About me

I’m such a hypocrite. 
I tell people to keep on living because life has to get better but I also tell them that it’s not my place to tell them what to do. That ultimately the decision is up to them and they can decide if they want to keep moving on to see what awaits up ahead or choose to end it all when they want. 
I always have to tag on that I’d miss them because I would and will-
And yet when I’m by myself my mind wonders down this bleak road where I hear the past. Voices and memories I still cling to when I know for a fact I should let them all go. Let it all blow away behind me and move to a better life. 
I moved across the country to escape my old life. To get away from my family and peers. And for the first few months I was happy. I felt free to be myself and open up- but somewhere along the line it all came back. …My mom called me and soon after my dad. 
I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to even pretend they are still alive but they called me. Told me how they missed me.
HOW CAN THEY MISS ME?! I am the very vermin they both told multiple times to stop acting like a freak, to stop disobeying, and worse- What I feel is the worse is that they told me I was a monster no one could ever love.
Mother gave me many stupid reasons for that claim. It felt like one long changing line of faults to me that she hated. Always telling me to sit up straight, to wear make up, to be more like her. How and why would I want to be like someone I was growing up to hate? It was bad enough I looked like the spitting image of her till High School. My god how much I changed in High School.
Father was the more violent of the two. Mom would crack me across the face and seethe with rage when she felt I acted up and sometimes use a belt but father- He would beat me.
Countless times I found myself hiding in my room from him. Even when the divorce was not complete he would find me and take off his belt. He never stopped till I was begging with tears running down my face. Even then it’d go till I couldn’t breath.
I hate(d) him the most. There was even a point where I wanted to kill him. To end it all because I was too scared of hell to kill myself. Perhaps I should thank them for making me go to church all those years and giving me the fear of damnation but sometimes… Sometimes I feel like the fear of hell isn’t there and it’s just moral fiber I constructed myself that holds me back.
I don’t know what to believe at times. I guess the important thing was that I didn’t take his gun and end anyone. I chickened out and hid in my room afraid suddenly not only of my parents but of myself.
Sometimes I wondered, no, I still do wonder, what my parents remember of the past. Surely if they read this they would call me insane or a liar. Perhaps I am both still in their eyes. But I can’t forget the past no matter how hard I try. I can live in the present for so long but the moment I don’t find myself distracted with something is the very second I slip away into my old nightmares.
I remember all the words my mom spelled out. She acted as if spelling them was less of a sin then out right saying it. Of course, she was always one to act high and mightier then everyone around her. 
Perhaps I am a little more grateful for her indulgence in slumber then I realized. When she was not having a go at me she was either in another room watching television she deemed ‘too adult’ for us or sleeping. At times I hated how if felt like we had no parents after the divorce. How they took to shoving us off onto mother and then tossing us both to father on the weekends. It was awful but what did I know? A part of me was starting to realize that it was loosing it’s innocents. That I was actually- I was actually enjoying their suffering. My reward for this sick enjoyment was not one I had seen coming or was prepared for. My grandfather’s death.
I don’t know why I blame myself for this. Maybe it’s because I never got to say goodbye but that shouldn’t make me feel responsible. If anything it should make me feel more robbed.
But he died. I remember the early morning grandma came over with the news. There was something toxic to the air and I just felt sick and before she could even say anything I had to ask. I asked if he was dead. Her face- she looked so sad and shocked before bawling again and telling us how she woke up to him hardly breathing. As if he were choking on something but according to the medics that arrived, he was having a heart attack. Something he never had before and he died from before they made it to the hospital. 
…Years before this, my great grandmother died. I was so little but I remember her and the card games we played as well as the movies we watched. I remember she had long hair and was stuck in a wheelchair. Worse of all, I remember us taking her to an old folks home and how sad she looked to be there. I hated that place. I hated how sad she was and how happy she would get to see us only to get upset when we’d leave. No one should be forced into that…
At her funeral, my grandpa was still alive and he sat me on his lap. He was always the kindest person to me. He would always say that I was special and going to grow into something beautiful and worthwhile. That day though he told me not to be upset. That death was unavoidable and that he too would die. I remember crying and breaking down at that point. How he lifted my chin and told me not to cry. He then asked me to be brave and make him a promise.
