The House That Built Me
By Allie Philips
The House That Built Me was awarded the 2020 first prize for creative nonfiction by the Saint Louis University Library Associates.
The house that built me is not made of brick and mortar, nor is it made of cement or
stucco. It is not made of wood and siding, nor rock or tin.The house that built me is made of
memories and moments, feelings and emotions. It is made of pain. It is made of laughter. It is
made of people, of places, and of everything in-between.
This. This is the house that built me
I am six years old. I stand in my black gilly Irish dance shoes, feeling the hair on my
arms stand each time a gush of cold air fills the dance studio as girls in leotards and tights come
and go. I watch the door. Open. Close. Open. Close. I bite down on the skin of my lip, eagerly
standing with my friends as we anxiously await for our mothers’ reply to our request for a
playdate. We receive the answer we hoped for, and my friends jump with excitement. I stiffen as
I hear the words leave my mother’s mouth about having the girls to our house. At that moment a
desperately pray one of their mother’s will offer their home instead. But they don’t. I do not want
friends to come to my house. I feel the way my stomach twists, and how a slight panic settles in.
Embarrassment. Anticipation. I imagine the worst scenarios possible. I imagine having to explain
things, things I don’t fully understand yet to my friends. Things like why my brother Jack is not
like most eleven year old boys. That most people can talk at the age of eleven. that most people
can think, and write their names at the age of eleven. That most people don’t scream and hurt and
attack other people when they are upset at the age of eleven. That most people don’t have a room
in their house they have to put their brother in to protect themselves from him, to protect himself
from him. But I don’t know how to say it. So I don’t. I just sit in the car, pressing my head
against the cold glass window, watching it fog up, praying that I don’t have to say anything.
Hoping that it nothing happens. That my father has taken my Jack out for the day. That the only
people home are my other two brothers, brothers who are like other brothers. Silently pleading
my friends don’t ask about the holes in the walls, the locks on the doors. Hoping I don’t have to
explain what I barely understand yet. That living in my house is much different than other
houses.
This. This is the house that built me.
I am nine years old. I feel the house shake. I close my door, muffling the sounds of
screaming, maybe even crying from the floors below. I feel the steady vibration in my feet as
Jack’s frustration reverberates through the house. I feel it at my toes as it slowly fills my body to
the top of my head, making my ears thrum. It’s hard to imagine what it would feel like to be
trapped in your own body, but I see it daily. The desperate feeling of not being able to be saved
by anyone, least of all yourself. I walk over to my bed, and stand very still. I stare at the ground,
focusing all of my attention onto a single square of carpet. I can feel the burn behind my eyes,
the way my tongue seems to swell, and the back of my mouth seems to feel almost full. But I
push it down. I push it down until it lodges in my throat, until it fills my stomach. I refuse it. I
refuse it again and again, until slowly, it becomes nothing. Until every last feeling fades into a
dull, low numb. Until the numbness itself becomes nothing. And the nothing becomes nothing.
And I am left with emptiness. That way when the house inevitably shakes again, there is nothing
left for me to feel. I am empty.
This. This is the house that built me.
I am thirteen years old. I feel my cheeks fill with warmth until they are practically
burning. My stomach turns, tying itself into a thick knot deep in my abdomen. My lungs feel too
small suddenly, and I am overcome with the distinct feeling that the ground and sky are coming
closer and closer together, as if they are going to crush me. I see people looking over at us, their
eyebrows knitting together, the way that they avert their eyes. I hear some people laughing
uncomfortably. I do not look at them. But most importantly, I do not dare to look at the spectacle
being created. I look at the ground. My brother Jack thrashes and screams. The pitch of his
screech is piercing, and he seems to be a mad man. He is a mad man. my father holds him back,
holds him down to the ground, away from others so as not to hurt them, or himself. To the
strangers passing by, Jack’s behavior foreign, disturbing. It makes them uncomfortable to see
someone acting like this. It makes them feel pity. Whether the pity is for my brother, my dad, or
even me, I’m not so sure. All I do know is that I hate this feeling, this feeling of helpless. The
realization that no matter what, there is nothing I can do to stop the scene playing in front of me.
