I’ve decided that every person has their story. And each individual story has it’s past, present, and future; amongst it’s truth, lies, and everywhere in between. But what’s the point in having a story if you never open up and share it? I can’t guarantee I’ll find the time to write every day, especially with my computer broken, but I can certainly attest to attempting to. I will try to write this like a descriptive diary in story form- but I will change everyone’s names but my own. I’m not going to start in the past- I’m sure it will fill itself in as at goes, and I don’t even know if I’m a decent creative writer… but here’s my story:

I’ve been on this roller coaster people call life for 25 years, a week, and four days now. Which doesn’t make me old by anyone’s standard, but I’ve been through a decent amount in those years that I’ve had a number of people tell me that if I started to share my story it would make a very decent sitcom. I’ve finally had the sweet relief of not worrying about one of my younger sisters. Morgan is a very self-absorbed teenager. Although at 17 I suppose just about everyone is. She is gorgeous and she knows it. She definitely uses it to her advantage, which is something that I never had the pleasure of experiencing. Even at her young age she has the ability to make the boys weak in the knees and willing to do anything for her. Her current boyfriend has now been held back a year in school because summer school didn’t fit in with Morgan’s need for constant attention. I have been sitting there worried about her for the past week because she has been in Florida with our father. A man I would prefer to think doesn’t exist past someone that I share certain family members with. My only brother and Morgan are the two of my younger siblings that are created by the monster life has forced me to call a father. The selfish bastard is one of those few people that exist who never meant to have children. However, I do appreciate they had more than just me. None of us have spoken with him in five years and suddenly he decides to start trying to be father of the year to the youngest. And she’s falling for it, which can only mean bad times to fall on Morgan. There’s nothing anyone in my family can do to show her how much of prick that man is, except to let her go through her own life experiences and find out for herself. She flew down there on Wednesday, with her puppy dog boyfriend following right behind. Which normally I would feel better about the fact that she was bringing another male with her, but I really don’t think this guy could do much damage in any sort of fight that may occur. With the onsite of my father being mentioned it starts all the horrific nightmares that always follow when he weasels his way back into my thoughts. So, needless to say, I haven’t slept much in the past few weeks. Morgan called me when she finally made it to Florida and had settled in a bit at our father’s newly built house, not that we ever saw much of the money that he makes. There was actually a summer when my brother Brad had to work full time during his high school years so that my mom could pay the rent. All while our father is building houses with the woman he married three months after our parent’s divorced ten years ago. Morgan doesn’t remember most of this, so to her she’s excited to have her father finally interested in being a part of her life without realizing that it’s just an act that he can only put on for so long. How hard is it to pretend to be a father for a week? I was glad that she had survived the flight and was, to her, safe and sound in Florida. I hung up the phone with her and tried to put the whole situation out of my mind, telling myself over and over again that she would be just fine. That he doesn’t drink anymore. Not that I really believe that in my heart. The last time I had asked him about it he had said, “I’m a recovered alcoholic who still socially drinks.” This is one of the most hypocritical sentences I’ve ever heard, although I feel that way about most of what he says. I went to bed shortly after that phone call, which I should know that’s not the smartest thing to do. I laid there staring at the ceiling for about an hour, when I finally I drifted off into what should’ve been a peaceful nights sleep. Instead I got the flashbacks, which after ten years I cannot understand why they are still so vivid…

I’m lying in my bed and everything is black and white, which I cannot understand why. I look up at the rainbow that encompasses the wall above my headboard and smile at the thought of my grandpa who lovingly painted it there. I start to think of all the wonderful things you think of when you’re staring at a rainbow, completely forgetting to think about what startled me awake, when I heard the screaming. As I start to come around to the reality of where I am I long to be anywhere else but here. I listen for a moment, it’s always better to have an idea of how much hell there’s going to be tonight. The hardest thing about is that you never knew when it was coming. My father’s drunk again. For the time being I know I have to stop Brad and Morgan from hearing anything. So I walk across the small hallway, very silently, to Brad’s room hoping that I didn’t get caught; that would be