I trusted that man more then anyone. He had always there when I needed him and always seemed to know when something was bugging me. Told me that I never had to be afraid because he was bigger then anyone who could ever harm me… My god, I still miss him.
So I agreed to make a promise. He asked me to promise not to cry when he would die. And I promised because he had never steered me wrong before and I knew he never would.
-That day he died I felt like my heart stopped beating. The air tasted poisonous and stale. The sky was even a sickly gray and when I went to school nothing mattered. The kids that bullied me, the spit balls, the dirt and ripped out hair- I don’t remember feeling any of it but I knew it happened. 
Later that week was his funeral. I was let out of school early for it and it was constantly switching between rain and drizzle. Everything felt gray and lifeless. Then came my turn in line to stare down into the filled casket.
The casket was only opened on the top. Everyone muttered ‘how peaceful’ he looked. All I could see was that he was gone. Taken from me. The one man in the entire world that never threatened me with my life, who never raised a hand to harm me, who let me curled up on his belly and sleep there because I felt safe- he was gone.
The one who used to stare down my father and make him leave his property when I ran into his house, he was dead. His face pale apart from the makeup. Those brown eyes that once were so full of life were closed and he laid perfectly still. 
I wanted to shake him. To grab his shoulders and beg god to give him back to me. My face burned but I walked away without a single word and hide in the nearest closet under all the guests jackets.
I felt like crying but no tears came. I felt alone. As if a large piece of me died with that old man that I cared for. Perhaps it did.
The door was opened and I was discovered and pulled out. I was told to cry and let my feelings out. That it was okay and expected. I never cried. I shook my head and the day went on just a bleak as ever.
Everyone there insisted that I cry. I actually received glares when I told them I wouldn’t. Never once did I explain myself. Promises were like secrets weren’t they? Best kept hidden and I was so upset with it all the my throat was tight. I wanted to be with him even as they threw dirt over his coffin but I stayed in back, away from them all- and then I heard my dad’s truck.
I panicked but didn’t know which way to go. The sound died and I was in the drizzle looking for a way around all these people and suddenly dad was there in front of me. A smile on his face. My voice already was failing me all day, why should it work now? Why was my dead feeling suddenly overwhelmed with panic- I didn’t know.
Mom came over and for a moment I was saved. It was weird. The two of them talking. I can’t even remember what was said but the tone was not friendly. I don’t recall who took me back to school. I hardly remember anything the rest of that day but the next day the names would come.
Monster. Hell Spawn. Bitch. So many names more and some of those were even by my sitter. She called me horrible things because mom liked to gossip. This time it was about my lack of tears. I should have told someone about my promise but my voice was lost to me. I let them step on me. I let her flick my head and insult me before making me sit in time out for an hour. 
I was alone in my world. The divorce had been awful. Neither side had wanted me until the judge decided that my brother and I were to be together. Suddenly both wanted me. I wanted no one but I had to choose one evil or the other. I went for mom. Only a fool would side with the man that knew how to beat them and then lay out what clothes were to be worn to hide the bruises. 
My grades wavered. I paid for it. I hated myself so much that I suddenly plotted my own death. I heard someone talk to me but no one was there- I checked the stalls one by one and no one. Had I lost my mind? To want to die so badly only to hear someone tell me not to do it?
The years went by and mom and dad’s brief encounters got out of hand. So much yelling and threatening. One time they never even switched who had us. Another time, dad tried to run mom over with the truck just after we got into it. Eventually mom got a new lover and he accompanied us to make dad act civil. 
I sometimes wish she hadn’t. I hated being thrown into my room but how could I tell anyone that my own father scared me? That he hurt me?
I couldn’t. No one would believe me. Mom might have possibly but she always did act like it never happened before, why should she ever care now? Not after all the years I told everyone whenever a mark was seen that I got hurt on the playground. I think only the substitute teacher ever caught on since she started hanging around me more often when she was there and kept asking questions that I felt I could never answer honestly.
In middle school- no one ever pretended to remember me. Dad moved out of state and suddenly that meant we have to live with him the whole summer and with mom the school year. My joy was unseen.
