My life is a well-known tragedy. I’m sure mine is no different than others. I am just another blip in the motion picture. A soul floating in this abyss we all call life. I am not important and I have changed nothing about this world but I do have something to say. Things have changed much sense I was little. I am no longer naive and innocent. I have made mistakes that could take the breath of person simply away. I like so many have lived. In fact I’m sure we all have. We all live, change and die. We die and we left in ashes or dirt to deal with our after life, whatever that is we believe. It is scary for me that we can leave so quickly. I think to the idea of immortality. To never die would be so sad. In our life we are here and then we are gone. It’s so unpredictable and sudden. It is beautiful. And with that I say I would rather be the person I am tomorrow, whoever that may be, than be the person I was yesterday…because that person isn’t me.

I was five years old. It was darkening as the car pushed on and turned into the night. I could hear them fighting. My parent’s angry worlds like knives into the air. I could hear my sister crying in her car seat. There was the smell of stale liquor and cigarette smoke. I can remember that I couldn’t breathe. I had been crying so hard that my lungs were in a state of panic. My lips were chapped from wet tears and cold air. I was freezing. They had the window open and it was cold outside. In fear I could not tell them that I did not feel good. I couldn’t breathe. I felt so helpless. I was so small and I did not understand at the time, the dark things that ranked across my parents memories.

They had trapped themselves in their marriage. I can never understand how two people can live in that. All they ever did was hurt each other and yet they stayed together. My mother would tell you it was because she had no choice. I have never believed this. I believe that she didn’t know how else to live. The hardest part for me was when she left. She left me alone in the darkness of a drunk and angry man. I was left to him and she went off to find herself. I remember that night most of all because it was then I realized how bad it really was. They both just kept yelling and telling each other they were wrong. I remember they were like children. I remember looking at them and saying, “You could stop…just stop this.”

I was terrified. The world was so complex and I was so little. And when my father hit her I could do nothing but tell her to stop yelling. I could do nothing but defend him. In my own mind I rationalized that he was bigger and she was not going to be able to defend herself. She had to stop! I wailed and cried out. I cried so hard my whole chest heaved as though it were going to explode. They continued to avoid me. They fought on as the car drove into the dark night, cloaking us from peoples helping hands. In my mind I prayed someone would see. I prayed someone would yank me from my mother and father. Out of this ugly world and into something kind and pleasant. Anywhere would be different. I wanted out. It was then I began to scream. I screamed my head off. It was a nightmare my voice. I retched out until I felt vomit in my throat. My parents were silenced. They turned to me from the front of the car. My mother’s face expressed shock while my father showed rage. The car stopped in front of our small trailer home.

“What the hell is wrong with her!” he got out and slammed the car door hard. My mother tried to stand up for me the best she could. But I was spanked hard put in the corner and was told I was bad. I was told I was bad for yelling. Yelling like they do…

It was hard to go to school that next day. Teacher’s eyes looked at me with irritation and judgment. They did not understand my random outburst. I was a bad child. I was a kid who was written off as a hopeless case. I remember hearing them talk about me. They complained about my clothes and dirty hair. I remember hating them. Once I got in trouble for taking food from lunch and hiding it for later. They told me I was stealing. I did not understand. I felt as though it was my choice as to whether I ate my food then or later. They felt very differently about that.
It was around this time my teachers began to ask me questions about my home. I remember the nice short haired older lady. She would bring me into her small room with bees on the wall and ask me all kinds of questions. I never told her truth. I was silent in fear of my father.
It was a hot afternoon soon before the end of school right after play time. When I broke and told her of my mommy and daddies bad things. I told her how they yelled and beat each other. I told her about the smell of liquor and smoke. I told her of the bad man that touched me when no one was there. I told her all of it and again I could not breathe. I cried to her, begging her to take me and my sister from that bad place. I held onto her arm like a monster and screamed at her…save me. She sent me back to class and I waited for it. I waited for that help. I waited for someone to save me…nobody came. I refused after that to see her again. It wasn’t so long after that I was removed from school and placed in home school where I learned nothing. I remember crying to my mother to let me go back to school. I hated being there, in that house. I wanted nothing more than to get out. Oh so many times I reached out. I told so many people of my home life. Nobody helped me. It was awful to think that no one would save me. Until finally I gave up and I like so many conformed to it.

It was a year or two later when my mother left and I stayed with Arron. Arron was now my main care provider. He filled out three pages and went to a judge. I could accept that but that didn’t mean he was any better. He would always find and date different woman. They were always together for a while but then it didn’t work because it never worked. They always left then but oddly it never bothered me. They moved out and I was left there in that house.

Years went by. I soon learned to bury my pain and shut it away. It was a sore that I kept tonguing at. It was a feeling I could not get away from. And every time I lied about it, it felt so painful and awful; it was almost like breaking my fingers. I would lie about my father’s booming voice telling me how useless and ugly I was. I would lie about the rotting food on the floor and how my sister wet the bed. I buried the truth to abandon my reality and reality was my fingers were broken.

My fingers were like my mind. I needed them to do things. I needed my fingers to fix things and do things. But my mental fingers were broken, each and every one of them. Not in a literal sense but emotionally and mentally. My hands weren’t tied, no not at all. My fingers were broken. I was incapable of being honest. I did not know how to be truthful. I did not know how to tell the truth. My father had robbed me of those gifts.

