You could consider this my first entry where I start recounting everything that led me to my current situation. I guess to start off I'll just talk about my family. Hopefully some background information can provide a bit of context.

I was born in Minnesota, lived there most of my life. I grew up without knowing much about my parents affairs, I was always pretty carefree from what I remember. One thing I recalled being strange however (although significantly less strange in hindsight) was my parents vehement dislike of any insect. It didn't really matter if said insect was as harmless as an earthworm or a ladybug. All bugs in the house were 'dealt with' on sight, I don't think I've ever seen my mom or dad do that thing where you slide the paper under the cup. They told me I should do the same, without hesitation, calling the creatures 'filthy' and 'cancerous'.

Well, because of the aspect of novelty that came with seeing a bug in the wild, I became pretty fascinated with them from a young age. I found a stick bug once in the schoolyard at recess and my friends and I laughed at it because of how goofy it looked. I found a stag beetle in the backyard once too, I showed it to my mom and she promptly told me to kill it and wash my hands. I put it back behind the bushes instead.

My parents have always been what you'd call... superstitious. My mother would cleanse the house with certain incenses, draw weird symbols in certain areas around the house, and sometimes I would find rolled up notes scrawled with odd characters I'd never seen before and couldn't even begin to understand. I didn't have much internet access in the early 2010s like most kids, so I tried searching up some of the symbols or characters in my mom's notes with the local library computer. I never found anything of course. At home, I would always ask her what they were and why she made them, and I was always met with the response "All in good time, my love."

Eventually I did figure out the purpose and function of those symbols, but the story my parents told me was so absurd and unbelievable that I finally understood why our neighbors often clocked us as "the weird family".

"The Namatovu household? Ah yes, that poor woman's absolutely lost it- Have you seen their porch and all those symbols? They probably practice witchcraft in that old shack." (Our house was actually pretty nice for THEIR information)

Anyways, I'll tell you what my parents told me about their occupations in another post, this one is getting awfully long and I've gotta go get the mail. I'll be back soon.

-Izzy