even more hell to pay then I knew I was already going to face. There are no thoughts other than concentrating on being as silent as humanly possible while walking across that small hallway. When I finally reach the door I’m hoping that it doesn’t squeak like it sometimes does when it opens because that’s a sure fire way to set the devil off and get caught. I breathe a sigh of relief when the door doesn’t squeak as I open it slowly and hope that Brad is still sleeping so that he doesn’t talk. I breathe another sigh because although he isn’t sleeping he remained quiet, so I close the door and go over to his bed. He’s looking at me with a cute yet very drowsy face while his eyes have that questioning look wondering what I’m doing there again. So I ask him if he wants to play a game. In which he jumps up in excitement quickly followed by me hushing him and praying that no one heard him scream “YES!!” I look around to turn his radio on quietly when I realize that he hadn’t finished his dinner earlier in the night and so the radio was taken away from him. So I tell Brad that we’re pirates (six year old boys always like pirate games) and that the ship we have to overtake with musical abilities are in my room. I worry about walking across that hallway again, but I worry more about him being loud while playing a cute little pirate. So he quickly grabs his eye patch from somewhere in his room, it’s amazing how he found that quickly, but I find myself laughing a little at his rendition of a pirate. So I explain to Brad that we have to be really quiet and very quick on our attack. That the evil pirates on the other ship only respond to the radio so there’s no point in yelling, which I think he only believed because he was so excited about playing a late night pirate game. I feel a little bad about deceiving him, but somehow (even at eight years old) I know it’s the right thing to do. We open his door and start out on our adventure when I realize that our parents are standing right there in the kitchen. So I remind Brad very quietly that we have to hurry on our swim across the hallway. As we get halfway through the hallway I notice that Brad has stopped and turned to look at our parents in the kitchen. I try to block his view and rush him along when I see the all too familiar sight of my father’s drunken hand go straight across my mother’s crying face. He’s swearing and screaming at her and it’s frightening, yet at the same time I want to go out and help her. But my memory jumped back into reality and I remembered that my responsibility was better concentrated on Brad at the moment. So I hurry him along and into my room where I can safely turn the radio on a little bit when I hear the cry from Morgan up the stairs. I know how my father hates the sound of a baby cry and when he gets in his drunken rages only God can tell what he’ll do next. But the baby’s room is through the kitchen and up the stairs on the other side of my parents. So I make the only decision I can make… I make sure that Brad is safe and starting to fall asleep again to the sound of the quiet radio, and I decide to attempt to make it up those stairs before he gets to Morgan, hoping that once again he’s drunk enough not to realize I’m there. I sneak in the kitchen against the far wall like in a spy movie I once got to see on the TV, while watching the mess you can call my parent’s marriage. It’s now gone beyond just his hand to kicking and throwing things. The sound of the glass shattering sends chills up my spine. I make to the stairs without being noticed; it was a matter of survival to learn to be invisible and I have mastered it at this point. I get up the stairs and get Morgan back to sleep after a little coercing. I decide to get back to Brad, which was my first mistake. You can only be invisible for so long. I get to the bottom of the stairs when I see that my father’s drunken evil eyes set on me. I quickly run into Brad’s room knowing that Brad was still lying in my room and that my father was too drunk to know the difference who’s room was who’s. I lay down in my brother’s bed and quickly find something to put in my mouth to stop my own scared crying, my father really hates crying. When I hear the door open and see the stumbling movement of an adult coming toward my bed. I see the shadow of an arm raise up in the air and I close my eyes…

I wake up in a pool of sweat and crying. I have learned now that I also scream through these nightmares at the end from various boyfriends that I have spent the night with that I know will never understand if I try to explain them. I still do not understand why it’s always that same nightmare over and over, when I know there are a lot more to choose from. As soon as I wake up the crying always stops, as it always does. I still cannot make myself cry because I spent my childhood training myself that it was wrong to do so. I look up into my ceiling and try to adjust my eyes, knowing that I’m far away from him and safe and the confusion sets in as to why I’m still having these nightmares. When I remember that Morgan is with him. I sit and think about how Morgan has the innate ability to push every single one of your anger buttons at the same time unconsciously, and while it’s funny to watch her do that to