The same exact scene I have watched again and again and again until I can practically pinpoint
the moment my brother is going to break. Break and shatter into a million pieces, over and over
again.
This. This is the house that built me.
I am fourteen years old. I watch as oldest my brother Will leaves, my one companion for
life. The only person I have ever met, and ever will meet that fully understands — or comes
close to understanding — what it is like. What it is like to call chaos a home. What it is like to
feel fear and comfort all at once, what it is like to hate and love a place so fiercely at the same
time. And he’s leaving me. I should be sad. I should be mad. I should feel so many things, but
instead I feel nothing. I feel the same emptiness set in as it always does. And I watch him leave. I
watch him pack his things to fill his dorm room. and I watch him slowly fade away. Fade. And
fade. And fade. Until he is gone.
This. This is the house that built me.
I am fifteen years old. I stare ahead, tuning out the sounds. The sound of my younger
brother, Ben, shrieking, throwing a dinner plate. The way my dad stands up, his fists hitting the
table, his voice bellowing. The sound of the plate shattering at the same moment Ben does, his
tantrum growing into an even bigger frenzied mess. And all of it from Jack speaking. Nothing
more than a few simple, broken words that sound more like oddly shaped noises being uttered. It
must feel strange to feel that there is a monster in your house. A monster that could snap any
minute and hurt you. But Ben is too young to understand that Jack is not a monster. That Jack is
the furthest thing from a monster. But to Ben, Jack’s words, the noises he utters, are bombs. They
are the warning call before an attack, and the minute they go off, Ben prepares his defenses for
the war he has created in his mind. The screaming is nothing to me now. I do not hear it. I do not
feel it as my father yells at my younger brother, attempting to calm him down, to just make the
noise stop for once. Ben has trapped himself in his own fear, nothing can break the protective
walls of terror he has built up, not even the loudest yells. Finally, the bricks of terror he created
begin to fall, and he slowly comes down to earth, leaving to gather himself in a different room. I
raise my head from the dinner plate I had placed all of my attention on, and look to the place I
fear to look at the most. My mother. the way her hands cover her face. the weariness painted in
her eyes. Many people say that the worst thing you can see on your parents’ faces is not anger,
but disappointment. I disagree. The worst thing you can see on your parents’ faces is defeat.
Because with that look of defeat comes the chilling realization that your mother and father are
not the superheroes you once perceived them to be, but they are, in fact, just as broken and
pained as any other person in this world. The table is silent, just my father, my mother, and me.
Finally, it is broken by my mother’s tired words: “this needs to stop”.
This. This is the house that built me
I am fifteen years old, almost sixteen. I focus on the words on the flash cards. Mitosis.
Cellular Respiration. Homeostasis. I will them into my memory. There must be 100 of them. I
flip through them again. Again. Again. Then I hear it. My oldest brother, Will, home for
Christmas break, yell. His state of calm has been broken as I hear the panic, “call 911, call 911!”
My heart jumps, I race to the phone not even considering what the problem is until the numbers
are punched in and there is a shrill ring in my ear.
“what’s going on?” I say.
“he’s having a seizure,” Will says breathlessly. Jack lays on the ground wet, outside the shower,
bare of clothes. The tremors through his body have stopped, and he just lies there, curled in a
ball. At that moment he looks something like a fetus. Like a helpless child, waiting for the help
of his mother, his family. Will stands there above him. his mouth slightly open, in shock, in
terror. The operator answers the phone. And I speak.
This. This is the house that built me.
I am sixteen years old. the sun is hot as it beats through the tall glass windows onto my
black, cheap polyester work shirt. I shift uncomfortably, as the material sticks to my back. It’s the
end of my shift, the end of my summer, the end of a long day. I look up from the groceries I am
packing and at the man they belong too. He says something I can’t quite remember. A snide
remark or critique about the monotony of my job. Packing groceries again and again and again.
His face is smug, as he looks down at me. His mouth twitches, and he tries to mask his
condescendence as he asks me “do you know how they define insanity?”
I stare up at him blankly, annoyed. Finally, I sigh and say, “yeah, it’s doing the same thing over
and over again and expecting a different outcome”.
