

          When I was in eighth and ninth grade, I had two toothbrushes. One I used to brush my teeth, and the other I found one day buried under empty cans of shaving cream and broken combs in a drawer of the guest bathroom. I took it to my room and hid it in the cupboard under my sink, tucked safely in a clear plastic cup I had gotten from the Ordway Theater. I threw the toothbrush away a little while ago because I couldn’t bear to look at it anymore. Which in retrospect is pretty stupid. It was just a toothbrush. It was a faded blue color and had some split and broken bristles. It was the really cheap kind that you buy at a Super America in Wisconsin because you forgot to pack one in your suitcase when you were going up to your cabin in Minong for Fourth of July weekend.

     After several months of struggling not to use it anymore, I finally took it down to the big brown trashcan in the garage one night. The concrete floor was freezing because I hadn’t bothered to put any shoes on. I was cold and I usually hated being in the garage alone, especially at night. Who knows what psycho rapist clowns could be lurking behind my father’s old recumbent bike and the giant plastic snowman we put on the porch for Christmastime? Nevertheless, that moment, throwing the toothbrush away, was one of the biggest reliefs of my life. Because for nearly a year, that toothbrush was the representation of a lifetime of self-loathing.