other people, it’s horrifying to know how upset you can get at a family member that quickly when it’s turned on you. And I start to worry about happens if she does that to him. Or if he “socially” turns to the bottle and gets angry. She wasn’t old enough to remember any of that and she has no idea the monster he can be. It scares me to know that if it were to happen I wouldn’t be there to hide her and take the blows instead. I have a five and a half inch scar up my lower back because of this monster (back surgery), and now my little sister is spending the week with him. I get up and smoke a couple of cigarettes, try to read, try to do anything really just to fall back asleep. I spend a week of nights like this, with the same nightmare at least once a week, until finally I got that call today that she was home safe. I know that I worry too much, but I was raised to worry about the devil that we had finally gotten out of the house, that man that I’m supposed to call father. I tell her I love her, and I hang up the phone relieved that she’s home safe and finally feeling the exhaustion of the past week. I’m elated at the fact that she didn’t really have that great of a time (which means she won’t be returning anytime soon) and that she promised me dinner for tomorrow night. I got her little giggle that I’ve gotten so used to hearing when she laughs at me for worrying so much. I am excited to know that I will lay tonight without the nightmares and hopefully nothing more than a peaceful, restless sleep knowing that she is only ten minutes away safe and sound without the monster I grew up with in the same house.

It makes me think of how far my family has come since then. It makes me appreciate my dad (step-dad) even more for the wonderful strong man that I have come to know over the past few years. It makes me think of how much I hated my mother through that point of life, how much she has changed, and how much I love everything about her now. My now adult understanding of wanting to keep the family together, thinking that it was the right thing to do, which makes me think of my ex-boyfriend Seth. How much time I have wasted over the past three years over a man who will never see who I really am. Thinking of how the miscarriage with him made me think that no matter how much trouble there was in the relationship we never really had, that because of that baby that was no longer we can make it work. Just like my mother, I had to take the time to realize that this was nothing more than an unhealthy relationship, and it took me, just like her, way to long to realize it. It’s not that Seth is a bad person like my father was by any means, but sometimes people just bring out the worst in each other. And Seth definitely brings out the worst in me and I in him. I have let him go, I just wish he would let me go and I don’t know how to help him do that. Maybe there isn’t a way, other than him just realizing it on his own. I do know that because of that baby and our experiences together over the past few years that I will always care about him. But the love that I don’t think was ever really there is not even in my heart anymore, let alone encompassing my life. It’s a hard realization to face and even harder to execute. I have the will to execute this madness out of my life, but no idea how. And I’m not a person that ever faces a situation without a plan. But I cannot find a plan on how to end the mess. I have a friend that consistently reminds me of the situation I’m in, without the understanding of any of this. I have recently promised my friend Bruce 100% honesty in anything I say, which is not an easy thing to do. I think that Bruce reminds me of Seth consistently for two reasons: one, a lack of understanding. Which I have a hard time reasoning because I know that somewhere in his heart he knows what it’s like to hold on well past the point of no return to someone because of a confused heart. But I think he forgets. And two, because I think there’s a part of him that’s a little jealous. When, if he’d take the time to try to understand he’d realize that he’s the one that has started to take over some of the thoughts that Seth’s stupidity used to occupy, only in a good, caring way. I’m trying to be 100% honest, but I don’t think that my thoughts make a whole lot of sense without some of my story. I have let Seth go, and although the idea of Bruce is scary to me, it sounds a whole lot more exciting and it’s a much better fit. And I wish I could get a little understanding that as much as he worries that I’m not over my past relationship, I’m worried he’s not quite over his either. I think past relationships have made us both a little gun shy and scared about opening up to anyone again, but I think that happens with everyone. I think that after you feel that kind of pain you’re heart can open up wider and really experience things with another person that you may not have had the knowledge to do earlier. Sometimes it takes life experiences to really see the person you’re looking at. So, to paraphrase something that Bruce Wayne said as Batman: Sometimes the experiences of doing the right thing can make you evil. I just wonder if you can bounce back from the lessons that evil has taught you and turn it into something great.