It could be worse.

My dad is a hardcore alcoholic and I burly ever see my mom. I guess I should start from the beginning. I have an half brother from a different dad who is 18, a half sister who is 17, and a little brother who is 5. I am a 13 year old girl. Growing up in my house wasn’t easy. My dad used to sell drugs and when he did take them he would come home and beat my mother in front of me and my siblings. I remember one time he hit her so hard that she fell into a mirror and broke her nose and ended up with two black eyes. That was fun explaining to the neighbors. When my dad wasn’t hitting my mom, doing drugs, or yelling, he could usually be found at the bar with his other girlfriends. My dad is not an attractive man. He is heavy and short, the only thing women like about him is his money. Although he has never physically abused me or any of my siblings he would say horrible things to us. My parents never married but they had two children together. They broke up and got back together many times before they were finally broken up for good. When I was about 6 years old my mom and dad went out on a date. They were trying to make things work. They left me home alone with a well trusted friend of the family named Micheal. My older brother and sister were living in North Carolina with their father and my little brother was not yet born. Micheal was kind of like an uncle to me but that night he got really drunk and long story short tried messing with me. I of course ran away. Being only 6 years old I wasn’t very smart but I knew he was going to hurt me. I tried to hide in my dads closet but he found me. After I refused to take my clothes off he hit me extremely hard. I fell backwards and hit my head against the wall. I had a concussion and I was bleeding very badly from my head but that didn’t stop him. While I was unconscious he raped me and left me in the closet to die. I woke up later that night naked in the closet and cried until my parents came home. I told my mom and dad what happened and I had to go to therapy for several years. I later found out that after Micheal raped me he got in his car and drove off of a bridge. He died immediately. I’m not sure if he did it out of guilt or just because he was drunk. Anyways, my parents ended up breaking up shortly after that night and my father married a new woman. My dad traveled often and was never home. I never saw my mother either because she was too busy trying to help raise my older sister and brother because their father could no longer financially support them. My stepmother was an evil woman. She knew I was raped and would often call me horrible names. I was only about seven at the time. She would burn me with her cigarettes and cut my arms until she drew blood. I still have many scars from her. I was scared to tell anyone that she was  abusing me because she often threatened to hurt my family. Sometimes she would lock me in a closet and not feed me for weeks because she claimed that I was fat. This continued until I was about 8 years old and finally told my dad what had happened. They got divorced and she went to jail. I never saw her again. Throughout this whole time I really only had one friend who I could tell this stuff to and that was Samantha. Samantha and I had grown up together and she knew everything about me. Samantha had cancer and it had progressively been getting worse. A few years passed pretty uneventfully until about the fifth grade when my cousin Tiffany killed herself because she was being bullied. She was only a year older than me. I remember how hard I cried when I heard the news. I attempted suicide many times never successfully. Finally my life seemed to be getting a little better. Samantha’s Leukemia had went into recession and we thought she was cured. We were wrong though. Samantha, my only friend in the world, had died. After that I felt like I couldn’t take anymore. I had always been a straight A student and now in sixth grade I began flunking classes. I stop giving a fuck about anything. I didn’t even believe in God anymore. I tried to kill myself many more times but never followed through with it. I even took up cutting myself and occasionally I would smoke and drink with neighborhood friends. My dad was always drunk so he never noticed when I snuck out. I had been practically raising my little brother too because my dad was so goddamned irresponsible and my mother was never in the picture. I was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder a few years ago also so I now know that when I had been smoking pot and drinking, I was merely self medicating. My life continued going downhill until I met a girl named Isabella. She is my best friend. She is the only reason I am not dead right now. After all I have been through in my life she has helped me sort out my thoughts and keep me from doing anything stupid. Although I am doing better now my life is still Hell. I am back to getting mostly A’s and B’s and I no longer smoke or drink. Although occasionally when I am in a depressive state I contemplate suicide and maybe cut myself. My dad is still an alcoholic jackass and my mom is still never around but I have hope for a better future. Without hope for a better future I would have nothing. So that’s my story. (And this is the short version! haha) I am now in the 7th grade and doing better. The best advice I can give anyone is this “Life gets better.”