I was still picked on by my peers who never even knew my name. I had food thrown at me, I was rammed into lockers, I even was punched in the face till my glasses broke. I had to tape them together like the typical comic book cliche kids that were bullied.
I never reported anyone. I was afraid no one would believe me and even then I had become accustomed to abuse. I wore long sleeves all the time and rubber bands on my wrist. I’d snap them when I felt like cutting. My wrist were always red.
Kids stole my homework to copy it or just pain took it and later thank me for my work in a mocking tone. I stopped caring about myself and my hair was long. People still ripped it out and spread rumors that I had lice.
My wrist was so raw. I eventually switched to gym wrist bands so I’d stop snapping myself. No one noticed and no one cared. I had to make new friends every year because no one remembered me since I was with my brother and dad every summer. Even then, my friends at the time made fun of me and cheated off me but I didn’t care. I just wanted to not be alone.
Middle school was ending. I took to ripping my own hair out. I tore into scabs and watched the blood. I accepted that my mom would have let me died when I finally started having my period and thought I was going to die a few years before. No one ever told me about it- unless it was something I missed hearing because of my depression about my grandfather. I thought mom would help me- she told me I was going to be fine and sleep. I bled through all my underwear and was finally scared again for my life.
One day she told me to wear pads and to stop worrying. Pads? What was that? Eventually she threw me a case and told me to read it. I didn’t know what to feel till grandma said it was going to happen every month and it was natural.
I cried. It hurt. I cramped up so bad at school that I threw up. I could hear everyone talking but I didn’t know what was said. I hated myself again and eventually someone came to get me.
Summer eventually came and dad picked us up at the halfway point in another state. His house changed again. He finally had a stable girlfriend. She was nice- why was she ever with him? I never knew and I’m still not sure but she seems to be making him into a better man now then he was that year.
Father came home raging mad one night. I should have minded my tongue but I was so close to finishing Swamp Thing that I told him no. He reminded me why I should be silent and obey but first he had to finish his beer… I wished he wouldn’t have or at least would have been decent enough to choke on it.
I was in much pain. I couldn’t breath properly when he dragged me into my room. The door slammed. I recalled screaming and more pain. I remember curling into a ball and sobbing my heart out. I wanted to die but I had to live. Heaven help me should I go and leave my brother alone in his clutches. If anyone had to get the stick it might as well be me. I opened my mouth and knew better. I was used to it and should he harm the person who I had come to love that was taking my grandfather’s place in my heart then I would be useless. Completely useless. Just like my parents said I was.
Still I cried all night. I could not sleep. I was choking on my sobs despite his threat to kill me. His girlfriend had snuck in when he fell asleep to apologize to me. To me- I couldn’t believe it. She even brought me food but I couldn’t eat. I was far too gone in my mangled sorrow to even try but somehow my stomach had something to barf up. But I always swallowed. It was revolting but if I got anything on the floor or walls- it’d be more then my puke I’d be cleaning up.
When he eventually left for work I was told I was allowed out of my room and the woman explained to me that the reason he had gotten so upset with me was not because of my rebellious no but because a cop had given him a ticket. I had my ass handed to me for a ticket. At least now I could go into the bathroom and puke properly.
Ugh- Eventually he came home to call me more names. He insulted my mother, something I came to expect over the years, and then he compared me to her. That was the meanest thing he done. He could have broken my arm and spit on me but he compared me to her like she compared me to him. All the negative traits, all their shit, it was inside me.
And I didn’t want to believe either of them. I never wanted to be like either of them. But I was afraid they were right. I was breaking and I could see them inside of myself. Every time I felt like hurting someone, felt like burning the world to the ground and dancing in the ashes, every demented thought that breathed into my mind…
But this time after I was chucked back into my room I stared at the empty bed across from mine where my brother slept and realized something. How could the people that raised me hate their own creation so much? Was it because they were never really around to till nightfall? If I really did die, would they turn on my brother and not take any blame or would it all be my fault? Maybe they would all live happily.
It was getting confusing for me but I knew I needed to change myself. Maybe not externally but I needed to try and feel less dead inside. Not for myself but for my brother.
