I hate you. Those became the words that chased after me all my childhood. It was the summer after my first year in middle school—I was twelve or thirteen. I can’t really remember what was happening, or what the argument was about, but I vividly remember the situation.
My mother was on drugs at the time for her broken back, and she faded in and out of consciousness. Her memory was fading, and she was rarely able to remember anything she’d said or done, before. Despite that, she was always absolutely confident that whatever us children said was wrong. So she always agreed to things only to change her mind later and take them away from us.
In the summer after my first year of middle school, I’d stopped doing basic household chores. I wasn’t being paid fairly—unlike my other siblings—and I was constantly being yelled at or harassed. So, learning from all the people’s advice on Cinderella, I told my mother to fuck off. I stopped doing household chores, but I kept doing the daily chores—which I flipped between alongside my siblings. One day I was washing the dishes and the counter, the next I was loading and unloading the dishwasher with the washed dishes, the last I was cleaning the dining table and sweeping the floors.
It was the only thing I could do, in the situation. I tried desperately to be treated fairly by my parents, but they always found issue with anything I did.
My middle school life started off well, at first. My mother had taken me out of orchestra the year before—which I had been really excited to get into. The second year of middle school, I accepted my losses, and was excited to get into choir.
Of course, life didn’t happen the way I expected it to. I got into many yelling matches with my mother—one practically every day. About two papers on the ground and my room being a mess, or a hair left behind on the counter. Sometimes my father pitched in; I remember getting yelled at because there were two spots of water left on the counter from where I’d cleaned it. They were so small that you could only see them from a specific angle in the kitchen.
In the end, I was given a PlayStation for my thirteenth birthday, and it was my saving grace. It was my introduction to the internet, and I loved playing Call of Duty with my oldest sister. Technically, I had a sister older than her, but I never really saw her as one. No, I loved playing Call of Duty, but eventually I got really into playing Black Ops Zombies. It was my favorite game, and I played it every night when I came home.
The arguments still happened, but I wasn’t the one involved in the arguments. I just remained in the basement, where the TV was, and played nonstop Black Ops Zombies. As a young girl, this maybe wasn’t the greatest option, but Zombies was the only game mode I could play without getting yelled at. And I was really, really starting to hate being yelled at. After all, each night I had to listen to my mother and father yell at one of my siblings as they valiantly tried defending themselves from whatever accusation was flung their way.
My second oldest sister kept getting called a slut and a whore for dating. My oldest sister tried her best to appease our parents, but she had failing grades and was being bullied in school. I was also being bullied in school, but in the end I still cared about my grades. They were the only things that I could control. It was so easy to get all A’s, and I loved it.
But then things only grew worse and worse in my third and last year of middle school. I started missing the bus, I started getting yelled at no matter what I did, and my PlayStation—the only solace I had—got taken. It was not returned. At the same time, a man who I probably shouldn’t have been speaking with—one who I was “dating”, him being in his mid-twenties and me in my early teens—and I got into an intense argument and broke off. Everything started falling apart.
I remember vividly my first year of high school. At the very end of middle school, I’d broken, and my grades plummeted to F’s. I started using school time for leisure, because it was the only place where people would leave me alone—if only for a bit. I would play card games, read on the school laptops, and desperately try and avoid thinking of my situation.
I was fifteen when I ran away the first time, or maybe I was fourteen. It was October or November, and I ran to the high school I’d been attending for maybe a month or two. I remember walking the streets for a long time, looking for my friend’s house, lost. I never found her house, that night. No, I slept outside, waking up shivering and falling asleep sweating from all the walking.
The arguments were getting worse, and my second oldest sister started skipping. It wasn’t long before I, too, started skipping. I missed classes, and evaded arriving on time nigh-constantly. I was always grinning and laughing with my friends, and hiding away to read stories on the school-granted laptop.
I was definitely fifteen when the fighting started growing physical. I remember walking into a fight scene. My father was fighting my brother while my mother was wailing on my second oldest sister. My oldest sister was screaming and crying, and I stood there, numb, watching and feeling hopeless.
Only a few weeks later, I kicked a laundry basket in my frustrations, turning my back, and my “oldest sister”, the one I didn’t consider to be family, darted forward and downed me. I remember it was right around Christmas, because I looked up at her with such hatred, knowing I could escape her grasp but knowing the only way I could was through an increase in violence. That the only way I could escape her grasp was through truly becoming the feral animal I was slowly starting to embody and biting, scratching, and killing her.
Even today, as I walked through this labyrinth, lost and looking for Lawrence, I still recall the thought.
I could kill her right now if I wanted.
I didn’t, though. No, of course I didn’t. On Christmas Day, I ran away. Except this attempt wasn’t to find my friend, it was to cross a lake and escape. Live my life out in a different city, walk until I collapsed, find a way to survive out there.
I failed, though. Of course I failed, I could never win. Even my therapist said it was my fault everything was happening. And I took on that burden. I told my mother I hated her when I was twelve, and I argued throughout middle school, and now she was bruising my family. My two sisters, and my one brother, and she was abusing those I didn’t think of as my siblings, too.