His face falters for a second, as though he forgot the punch line he had prepared. He
nods, “yes, that is how they define it”. I give him a tight lipped smile and hand him his groceries,
not bothering to ask if he needs help bringing them out to his car. After he leaves, my coworker
turns to me, “how did you know that?” I just smile and let out a small laugh, shaking my head
slowly, letting a white lie slip through my mouth about learning it in school. Not telling her that
insanity and I know each other quite well. That I watch it happen everyday. Watch as Jack does
the same things over and over again, only to upset himself, not understanding that his actions
will always end the same way. It always ends the same.
This. This is the house that built me.
“It seems that for you, chaos is your comfortable”.
I am seventeen years old. I look up at my doctor and laugh, nodding my head slowly.
“Yeah, you could definitely say that”. She continues the conversation, moving on, but I
do not. I keep replaying her words in my head. And I continue replaying it. Hearing that sentence
over and over again until it infest my dreams and invades my subconscious. Is chaos my
comfortable? The thing about living in chaos is that it doesn’t seem like chaos in the moment, it
seems normal. Like a dream. It’s not until you wake up that you realize just how ridiculous it is
to think everything you experienced is just as ordinary as the rest.
This. This is the house that built me.
I am seventeen years old. I stand on the old, cracked cement steps, breathing in the fresh
summer air. The green house I stand in front of is aged, but the inside is new. New in more ways
than one. This house is the start of new beginnings, new experiences, and maybe, just maybe, a
new peace. I inhale. I breath in the work my family and I put into it. Not only just the physical
labor, but the mental labor from all the years of build up. All the years of anger and sadness. All
the years of frustration. But most of all, all the years of sacrifice. The sacrifices I made. Ben
made. Will made. The sacrifices my mother and father made. And finally, after all of it, it has
finally come. A freedom. But with all freedoms come a loss. I watch as Jack wanders around. He
doesn’t know it yet. He doesn’t know that the wooden floors that creak below his feet will be the
place that he will now call home. A home away from his family. He doesn’t know that the freshly
painted walls will be the ones that protect him, keep him safe. And in that moment of watching
him, I wonder if he will ever know. Will he call it home? Or will it be some sort of stepping
stone, a stopping place for him? His bed is clean. Sun glistens through the window. I look
around, but my gaze settles on my father. My father who is like no other I have ever met. Strong
and stoic, but yet also fragile and weak at times. I have always said that the day my father dies,
Jack will die as well because they are so connected that it would seem impossible for my brother
to go on without him. But, in this moment, I imagine the possibility that if the roles were to be
reversed, would my father die the day my brother died too? There is no person in the world that
Jack loves more than my father. And though he would never admit it, besides my mother, there is
no other person in the world that my father loves more than Jack. They rely on each other. My
father looks around the room, a small smile growing on his face, and then finally, his gaze rests
on Jack. The blessing in disguise my mother and father never asked for, never knew they so
desperately needed until he appeared. And there he was. Gone and here all in the same moment.
This. This is the house that built me.
I am eighteen. I stand in my empty house, as my father throws the last of my boxes into
the car. My room is barren, empty of all the things I had filled it with throughout my years of
life. Books. Posters. Knickknacks. Everything that I deemed worthy of creating the space of
where I would live, gone. I wander through the floors of my house, taking in the place I have
called home for so long one last time before I travel to establish my new one. I know I’ll return
here again soon, but it will be different. By then I will have a whole new life. A life with
different people, with different places, different stories. A life that this house will never know.
But this isn’t the only house I will be leaving. I know this. I know that with this new chapter of
my life I will be leaving much more behind than I care to admit. I had always imagined this
moment, this moment of escape and independence. I imagined it being exhilarating. I imagined it
being freeing. But it is none of those things. It is sad. It is nostalgic. But mostly, this moment of
escape and independence is understanding. Understanding of who I am. Understanding of this
house that built me. This house that shaped me into the person that I am today. Not a single part
of me untouched from this house. All the good and bad that I have, shaped and molded by this
house that built me.
But no, it is not just a house. A house is a sturdy, detached physical structure. It is not
something that can make you laugh, make you cry, make shift, and change, and grow. So, as I
leave, I say goodbye not to a house, but a home. The home that built me.
