Hard Knock Life?

I don't think my life is - or was - all that difficult. There are people here and beyond that have been through things I could never imagine handling! I just know, though, that the events in my life, small as they are, have had a negative impact on my life. How could they not? I wake up every morning wishing to go back to sleep and walk down the street just hoping for someone to kidnap and murder me. I smile at the idea of not breathing anymore and being somewhere not, well, here.

The biggest traumatic event happened almost three years ago, but I think my darkness stems from well before that. My mom was a 22-year-old white woman from the Midwest and my dad a 17-year-old kid from the Caribbean islands. Race matters because my maternal grandmother is probably the biggest bigot I've ever met and half of me thinks my mom got with my dad out of spite. I like to think they loved each other, but I can't be sure.

My parents divorced for the first time when I was probably about four years old. My dad walked out after my maternal grandmother repeatedly tried to bribe him to leave with nice shoes and envelopes of money. She also took my paternal grandmother to the woods and threatened to kill her, so the stories go. I guess he couldn't handle the hate anymore, which I understand as you'll read in a bit.

This was the moment "depression" entered my vocabulary.

I have a very vivid memory of sitting in the bathtub as a little girl. I can't remember if I was crying and there was a very good chance I wasn't. My dad had taught me to be a tough girl and I didn't disappoint. My mother gathered me from the tub and I told her I missed my dad. The two of us used to be very close and I'm told there was a time only the two of us lived together. My mom asked if I was depressed. I asked what the word meant and she said "Very very sad". I said, in my little girlish voice, that "Yes, I think I'm depressed". My dad tells me that I would call him from the closet crying to come visit him. I believe it.

My parents remarried shortly after and had my first little brother. My dad was supposed to have the two of us on the weekends, but the visits were always cut short by homesickness and an overwhelming need (felt mainly by my brother) to be at our mom's side.

At around 12 or 13 I stopped seeing my dad all together and grew a sort of resentment towards him. I remember times when he said he would show up and would be late or not come at all. He tells me he tried to come every single weekend but my mom would stop him saying only that my brother and I didn't want to see him. It was true we didn't want to see him and I remember my mom asking me if I wanted to see him while he waited at the door, but I don't remember him coming every weekend at all. Whether my mom hid some visits from me or manipulated me into thinking a certain way about my dad, I will never know. What I experienced was what I experienced, regardless of how it happened.

Meanwhile, I lived with my mom and my prejudiced grandmother. From a young age, I hated that woman, my grandmother, and I don't hate easily. I remember doing things out of spite, as I believe my mom did. I remember telling her when I was in third grade or so that I had a crush on this little African American boy in my class and she called me a bitch for liking someone so nasty. I stuck my tongue out and said we would get married and have lots of babies anyway. I think she called me a bitch a lot.

That was also when I had my first sex dream featuring that classmate, but that's beside the point. I also had a pet bird that I loved more than anything. Years later, when I was still in single digits, I found him dead on top of his cage after coming home from the pet store with some food and a new bird toy. I cried harder than I'd ever cried in my life and I haven't cried that hard for anything since. That's actually surprising, given what happens later.

When my second little brother was born, my grandmother called him a "Little good-for-nothing bastard like [his] father." I hated her for that too. Who says those things to a small child, your grandson, no less! I would always talk back to her and get angry with her and she would curse me out in response. She liked my first little brother best.

My elementary school life wasn't easy either. I went to five different schools and only had one or two close friends, since I knew I'd be leaving before the year was over. In fifth grade, I was part of this clique of little girls and they voted me out a few months later. It hurt because those were the only friends I had that year. I played alone a lot then, which was fine since I played in the sand or on the swing. Later, I tried desperately to make friends with this new girl and warned her about the mean group of girls who kicked me out of their friend group. She ditched me for them, of course. I wasn't bullied, I wasn't pushed around, I wasn't anything. I was an ignored piece of nothing, not interesting enough for most kids and too much of a nomad to keep the friends I did make. I then went on to two different middle schools, which was WAY better than elementary school since I was ignored much less and was known by a whole lot of people. Not a lot of close friends, but better than nothing. I went to one high school which were the most bittersweet years of my life.

Sophomore year, the first day of school, my mom got diagnosed with cancer. Non small cell neuroendocrine carcinoma. Lungs first, then ovaries (hysterectomy at age 37), lungs again, pancreas, brain. She wanted to go to Texas for a specialist but I wanted to stay in my high school. How selfish can a daughter get? My mom was a strong woman and I had high hopes. I didn't cry. Barely felt sad. I don't think I understood. I thought cancer was something my superhero mom would be able to get over. By this time, I had a whole gaggle of friends from the school's anime club as a support group anyway, so it's not like I had nobody.

