for me it was dogs. i grew up with 1 family dog which was fine, i enjoyed having the 1 dog. then we moved to a bigger property with more land right before i started high school and my mom just went nuts with adopting all these dogs. then a few years later she got involved in a dog rescue for 6 years. i’m scared to even type this out because i always get downvoted but i’m hoping y’all here will understand. these dogs were everything to her. and us 4 kids and my dad were like nothing. they destroyed our house. the house my dad spent every single moment off work fixing up. it stunk. piss and shit everywhere daily. i vividly remember one night i woke up having to pee and i walked down the hallway and stepped barefoot into a huge pile of shit. it was constant chaos with dogs fighting every day. at times we would have upwards of 10 mostly large breed dogs inside the house. she fed them all in the kitchen and they would scarf down the food so fast and then vomit from inhaling it. then another dog would come along and eat the vomit. and then the faster dogs would go try to steal the slower eating dogs food and a huge fight would break out. they would hump each other. killed a few of my cats. i could go on and on.
it was mortifying trying to have any friends or boyfriends over to witness all this. the only safe space was my bedroom. everywhere else stunk and was covered in dog hair and filth. if somebody came to our gate a literally army of dogs would start howling and freaking out. there was never any peace in that house for so many years. i couldn’t wait to turn 18 to move out. which led me to make stupid decisions when it came to men because i was just so desperate to get away from that nightmare.
all of her free time was dedicated to these dogs. never us. i remember begging and pleading with her to stop all the dog stuff and she would just ignore me. i’d ask my father to talk to her and he would just shrug and say it’s her thing. it was really really hard honestly. to this day i’ll never own a dog. they bring back nothing but bad memories of all those years living there.