This. This is the home that built me.
The House That Built Me was awarded the 2020 first prize for creative nonfiction by the Saint Louis University Library Associates.
The house that built me is not made of brick and mortar, nor is it made of cement or
stucco. It is not made of wood and siding, nor rock or tin.The house that built me is made of
memories and moments, feelings and emotions. It is made of pain. It is made of laughter. It is
made of people, of places, and of everything in-between.
This. This is the house that built me
I am six years old. I stand in my black gilly Irish dance shoes, feeling the hair on my
arms stand each time a gush of cold air fills the dance studio as girls in leotards and tights come
and go. I watch the door. Open. Close. Open. Close. I bite down on the skin of my lip, eagerly
standing with my friends as we anxiously await for our mothers’ reply to our request for a
playdate. We receive the answer we hoped for, and my friends jump with excitement. I stiffen as
I hear the words leave my mother’s mouth about having the girls to our house. At that moment a
desperately pray one of their mother’s will offer their home instead. But they don’t. I do not want
friends to come to my house. I feel the way my stomach twists, and how a slight panic settles in.
Embarrassment. Anticipation. I imagine the worst scenarios possible. I imagine having to explain
things, things I don’t fully understand yet to my friends. Things like why my brother Jack is not
like most eleven year old boys. That most people can talk at the age of eleven. that most people
can think, and write their names at the age of eleven. That most people don’t scream and hurt and
attack other people when they are upset at the age of eleven. That most people don’t have a room
in their house they have to put their brother in to protect themselves from him, to protect himself
from him. But I don’t know how to say it. So I don’t. I just sit in the car, pressing my head
against the cold glass window, watching it fog up, praying that I don’t have to say anything.
Hoping that it nothing happens. That my father has taken my Jack out for the day. That the only
people home are my other two brothers, brothers who are like other brothers. Silently pleading
my friends don’t ask about the holes in the walls, the locks on the doors. Hoping I don’t have to
explain what I barely understand yet. That living in my house is much different than other
houses.
This. This is the house that built me.
I am nine years old. I feel the house shake. I close my door, muffling the sounds of
screaming, maybe even crying from the floors below. I feel the steady vibration in my feet as
Jack’s frustration reverberates through the house. I feel it at my toes as it slowly fills my body to
the top of my head, making my ears thrum. It’s hard to imagine what it would feel like to be
trapped in your own body, but I see it daily. The desperate feeling of not being able to be saved
by anyone, least of all yourself. I walk over to my bed, and stand very still. I stare at the ground,
focusing all of my attention onto a single square of carpet. I can feel the burn behind my eyes,
the way my tongue seems to swell, and the back of my mouth seems to feel almost full. But I
push it down. I push it down until it lodges in my throat, until it fills my stomach. I refuse it. I
refuse it again and again, until slowly, it becomes nothing. Until every last feeling fades into a
dull, low numb. Until the numbness itself becomes nothing. And the nothing becomes nothing.
And I am left with emptiness. That way when the house inevitably shakes again, there is nothing
left for me to feel. I am empty.
This. This is the house that built me.
I am thirteen years old. I feel my cheeks fill with warmth until they are practically
burning. My stomach turns, tying itself into a thick knot deep in my abdomen. My lungs feel too
small suddenly, and I am overcome with the distinct feeling that the ground and sky are coming
closer and closer together, as if they are going to crush me. I see people looking over at us, their
eyebrows knitting together, the way that they avert their eyes. I hear some people laughing
uncomfortably. I do not look at them. But most importantly, I do not dare to look at the spectacle
being created. I look at the ground. My brother Jack thrashes and screams. The pitch of his
screech is piercing, and he seems to be a mad man. He is a mad man. my father holds him back,
holds him down to the ground, away from others so as not to hurt them, or himself. To the
strangers passing by, Jack’s behavior foreign, disturbing. It makes them uncomfortable to see
someone acting like this. It makes them feel pity. Whether the pity is for my brother, my dad, or
even me, I’m not so sure. All I do know is that I hate this feeling, this feeling of helpless. The
realization that no matter what, there is nothing I can do to stop the scene playing in front of me.
