Note: Untitled note
There's a scar in the corner of my right eye. Its in the shape of a cresant moon. Strange, I know. I remember throughout school my friends used to point it out and say I must be the female Harry potter (Harriet Potter) and it was unique. They talked about it as if it were a fashion accessory that they could try on and take off. I always smiled and pretended that their words were compliments to me and it was a part of my "quirky" personality, but inside the words were painful jabs and reminders of what that scar meant and what was forever missing from me.
My friends wondered why it was just my mother and me. At sporting events and recitals, their parents filled the crowds with cheers and bouquets to shower upon them. I was envious of their lives and good fortune. The first time they asked me about my father, my face drained of all color and I turned into a ghost, quivering and anxious, I prayed to disappear but I was trapped in that moment. What do I say? These girls were given affection endlessly, with hugs and kisses from parents who asked about their day, who held them through heartbreak and sorrow, who brushed their hair behind their ears without thinking, just because. Half of me was missing. The scar they so mindlessly and idiodically talked about came from a terrible car accident when I was still so little, I had to ride in a car seat.
The winding roads of the Pennsylvania backcountry were tricky even in the best of conditions, but that fateful night in the middle of a brutal winter, there lay a deadly blanket of white on the road. I remember only this. The radio was on, a soft murmur in the background and my fathers voice smooth as silk and sweet as honey intertwining in the mix. My mother was knitting him a hat for his birthday; blue his favorite color. I didn't remember that part though. Years later I was told about the events of the accident when my mother got very drunk and yelled at the world. She threw a bottle of liquor against the wall. I huddled in the corner, watching her tirade and drunken storm rage through the house. I watched the glass shatter and rain on the carpet. I was seven.
My father wanted to be a musician but never had that dream realized. Music saved his life, as those closest to him would say. Before the last remaining family members related to him passed on, I was told endless stories of his life. He grew up in an abusive household, watching his father beat his mother senselessly like clockwork. When he was twelve, his uncle killed him with a hammer and walked into the police station to turn himself in. Times were hard for his family after that as the breadwinner of the family was gone. His mother worked any shift she could pick up but that left him and his two siblings unsupervised. As he grew older he dabbled in a da gerous side of life, selling and doing drugs. They were his escape, the place his mind could fly off too when my grandma cried over bills or his sister cried from hunger. Nothing seemed to take those haunting images from his mind of his father cruelly attacking his mother. His other salvation from the constant bombardment of painful thoughts and emotions was music. He loved to sing and play guitar and was quite good. The only classes he excelled in were music related, but sadly music lost to his growing addiction.
He made some bad choices and paid the price. He was caught stealing and at seventeen was going to be sent to prison on a slew of charges. His life seemed over, short and worthless at this point, years wasted and a future lost. But, he was offered a chance, an oppertunity to turn his life around for the better and make something of himself. He jumped at the offer, coming from the man he tried to rob.
My father worked hard for him, pouring his sweat and soul into his work. Two years passed and he was drug free, healthier, happier, and feeling fulfilled. He had a contract with the man and after his five years of service, he'd he free to pursue his love of music. Matters were complicated when his girlfriend, my mother, got pregnant. He was overjoyed, they told me. He was going places and starting a new, better life. He married my mom and a few months later I was born, the greatest joy he had ever known. He tried to get out of the contract earliar, wishing to move on with his life and new family but his boss was firm and required he stay. Not long after, our car veered off the embankment and tumbled into a grove of thick trees. They tell me he died instantly. They say he didn't feel a thing. It was a miracle. My mother and I survived. It was a miracle, they said.
How could I tell anyone this? When they asked me where my dad was, I learned to perfect a lopsided smilez one that tries for spunky positivity but with a winning side of aching and longing that is all too visible. I tell them he walked out on my mom and me when she was pregnant with me, fearing commitment. I guess it was easier to tell them that my dad was the villain instead of living with an alcoholic, abusive, and clinically depressed mother who see as passed you.
My mother was an only child, adopted by an older couple, so they were dead not long after I was born, and over the years my fathers relatives sailed into a sea I couldn't cross, a horizon I longed to reach. I was alone and so terribly lonely. The sound of my mother stumbling drunk and cursing the sky left a dark cloud over the house. I was alone, with only her for company. It became too much pain to bear on my shoulders alone. I ached for an escape and I found one. This...this was the first sign.
I rushed into the bathroom, a hot and heavy feeling of anxiety and helplessness crushing me and contorting my heart from the inside. I grabbed a blade and slashed my wrists, cutting as deep as I could. I pushed through the fires tearing through my wrists and dug deeper, feeling my life collapse before me. The horizon of my dreams, the hope I could reach was before me. I cut for the boat that'd sail me to warmer shores, and collapsed on the floor, bleeding and exhausted. My head rested against the wall, years streaming down my face, waiting for death to come, but it never did. The horrible pain of my wrists were gone, disappearing like a cloud of smoke after a fire. I stared in disbelief at my wrists, but they were unblemished. There was no cut and no more bleeding.
I thought I was losing my mind. I thought I was going insane. The scene played over and over again in my head and the sensation of metal against flesh was so vivid so...real. what was going on with me? somehow I must have missed something, and I didn't actually go through with my suicide attempt. I desperately cleaned up the blood and locked myself in my room, shaking with freight, trying to erase the images from my mind. I stayed awake that night, watching shadows dance across the wall like a dark puppet show of controrting shapes and erratic movements, counting down the days until my seventeenth birthday. Just a few weeks.
At school, I tried to play it cool but I was visibly on edge and ready to crumble. My friend suggested I take some pills from her father's medicine cabinet to mellow out, but I declined. I wasn't foggy or in a haze, everythig around me was growing sharper and I was more in tune with the world around me. I soon realized that what happened in the bathroom was real. I wasn't some crazy person about to lose their last grip on reality. I tried multiple times to Injure myself but I was left unscratched every time. The next sign was my senses to the people around me. The air was electrified and I could read the pulses sent out by the people around me. I can't explain it, it's like their auras were suddenly detectable by whatever was inside of me that was causing all of this. The vibes rolling off my friends weren't surprising, they had a shallow range, not fully developed, not good but definitely not insidious. They were weak people.
I stopped talking to anyone. I avoided all persons around me, ditching my friends and putting myself in a voluntary isolation. The signals were deafening and I wanted nothing more than to stop feeling every goddamn thing. I wanted to stop consuming the fear and anger in the air, my home nightmare was now playing out everywhere and I couldn't bear this load too. I couldn't keep up. I tried to stay positive and count the days till my birthday, even though I had much less to look forward to than before. I'd still be a minor, Mom would be drunk and now my "friends" were angered by my attitude and cancelled the party. Amber told me that I needed a serious attitude adjustment and to get over myself. I ignored her and walked away. It didn't bother me as much as I thought it should, and there was some comfort in not caring what they thought. Anyway, Amber was a bitch.
The last sign was troubling. Around me the world was heading toward it's cataclysmic disaster and I didn't even realize what was about to unravel before me.
FTFY