Slipping, I guess?

So I guess I never really considered trying to write out my story anywhere, but maybe getting it all down will help me put it into perspective, help me decide whether or not I can take this, haha. 

I’m turning 17 this December and my most frequent thought is generally that “I’m so young why is everything already so bad.”
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I should be out, enjoying life, enjoying myself, going places with my life, planning for post secondary. 

But nothing is happening, I’m not doing anything. Lack of motivation is a horrible thing isn’t it?

I grew up in Canada, having moved to BC when I was just one year old. My mother was verbally and physically abusive for as long as I remember, telling us how worthless we, me and my brother – who is 4 years older than me – were, and how much she didn’t want us around, how much of a burden we were, so on and so forth. 

Just about every other day, we’d get beat. Either with a wooden spatula or her hands and nails ( so sharp they almost appear to be claws to a child so young ) anything she could get her hands on in the moment. 

One too many times has a knife been pulled on a child far too young to defend themselves from the mother. 

It was only those times that my father would step in, hold her back, tell her if she seriously injured or killed one of us, she would go to prison. 

It sucks, being young and knowing the only reason why your mother hasn’t killed you is because SHE is going to get in trouble for it. 

What gets to me most though, is there was a time where she tried. I was 6 years old, first grade and almost the end of the school year. I don’t remember the exact date, but it was a tuesday. The details about that day are horribly vivid. It was hot outside, sweltering, I’d decided to take a bath, I used to like baths. 

My mother had come inside the washroom, which wasn’t strange. I was small and we only had one washroom. She rummaged around under the sink for a while as I splashed in the cool water. 

She came over to me, and I lit up, maybe she was going to play with me a bit. As much of a monster as she was, she was still my mom and she was still someone whom I loved and wanted to please. 

So she crouched down next to me, snaked on of her hands around my wrists and one on top of my face and shoved until I was submerged. 

Scary thing is I didn’t panic, don’t struggle, not until I was running out of air and tried to wiggle out of her grasp. It didn’t work though, and even at six I knew that mommy was hurting me worse than she ever had. 

What stopped her, you might be wondering? What made her release me and let me up gasping and coughing and crying?

A phone call. The phone rang, and she released me instantly to answer the phone in a lovely chipper tone. I think she might have been expecting that call. 

I sat in the tub for the next three hours, crying and shivering and shaking until my brother came home. I crawled out then and dried myself off and went to my room. 

Rest of the day is blank. I don’t know why I thought of this today, of all days, but I’m assuming it had something to do with the fact that my mom had a chat with me today and ended with a good old, “I should have just ended you when you were little, would have saved both of us the trouble.” 

Thanks mom, you really make me feel aces about still being alive. 

The discussion wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, just the usual “I don’t need you, I almost feel sorry for you, why can’t you be more like Marlee.”

And you know what mom,

You don’t have to berate me on how much like Marlee I’m NOT. 

I ALREADY FUCKING KNOW. 

She’s pretty and thin and smart and determined and has a gorgeous personality and everything I’d love to be but I’m not. 

I know this you don’t have to keep reminding me its shitty enough being her best friend and not being able to have her or be her so please just fucking please stop comparing me to her.

Please

But I digress. I was lifestorying yes?

So my dad used to step in when things got particularly rough to the point of murder. 

He was, well he was absent, a cheater, and a passive aggressive asshole. 

He’d never yell or hit, but if you did something that displeased him, he was going to let you know with a series of merciless quips about your weight and personality until you broke down crying and left the room. 

My parents made it a habit to tell us how the only reason they were in that shitty marriage was because of us, that we were tying them there because we were their obligation. 

Unwanted and a burden, nice thoughts when you’re 7 years old. 

I equated my parents not being happy to me never being good enough. Because things never were good enough. 

Got a B on that test, didn’t hang the coats quite the right way, didn’t peel enough carrots. 

My mother beat me once because I peeled TOO many carrots. Kind of laughable ridiculous, right?

She looked for excuses to hurt us, to relieve her stress. We as children and natural mistake makers, always had an opportunity ready for her, much to our misfortune. 

And every time, without fail, after every single lashing, she’d wait a few hours, then come sulking over to us with apologies and promises to never do it again, to try and understand that mommy was angry and she didn’t mean it. 

We drank that bullshit up. Made us confused as hell, couldn’t quite tell why if mommy loved us so much why did she hurt us so bad?

Why did I have to miss lesson after lesson of swimming because of bruising on my body?

Why was there so much hate inside of her?

Why were we the little soldiers that had to face it all?

But she was sweet as candy, to anybody outside the direct family, people always told me that I had a lovely mother, I would offer them a polite nod and an, “I know.”

Because at the young age of 5, you knew how to keep your mouth shut and hide your bruises. You knew what to say and how to say it. 

You knew how to play all the games no child should ever learn, and you know how to play em damn good. 

So we played a game of hide and seek our entire lives, minus the seek. 

