"It's going to be Ok, It's going to be Ok, I'm going to be fine. Just breathe in, breathe out. It's not my fault. It's not my fault. It's not my fault. Just breathe."
My eyes are closed now. I'm wishing I had the powers to transport myself as far away from that house as possible. I am almost chanting in my head now, a breathing pattern to calm me down. I'm sitting in some sort of fetal position with my back pressed against the wall. At the time it felt like my bedroom walls were the only thing protecting me from harm, but even the walls could not drown out the words of hatred and yelling being carried throughout the rest of the house. I feel like those hallways will always be haunted with these memories.
Sometimes singing songs in my head helped, but sometimes it made me cry even harder. With every slam, bang, scream or clash my body tightened with fear in an effortless rhythm. I just sat there waiting, waiting, waiting...ok here it comes and then my door would be thrown open and for the next ten minutes everything would be blamed on me. By this point, my mother has made a dramatic, and loud exit out of the house. All I could hear between the yelling and my heart pounding was the door slamming and the tires squealing out of the driveway. More tears. More yelling. If I was lucky that night, I probably didn't get chastised for crying.
This was a very exhausting routine that happened more often than not. How was I supposed to know this kind of shit was probably not normal? That "families" usually do not experience this insane bullshit on a daily basis. It was emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausting for a young girl.
Once my mother returned, more yelling, more fighting. My stepfather has left me feeling lifeless and alone and numb in my room now, to go fight with my mother some more. Then silence. Oh my God, it was so nice. I slowly turned my door knob trying not to make any sound. I barely had a foot out of my door when I stopped dead in my tracks. My mother was sitting at the top of the stairs, which were located just at the end of the hallway down from my room. She was alone, silently crying. I heard her cry for her mother ( who has been dead for years by this time). My heart literally sank into the depths of my stomache. I was filled with a very confusing emotion. I didn't know what to do. I was the child, she was the adult. She is supposed to comfort me, not the other way around. She is supposed to scoop me up in her arms and hold me close, telling me everything will be fine, but SHE was crying. I stayed there, listening to her silently cry and beg for her mother. My heart was breaking. I retreated back into my room and closed the door. I did not know how to handle this.
It didn't seem fair when my sister got to leave for college, and eventually my brother. I was even more alone than before. Not that I ever talked to them about any of this,or that they sheltered me from anything that apparently was going on, but their presence seemed to give me some kind of reassurance that everything would be ok.
A person can only handle so much negativity before they eventually crack and their insides spill out, revealing all that's been growing inside. The day I told my mother I was moving out, and I would be living with my father was a very freeing day. "You know you will have to go to court, and talk to a judge, you know that right?" This was my mother's attempt at scaring me into staying there. She then started blaming herself, saying she was a horrible mother. It wasn't that. I don't really know what it was. It just seemed like a living hell.
I was not Ok. I was a young girl slowly slipping into a very grown up mentality of unhappiness and depression. Looking back on those days I now understand that my thoughts of life, and unhappiness at that age were probably not normal. My behaviors and and my thinking that I needed to punish myself were probably not normal either. I don't think i'm just holding on to these bad feelings and unhappy memories from the past because I want to dwell on them, It is because I don't have very many good feelings or happy memories to hold on to or remember. I have not one, not one single memory to describe to you of my father and mother together. I never saw them kiss, I never saw them lovingly embrace one another and gaze into eachother's eyes. I did not grow up in a 'family'. I grew up in seperation and distance.
I'm sure this will all make sense one day.