School sucked as usual. My glasses were broken again and this time the male kids were getting grotesque, telling me to suck their dicks so they could piss in my mouth like the dirty whore they thought me to be. I still hated them and wished death upon them only to remember I shouldn’t. I was raised to turn the other cheek and let it happen and I did for as long as I could. Sometime though that animal inside of you breaks lose and you find yourself beating the shit out of someone who’s pulling your hair. 
Thank god the bus driver took my side and didn’t report me. The other kid was kicked off the bus. No one else spoke to me for a while but eventually the rumors were coming back but this time I didn’t care.
I cut my hair short. It looked stupid and still managed to poke me in the eyes. I wore rubber bands again and sometime put ice on my wrists. I went to wearing short sleeves and camo pants. I still hated everyone- except my brother and grandparents that remained but I hardly ever saw them.
Eventually my sitter moved away. I was the only kid in high school forced to still go to one until that point. A part of me didn’t mind. She was paying me to help her because she felt bad for me. 
Someone must have caught on to my depression because a counselor started stalking me. I was eventually pulled out of class and asked questions. Again I lied and said everything was fine. I smiled all day and acted cheery after that for several more days just to make her go away.
Why did I lie? I feared what my mother told me once. That if I ever said anything against her or called anyone that she’d let them take me away and put me someplace far worse. I believe her. After all, some place worse? What level of hell awaited me if I told the truth?
I started dying my hair lighter blonde. I got teased for that but I didn’t care.  It beat hurting myself. I started wearing more black. I smiled more often in time but was feeling uptight. I took to hiding in my own room without orders. All my homework was done in class and I stared at my ceiling for hours. The pink walls, which I asked to be any color but pink when we moved again, would bleed to purple and eventually to nothing but shadows. I couldn’t sleep. My past was haunting me. Everything said against me, the kids at school, the deaths that happened, all those people I once called friends and still think of as such just because they let me sit with them at lunch or near them on the bus when they rode.
I had to listen to my CD player to even try to sleep and even then I would often quietly sing along. One day mom burst into my room and ripped the headphones off my head and threw everything aside. She screamed at me for being so noisy that she couldn’t sleep. Her room was on the other side of the house. She told me to sleep and slammed my door shut and I was just grateful she left it at that.
I disobeyed the next night but made sure to have it low enough to hear her coming. I stayed under my sheets and talked to her when she came to make sure I was obeying but she never came all the way inside. She closed the door and I was relieved but still unable to sleep.
That went on for months. The circles under my eyes got darker and more violet in hue. People thought I was finally wearing makeup. Gah, what a disgusting thing makeup was in my mind. Luring people in to think you are one way when really your not. It was also something the dead had no choice in wearing. But I know now that isn’t what it was for- but back then. I hated it so much but I hated a lot of things as is obvious by now.
High school holds so many twisted memories for me. It was when my father decided to call me and tell me that he didn’t want me any more. So we dropped off my brother and I cried for two reasons. He could finally show me that I was no longer worth having around and secondly, he took the one person I loved and could no longer protect.
That summer my old sitter came to visit me. She told me something that both relieved and broke my heart. That the man I called father was not my dad after all and I knew she was telling me the truth. Mom was not home and my step-dad was mowing. I made my sitter and her husband some fresh cranberry orange bread and we talked about the past. She apologized for things and I cried in front of her and felt so stupid for doing so. All the years of trying not to cry in front of anyone who was not beating me, and I was sobbing like a baby in front of these two people who practically raised me after my grandfather died.
Suddenly my life made a little more sense to me. Dad hated me so much because I was not his. He loved my brother because he was. My mother hated me because I was one of her biggest mistakes. How could either of them love or care for a giant mistake despite how much I used to try and make them happy. How I used to throw myself at their feet and bring home decent marks on my report cards but that one C damned me each time. I changed so much about myself. I protected my brother as best as I could and when I couldn’t I would get paddled and sent to my room.
Fuck, it all made some stupid amount of sense to me and I cried. As awkward as it was, I cried and my old sitter hugged me. She never knew how bad it was but she was starting to get the picture. I hated myself for opening up to her and she left after a few hours. Suddenly I felt sick and alone again but it felt as if I knew why.