The same exact scene I have watched again and again and again until I can practically pinpoint
the moment my brother is going to break. Break and shatter into a million pieces, over and over
again.
This. This is the house that built me.
I am fourteen years old. I watch as oldest my brother Will leaves, my one companion for
life. The only person I have ever met, and ever will meet that fully understands — or comes
close to understanding — what it is like. What it is like to call chaos a home. What it is like to
feel fear and comfort all at once, what it is like to hate and love a place so fiercely at the same
time. And he’s leaving me. I should be sad. I should be mad. I should feel so many things, but
instead I feel nothing. I feel the same emptiness set in as it always does. And I watch him leave. I
watch him pack his things to fill his dorm room. and I watch him slowly fade away. Fade. And
fade. And fade. Until he is gone.
This. This is the house that built me.
I am fifteen years old. I stare ahead, tuning out the sounds. The sound of my younger
brother, Ben, shrieking, throwing a dinner plate. The way my dad stands up, his fists hitting the
table, his voice bellowing. The sound of the plate shattering at the same moment Ben does, his
tantrum growing into an even bigger frenzied mess. And all of it from Jack speaking. Nothing
more than a few simple, broken words that sound more like oddly shaped noises being uttered. It
must feel strange to feel that there is a monster in your house. A monster that could snap any
minute and hurt you. But Ben is too young to understand that Jack is not a monster. That Jack is
the furthest thing from a monster. But to Ben, Jack’s words, the noises he utters, are bombs. They
are the warning call before an attack, and the minute they go off, Ben prepares his defenses for
the war he has created in his mind. The screaming is nothing to me now. I do not hear it. I do not
feel it as my father yells at my younger brother, attempting to calm him down, to just make the
noise stop for once. Ben has trapped himself in his own fear, nothing can break the protective
walls of terror he has built up, not even the loudest yells. Finally, the bricks of terror he created
begin to fall, and he slowly comes down to earth, leaving to gather himself in a different room. I
raise my head from the dinner plate I had placed all of my attention on, and look to the place I
fear to look at the most. My mother. the way her hands cover her face. the weariness painted in
her eyes. Many people say that the worst thing you can see on your parents’ faces is not anger,
but disappointment. I disagree. The worst thing you can see on your parents’ faces is defeat.
Because with that look of defeat comes the chilling realization that your mother and father are
not the superheroes you once perceived them to be, but they are, in fact, just as broken and
pained as any other person in this world. The table is silent, just my father, my mother, and me.
Finally, it is broken by my mother’s tired words: “this needs to stop”.
This. This is the house that built me
I am fifteen years old, almost sixteen. I focus on the words on the flash cards. Mitosis.
Cellular Respiration. Homeostasis. I will them into my memory. There must be 100 of them. I
flip through them again. Again. Again. Then I hear it. My oldest brother, Will, home for
Christmas break, yell. His state of calm has been broken as I hear the panic, “call 911, call 911!”
My heart jumps, I race to the phone not even considering what the problem is until the numbers
are punched in and there is a shrill ring in my ear.
“what’s going on?” I say.
“he’s having a seizure,” Will says breathlessly. Jack lays on the ground wet, outside the shower,
bare of clothes. The tremors through his body have stopped, and he just lies there, curled in a
ball. At that moment he looks something like a fetus. Like a helpless child, waiting for the help
of his mother, his family. Will stands there above him. his mouth slightly open, in shock, in
terror. The operator answers the phone. And I speak.
This. This is the house that built me.
I am sixteen years old. the sun is hot as it beats through the tall glass windows onto my
black, cheap polyester work shirt. I shift uncomfortably, as the material sticks to my back. It’s the
end of my shift, the end of my summer, the end of a long day. I look up from the groceries I am
packing and at the man they belong too. He says something I can’t quite remember. A snide
remark or critique about the monotony of my job. Packing groceries again and again and again.
His face is smug, as he looks down at me. His mouth twitches, and he tries to mask his
condescendence as he asks me “do you know how they define insanity?”
I stare up at him blankly, annoyed. Finally, I sigh and say, “yeah, it’s doing the same thing over
and over again and expecting a different outcome”.
