Confession: A Brief History Lesson (2)

When mom did find out, and saw I was flunking all my classes, she went ballistic. She’d abuse me. She’d called me a terrible daughter and accused me of making her out to be a horrible mother, because of course people would see my failures as hers. She called my father that same day and told him, ” I can’t handle her anymore. I want her out of my house! She’s your problem!” Of course, it stung being tossed out by my mother. I was disposed of at my Grandmothers house and moved into the room upstairs and across from my father back in the city I had grown up in. Dad was seeing someone from work, and divorce papers where being filed. Everything felt doomed to me.

Dad was still drinking and mom’s entire side of the family had disowned me. She’d told them that I had been the one to chose to live with my father and betrayed her. Now, I was isolated with the abuse and the alcoholism. Anytime I would talk about mom, even missing her, it was a trigger for abuse. Any time I had any sort of bump in the road, it was met with abuse. It was constant. I started at the Public High School in my home town, where I knew a few people. Despite my attendance and grades going up, I was falling into a depression.

Things get hazy from here in my memory. While I was still living at my Grandmothers I was disobeying my curfew regularly. I’d be at parks till all hours of the night and talking with friends I had made at school. At night I would sneak in and out of the house through windows. Dad was usually never home during this time because he was out with this woman he was seeing and her son. As angry as Grandma would get when she caught me, she never said a word, I think because she’s seen my Father abuse me so many times. To this day I don’t know if she ever said anything to him about it or not. She was a fairly quiet and submissive wife in her time, and her husband had been a bad alcoholic.

Somehow, my parents ended up working things out in the end and got back together a day before their divorce papers where to be finalized. I honestly do not remember what it was like, all of us moving back in together. I guess by then it didn’t much matter to me anymore where I was. I felt like I had been betrayed by both of them, and by now I was totally detached from the whole family. I got to continue attending the High School in my hometown even though it was a commute because I wasn’t skipping and I had gotten back on the honor role. I was thankful enough for that, without it I don’t think it would have been tolerable.

At this time there was a slight lull in all the drama, but right before the close of my freshman year there was one last tornado. My best friend was diagnosed with some rapid muscular degenerative disease that would have left him completely cripple in only a few years. After telling me this diagnosis he gave me a letter saying how much he loved me, and the he had to leave but I needed to stay no matter what happened to find the joy in living. Above all he wanted me to be happy, to never forget who I was and that he would always be watching over me. After I read the note I had this sick feeling in my stomach, that sort of feeling that something is horribly wrong. It was; he ended his life later that night.

When I found out I was inconsolable. Something in me just snapped, and maybe that snap was long over due. I wasn’t able to even think straight, only cry and feel like if this was the way life was, cold and lonely and filled with so much hurt, what was the point? He was right to check out, and so should I. Eventually I got sent to the Youth Psychiatric Ward.