My brother came back and he was taller but suddenly talked less. What had ‘father’ done to him? I asked but never got much of an answer but our hugging was long and silent. What torture happened to him that I failed to prevent? Hopefully that man loved him enough not to harm my little brother.
School was back again but I had made online friends over that summer. I suddenly felt a little less gloom and doom. I wore tie-dye and camo together calling myself a freedom fighter but was too stupid to know any better. Teachers seemed to like me more because I was getting more talkative and active in class. I stopped eating anything but dinner. My weight dropped and I drank water whenever I got hungry.
I became more sickly then I ever had been but I felt like I was just starting to find myself. My sitter gave me the key and I was peeking around the corners of my soul like I could become something more at long last.
Kids still picked on me but less. They were actually starting to learn my name. It was weird and some kids that used to be my friends were my friends again. We were the outcasts of the outcasts. My C was gone for a brief moment and then I don’t know what happened.
I hated myself again suddenly. Life was dark for seemingly no reason and I cried every night again and begged god to save me. For what I was unsure but I needed help. One problem though, I was never going to ask for it.
My mood got out of control and suddenly my step-dad and I were arguing. I don’t recall what started it, no doubt my fault, and… I was scared. Things cooled down between us but I was getting more violent with myself again. I ripped out more hair, and actually started slapping myself in the face, went back to biting my wrists, and I howled into pillows. I couldn’t stop myself. I was suicidal again and taking pills from the cabinets. I took many but always at different times because although I was suicidal a part of me stayed sane enough to not want to. That part must have also been smart enough not to get caught because no one ever noticed the abundant lack of pills.
I was sleepy all the time but couldn’t at home. I passed out in classes but mostly in History. I now had two C’s I got screamed out for though one was verging on a D. Poor boring American history and sleep deprived me. 
I still wasn’t eating anything but dinner at home. I lied and said I ate lunch but I saved the money to get out of there along with what I earned working for my old sitter. Eventually my art teacher found out about my lack of eating thanks to my traitorous stomach that growled so loudly no one could hear themselves talk. They all stared and eventually she started making me eat crackers in her class before she’d let me leave. Always at least three. Despite drinks and food not being allowed in class, she eventually pulled me aside and asked me to bring in something. I started drinking lemonade and cranberry juice in class. Everyone was jealous but too dumb to figure out why for themselves.
Eventually I joined book club and made friends with the librarian who got me into many good books. I read more. I had to keep a lot of the books away from my mother or she would tell me how horrible I was for reading things about other worlds, magic, and fantasy creatures. How could she hate something so wonderful? Or murder mysteries? Or death itself? What- wait, I was becoming fond of things that were terribly tabu in my parents eyes again. 
I loved the idea of magic, other religions, creatures, even death no longer frightened me so badly and I came to embrace the idea when it involved others, after all, none of it was real. My fondness for books was rekindled and I felt more lost in them then ever as well as cartoons and anime. I longed for a better world again. I wished to be free of it all, to unshackle myself from reality and be something…something so much more!
But every time the story ended. Each time the show would close and I would be… me. I was a nobody who couldn’t even like who and what they saw in the mirror. The mirror- fuck how I became terrified of it after a while. When I stopped sleeping at night I started to see things in time, especially in mirrors. I saw something in myself that creeped me out. Something too ugly for words but I stopped looking into them for a long time. I started looking into the sink and avoiding reflective surfaces. 
I eventually started to sleep again but the marks under my eyes stayed. In fact, I still have them but they get lighter the more I sleep though I think they will never fully go away. 
Mom eventually told me that I used to talk in my sleep which reminded me that when I was little, dad once told me that he always found me crying in my sleep. He said it with a smile. 
Ugh- my mood is lifting. I feel better for venting but I also feel like I am betraying myself. As if writing it all down goes against something inside of me. Perhaps   because no one should ever have to be burdened with my sorrows. Maybe I can stop feeling so damn demented as if my skull is splitting into two and fight over who I am finally going to be? I don’t know… I still don’t know what to think of myself. Maybe I never will or maybe I’ll write more the next time I feel like hurting myself? I just might learn something or at the very least… Maybe I’ll find out why I hate myself.