It was my third grade reading teacher who I finally felt the wrath of how bad it is to lie. It was sometime in the week and she asked me why I had missed so many days of school and I told her my family member had lost of loved one in Chicago and I was at a funeral. Of course she believed me. Later she found that was not true so angered she confronted me.

“Why did you lie to me?” she said “I thought we were friends.” In that moment I heard my mother’s enraged voice in my head. “Don’t lie! Liars go to hell because they are bad!!” instantly I cried. I ran to the bathroom in pain and again I could not breathe. She then fallowed me asking me why I had lied. I cried and cried. I fell down on the ground with my head against the cold concrete. I then came up with a totally different story. I told her my mother was sick and I had to take care of her. This was a lie as well. My mother was gone. I hadn’t seen her in months. But I was too embarrassed to tell her the truth. The truth was much more simple and yet so complicated.

The truth was my father was a drunk and loser and could not get up in the morning to take us to school. I had tried to wake him up I really did but he just lay there. I missed six days of school because of him. I was so ashamed. It was not the end of this lying. I continued to lie about things. I made my life so much worse than what it was because it made more sense than being truthful and saying my father was a dirty broken man who made me feel ugly and stupid and insecure about everything from my body to my feelings. I could not tell them my mother had abandoned me for a man I did not know. I could not tell them the truth. The truth was absurd and the truth wasn’t going to pull me from that bad place. I figured if I told them of my crazy stories they would take me away. This was the case but it was not the case I had pictured it in. In the end I suffered more than I ever should have.

I had begun to break and crumple much like my mental fingers. I was losing my mind no one could help me…I was lying to get away from everything. I was trying to live my stories because they went along the pain I felt. It was the only way I could survive. Until it hurt so bad that I finally buried myself. I went to my school counselor and told her I had been attacked to get out of school. I can’t tell you the logic in this but I needed out. I needed to go home so I could kill myself.

They not so soon later stuck me in a mental hospital. A small caged in place that I stayed for maybe two weeks. They were little help for me. As it continued my “compulsive lying” got worse and worse. I could literally not control it. I faked seizures, make myself vomit had tantrums in class. I was so broken and so helpless. God I needed help. It was no longer a habit it was an addiction. I very bad condition I could not stop. And again I could not breathe.

It was in June shortly after my last visit to the hospital. My step father Larry was outside with his friend Knox and short bearded guy I liked a lot. I had been to three mental hospitals and through a collection of medication. I was standing in my bathroom looking in my mirror. The face looking back me was ugly. I hated that monster in the mirror, and I could not remove her. It was then I realized I was killing my family. That monster in the mirror wasn’t me. Not really she was something in me I could not remove.

I was going to be with her forever but my family didn’t have to be. I ran to my mom and dad’s room and collected all the medication. One by one I swallowed them. I lost count after thirty. Each of them felt like bugs as they slid down into me. I remember thinking about taking off my clothes because I was going to get in my tub but I didn’t want them to find me naked so I kept them on and climbed in. I wanted to be warm but the water wouldn’t get hot enough. Minutes passed and I felt the heaviness in my chest. It was a strange ach. The world was a cartoon as I found myself slowly drifting. Was this what dying felt like? I felt tired but not like I was dying. I closed my eyes and fell into darkness. It was then I heard my dad Larry. He was yelling at me but I couldn’t understand him. He was yelling at me to wake up. It was then I felt the cold water. It sprayed down on me and hit my face. I jolted up and stared into his terrified face.

Later the ambulance came and I was hoisted up and was instantly shipped to Osage Hospital. I was made to drink coal that tasted awful and made my stomach very sick. I pooped black and had awful migraines. I went from there to Columbia Hospital, where I was in intensive care for almost three weeks. From there I was sent to the Columbia Mental Ward and there I received treatment. I almost died that night.

If I could change I would. If I could take all the pain and hate I would. If I could go back and redo everything I would but I can’t. Every day of my life but I can’t. I have changed in ways most can’t imagine. A few years ago most would have thought I wouldn’t make it to thirty. Today the people see me as a well behaved, wonderful kid who tries hard and had probably lived a completely normal life. Some of my friends look at me as a beacon of hope. But they don’t know who I was.

It’s easier to run from it. It’s easier to pretend that I am something I am not. I guess in a way I am still living a lie but I don’t think I can live another way. Everything I have done shapes me today. It makes me who I am. I am not a bad person and I am not going to hell. I have forgiven my father for his choices, I love my mother step father and I respect them with every fiber of my being. The people in my world now love me for who I am. And I am ashamed of whom I was but I am not afraid of it anymore.

It is now not so hard to breathe. I am forming into my own person. They say things can’t grow beneath the winter but I disagree, because I am still in my winter and I am growing stronger and stronger. I’m here to say that our mistakes shape us yes. They ensure that we have courage and bravery. They make us better people. We learn from them…

I don’t plan on going out and helping people like me. I don’t plan on saving lives and beings some kind of hero. I can’t do that. I don’t have that in me. At this point in my life I have done so many things wrong I am still very much so learning right from wrong. I don’t know who I want to be. I have no plans for my future other than living because at this point I can’t say everything is better and I have a lot to do. But I have found peace. I have found a peace inside of me called love. It is inside of me and all around me. I have hope and I am ready to take flight. As my childhood now comes to an end I now know what I have to do to get better and when I smile it’s real. It’s me and my fingers…they aren’t broken anymore. I am stronger now. Sometimes they hurt when it gets cold but I’m ok…I’m ok. I am going places and I’m not scared…