His face falters for a second, as though he forgot the punch line he had prepared. He
nods, “yes, that is how they define it”. I give him a tight lipped smile and hand him his groceries,
not bothering to ask if he needs help bringing them out to his car. After he leaves, my coworker
turns to me, “how did you know that?” I just smile and let out a small laugh, shaking my head
slowly, letting a white lie slip through my mouth about learning it in school. Not telling her that
insanity and I know each other quite well. That I watch it happen everyday. Watch as Jack does
the same things over and over again, only to upset himself, not understanding that his actions
will always end the same way. It always ends the same.
This. This is the house that built me.
“It seems that for you, chaos is your comfortable”.
I am seventeen years old. I look up at my doctor and laugh, nodding my head slowly.
“Yeah, you could definitely say that”. She continues the conversation, moving on, but I
do not. I keep replaying her words in my head. And I continue replaying it. Hearing that sentence
over and over again until it infest my dreams and invades my subconscious. Is chaos my
comfortable? The thing about living in chaos is that it doesn’t seem like chaos in the moment, it
seems normal. Like a dream. It’s not until you wake up that you realize just how ridiculous it is
to think everything you experienced is just as ordinary as the rest.
This. This is the house that built me.
I am seventeen years old. I stand on the old, cracked cement steps, breathing in the fresh
summer air. The green house I stand in front of is aged, but the inside is new. New in more ways
than one. This house is the start of new beginnings, new experiences, and maybe, just maybe, a
new peace. I inhale. I breath in the work my family and I put into it. Not only just the physical
labor, but the mental labor from all the years of build up. All the years of anger and sadness. All
the years of frustration. But most of all, all the years of sacrifice. The sacrifices I made. Ben
made. Will made. The sacrifices my mother and father made. And finally, after all of it, it has
finally come. A freedom. But with all freedoms come a loss. I watch as Jack wanders around. He
doesn’t know it yet. He doesn’t know that the wooden floors that creak below his feet will be the
place that he will now call home. A home away from his family. He doesn’t know that the freshly
painted walls will be the ones that protect him, keep him safe. And in that moment of watching
him, I wonder if he will ever know. Will he call it home? Or will it be some sort of stepping
stone, a stopping place for him? His bed is clean. Sun glistens through the window. I look
around, but my gaze settles on my father. My father who is like no other I have ever met. Strong
and stoic, but yet also fragile and weak at times. I have always said that the day my father dies,
Jack will die as well because they are so connected that it would seem impossible for my brother
to go on without him. But, in this moment, I imagine the possibility that if the roles were to be
reversed, would my father die the day my brother died too? There is no person in the world that
Jack loves more than my father. And though he would never admit it, besides my mother, there is
no other person in the world that my father loves more than Jack. They rely on each other. My
father looks around the room, a small smile growing on his face, and then finally, his gaze rests
on Jack. The blessing in disguise my mother and father never asked for, never knew they so
desperately needed until he appeared. And there he was. Gone and here all in the same moment.
This. This is the house that built me.
I am eighteen. I stand in my empty house, as my father throws the last of my boxes into
the car. My room is barren, empty of all the things I had filled it with throughout my years of
life. Books. Posters. Knickknacks. Everything that I deemed worthy of creating the space of
where I would live, gone. I wander through the floors of my house, taking in the place I have
called home for so long one last time before I travel to establish my new one. I know I’ll return
here again soon, but it will be different. By then I will have a whole new life. A life with
different people, with different places, different stories. A life that this house will never know.
But this isn’t the only house I will be leaving. I know this. I know that with this new chapter of
my life I will be leaving much more behind than I care to admit. I had always imagined this
moment, this moment of escape and independence. I imagined it being exhilarating. I imagined it
being freeing. But it is none of those things. It is sad. It is nostalgic. But mostly, this moment of
escape and independence is understanding. Understanding of who I am. Understanding of this
house that built me. This house that shaped me into the person that I am today. Not a single part
of me untouched from this house. All the good and bad that I have, shaped and molded by this
house that built me.
But no, it is not just a house. A house is a sturdy, detached physical structure. It is not
something that can make you laugh, make you cry, make shift, and change, and grow. So, as I
leave, I say goodbye not to a house, but a home. The home that built me.
This. This is the home that built me.