In fact, my senior year of high school, I fell in love with someone for the first time. Oddly enough I fell for someone who was my same sex. I actually got some flack from my mom, which was highly unexpected and made me lose some respect for her. My "best friend" and I were so close, my mom would make kissy faces regarding the two of us and embarrass me for being so eager when she was going to come over, calling me "an excited puppy waiting for their master". I got "outed" (I'm not a lesbian) after my mom took my phone and found some dirty texts. It was a terrible encounter at 3am. And I was so afraid I would lose my lovely girl, as she fought with me at school that day, but we stayed strong and kept trucking through, keeping our relationship hidden at home. I got called a "dirty fag" once by a stranger, but that's about it. Still, we had all our friends, so the support and understanding was there.

It was around senior prom when things were worse than ever. After being in remission for eight months, my mom's cancer was back in her brain and pancreas. She was in and out of the hospital. I had to suffer through my grandmother getting me ready for prom so I could go visit my mom before the dance. It was so bad, my girlfriend convinced me to start talking to my dad again, just in case I would need him soon. It was refreshing when I realized I had a parent who didn't care whether I was with a girl or a boy. I invited him to my graduation, which I didn't stress too much about since my mom was bedridden and couldn't go. I still wish my mom was there over my dad, though.

Over the summer, brain tumors turned my mominto something like a baby. She couldn't walk. She couldn't talk. She had to pee in a bucket next to her bed. I had to care for my two little brothers and, being used to being taken care of myself, I had a hard time taking care of others. Looking back, I could have and should have done way better, but I think I did my best considering the how unexpected the situation was to me. I'm so stupid.

My grandmother was around a lot, though she was no help. I got physical with her multiple times, literally threw her out of the house once or twice after my mom asked me to. She threatened to shoot my youngest brother's dad in the head and we had to call the cops on her since it was very likely she carried a piece. She mentally tormented me ("Spick like your father. Dirty lesbian. You get off on conflict. Excited and aroused I can tell"), my youngest brother ("Piece of sh*t bastard"), and my mother who was trapped inside her own dilapidated body ("That's the cancer talking. She doesn't know what she's saying. You can't listen to her"). The house became a filthy mess. My mom's living conditions were horrendous. I wouldn't let a dog live the way she did. She had lice and it was passed to me, twice. I was stressed and scared. I finally realized that my mom was dying and at the same time, I could feel my girlfriend - the one person I thought would be constant - slipping away from me. We had broken up once already but she asked me to get back with her after a weekend. She was going through her own family issues and I tried to support her as much as I could, but I could tell it wasn't enough. I probably should have stayed broken up with her to save both of us the pain.

Because it was in October that my mom succumbed to her disease. And it was four days after the funeral that my pillar of hope finally crumbled and broke my heart over the phone. I was being "too needy". It was Haloween night when I packed my bags and moved away from home to live with my dad, who I had been separated from and hated for years. It was the night I left behind one of my little brothers - who I loved so dearly - to start a new life. That may have been the last night I said "I love you" to anyone ever again.

There's a whole new set of issues I'm facing in this life I've been living since 2011, but that would probably be under something different. I don't talk to my high school friends anymore, which hurts me every couple of weeks since I saw them as my only family while my mom was sick. Mix that with the feelings of guilt I have for failing to care for my brothers as I should have, for leaving one of my brothers behind, and for being too worried about my own issues to care for either of theirs. Then there's this sense of underlying hatred from my paternal relatives towards me, my brother, and my mom for not seeing my dad for years and causing him pain. My aunt, uncles, and cousin act like they've just met me when the best memories of my childhood are with them. I feel adopted. Adopted by a family that is mine but cannot accept my past and how it has changed me as a person. I'm different from them. I'm struggling to find an identity that they will accept and I can love, although love is so hard for me to admit to now since I'm this close to writing it off as a myth. I feel no one has faith in me. I'm constantly treated as a child who is literally incapable of even babysitting her 4th infant brother for a few hours. How would that make you feel as a woman who one day wants kids of her own? Not very warm and fluffy inside.

Again, I don't think my life is at all hard or even worthy of mention on a site such as this. There are things I have left out and I don't think it's as bad as I make it out to be in my mind. I just feel like... I feel like life is laying on me brick after brick after brick of little tragedies and heartaches. Maybe I'm a strong person, maybe I'm weak. Either way, I'm afraid that this wall of bricks will crush me very soon.

If you've reading this, congratulations.