Kept up the grades so I wouldn’t get hit often, like it stopped her, never made any close friends, didn’t know how. Everybody you think you can trust, leaves. 

Everyone always leaves and goes silent. 

Humans are notoriously flaky creatures. 

Silence is survival. 

So when I’m nine years old, dad says he’s going to take me out to dinner, my birthday had been about a week or so back. 

But we make a pit stop, at a family friend’s. My father grew up with the man, they were so close they might have been brothers. But he sets me down there, says he’ll be back in ten minutes at most. 

Ten minutes pass

Then twenty. 

Then and hour. 

Then three. 

Family friend, let’s call him Stewart, gets a phone call. It’s my father, begging him to hold onto me for the night. 

Stewart agrees, my father doesn’t even request to speak to me on the phone. 

I was scared, but I could hear most of the conversation, so I knew I was staying put. 

I didn’t like Stewart, never did. There was something off about him that I sensed even as a kid. 

They say always follow your instincts right? Maybe someone should have listened to mine. 

The night was spent, hands down my pants, not a tear was shed, not a word was said. 

And for years not a word was said. 

Silence is survival. 

My father arrived late the next morning, thanked Stewart for taking me, ushered me into the car. I didn’t say a word to the man I called my father. 

He’d said ten minutes, he left me for the wolves. 

I don’t know if I forgave him or not, I don’t know if there was anything to forgive really. But I’ll have that memory, for god knows how long. 

But it’s there, festering, like a lot of things are, at the back of my mind. 

It’s like a disease. Wonder how long before I late it take over, after all it’s already taken root. 

So a few more years pass, I go through private school for grades three and four by the way, the whole religious stint. 

Failure, made me shy away from religion even more when I came out of it. 

My violence level exploded from grades 5-7. 

I didn’t like something or someone? If I made em bleed it wasn’t a problem anymore. 

I hit high school, around thirteen is when mommy stopped hitting us, after countless one sided battles, when she realized we were getting big enough to fight back. 

Not that I ever could, personally. There’s something inside of me, see, where the three people I can’t cause harm to were my three abusies, I’m not even going to get into the kind of devil my brother was to me. 

He was getting it from my mom, and he poured it onto me. It was a chain and no blame falls upon him. 

Half way through grade 8, struggling with depression and being the loudest most cheerful kid in my grade, I seek out weed. 

Simple to get, cheaper than most things, easy habit to fall into. Got to grade 9, passing, god knows how. Summer was spent in inactivity. 

Beginning of grade nine I started smoking, mostly because I thought they looked pretty, didn’t think it would become a habit. Frequency of drugs picked up, dabbled a bit in mushrooms, ecstasy, coke, the easy stuff. Alcohol too. 

Lost myself for a while, 14 and “living it large”

Picked up cutting that year too, more as a stereotypical fitting in depressed kid thing, didn’t realize how vital it would become in my keeping steady process. 

I moved, the summer of my ninth grade year, mom wanted a place, the divorce happened, parents split, I couldn’t really give a rats ass what they did at that point. 

I quit most of my shit in grade ten, went fairly straight edge and only stuck to occasional weed and cigarettes. 

A year went by, my mom only attacking me once because of grades, first time I’d ever stormed out of the house, crying out of frustration not fear. 

Fear is a crazy word and I’ve only ever felt it once in my life. Like, true terror, the type that has you shaking and screaming and your blood running cold because you’re so so afraid. 

My brother had lost his night light. I suggested checking under his bed, it wasn’t there, my mother instantly pounced on the idea that I had taken it for whatever reason. I was maybe 8? At best? Ages get a little fuzzy in my mind. 

She beat me mercilessly, dragged me into her bedroom as my brother watched and my dad pretended not to see. 

I’d never endured a worse beating in my life. 

She left me on the floor, shaking and crying and hurting and asking myself why me, why did mommy hate me. 

It turns out my brother’s friend had nabbed it, and my mother returned to the room an hour later. 

I’d managed to drag myself to the corner of the room but that’s all I could mange. 

She walked in, turned towards me, and I started screaming. Begging, pleading for her to “please, please mama no, please no more please not again it hurts, please I’m sorry I’m sorry.”

I wouldn’t stop, the crying and the shaking and the yelling. My father had to come in and calm me down as my mother left the room. 

I don’t think I was able to go near her for a few days, but a few shallow apologies and promises for a candy bar and I was sold again, shoving down the incident into that little jar I held up tight inside. 

so we reach now, end of my grade eleven year, failing all my courses, cutting when I need to, chain smoking, and desperately wishing for the courage to just end it. 

I’m tired. Is that the word I can use? Yeah, tired sums it up. I don’t want to do this any more, I hate myself and I’m neutral to the world. There’s nothing for me and I’m tired of waiting for shit to “get better.”

She always tried to have this way of convincing us that we were failures that were never going to go anywhere in life and nothing would ever work out for us. 

Well good for her, because it worked. 

I worked and I’m done.