In the end, I got really into martial arts and combat shows. After all, they all had underdogs in the worst of situations coming out on top. They had heroes. As a kid, I wanted desperately to be a hero. But I also wanted to be anywhere but there. Anywhere.
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I didn’t care if it was some human trafficker who took me away, some cannibalistic serial killer, some kind citizen. I just wanted to be anywhere but where I was. I couldn’t save anyone—I was the one needing to be saved. I was always the one needing to be saved.
Life isn’t a book, though. It isn’t some amazing story where someone overcomes their difficulties. I failed in running away, and I failed in my subsequent—and first—suicide attempt, and no one came to save me. Not then, not ever. My second and third suicide attempt weren’t much better.
The cops told my parents to spank me after one of them. I was sixteen. They didn’t, thankfully, but I still remember that conversation with clarity. I was trying to die from hypothermia and that cop not only stopped me, but he told my parents to hit me? That year, I was punched in the face by my mother. I goaded her further, wanting an excuse to rip her throat out with my teeth. I was, at this time, completely inhuman.
I was an abused dog snarling and snapping at everything around it, still running circles around my friends panting with my tongue lolling out, begging for any sort of love. Any sort of care. I recall that I frequently imagined myself having wings during this period. The wings were torn and shredded, barbed wire wrapping around me and tightening any time my wings so much as twitched.
It was insanity. I had finally broken, unable to escape physically, mentally, or even just fucking die. I couldn’t even die.
In the end, I stopped trying to die. I stopped trying to do anything. Sometimes, I was allowed to have the various items my parents had granted me—they returned and took the items away seemingly at random, just wanting excuses to argue, I bet. Regardless, I had completely given up.
I stopped eating anywhere except school or if the meals were easy. I stopped showering. I stopped doing anything except reading and sleeping. I imagined myself in any other situation.
Anywhere but here. Anywhere. Please. Someone, anyone, please, save me.
But there was no one. I recall that, at that time, I’d created an imaginary friend. It was based off of some anime character or another, and their only job was to shoot the thoughts out of my head in graphic detail. I would think of my mother touching me, and instead of feeling sick and crying, instead my imaginary friend appeared and shot me. Over, and over, and over again.
It was cathartic. I dreamed of the day I would own a gun. It was to my great misfortune that my cowardice outweighed my desire to escape, once I did get a gun.
Eventually, me, broken, dead, empty, was kicked out at the age of eighteen, only a few months after my birthday. Thankfully, at that point, I still had some friends, but… well.
I didn’t remember them.
No, I had an idea. A great, wonderful, grand idea. I would go to New York City and kill myself there! Surely it would be easier, right? Even if I didn’t have the balls to do it myself, pissing people off was something I was so great at doing—I mean, my parents, my siblings, my friends, they all seemed to hate me, so surely I was great at pissing people off, right?
…
I stared down at the stone bricks beneath my feet as I thought, kicking idly at some moss.
No, I wasn’t. Even gangsters were resistant to any attempt I’d made. Not that I made it to New York—I got stopped halfway there in a horrible state. Someone reported me, and I got put into a mental hospital.
There I stayed for three whole months, because they refused to send me to a homeless shelter. No, they wished to send me back to that hell. And, in the end, overdosed on drugs, I agreed.
My second-oldest sister accepted me in the same day—my parents had already kicked me out almost half an hour after I arrived. She said I couldn’t stay, though, and I ended up going out on a whim. I found some guy online, and stayed with him. That obviously didn’t work out—he wanted me to do the dishes, or keep a job. The one thing I really, truly couldn’t do.
After all, I had only just escaped the broken-minded insanity that I’d fallen into. Maybe I was overreacting, and doing the dishes wouldn’t have made me fall back into insanity, but I was already struggling to be okay. After another suicide attempt, I was back in my own personal hell. They hardly kept me before kicking me out. After I was eighteen, I never stayed in one place for longer than a year, and eventually—somehow—made my way back to New York City. I was about 24 or 25 when I arrived—I couldn’t really remember, anymore.
There, I met a few good folk, and a few average folk, and I somehow managed to find myself a job at some fancy ass place. I set records—I’d kept a job for over three months! I’d kept a place for over a year! I…
I…
I stared down at the long, dark chasm I’d stumbled across. I didn’t notice the dark smoky clouds clinging to my form, wrapping around me much like a snake would wind around its prey.
I lost everything.
Again.
I couldn’t even keep what was good. No, the moment I became happy the fucking apocalypse happened! This was my fault. It was always my fault. This… I couldn’t. Not anymore.
“BLOOD!” Someone screamed out.
My foot stretched out, hovering above empty air. This… this seemed so easy, now. Why was it always so hard to do before?
Tilting forward, I found myself thrown backward. Pain snapped through my form. I coughed, entire body writhing as the pain went deeper, clawing at my heart, searing into my chest.
“Ah, fuck, what the fuck?” I asked, scrambling away from the edge I was next to, looking around.
Above me, glowering down with pale yellow glowing spots where the eyes would be, was a floating specter of shadow and dust.
“Your pain… give me more. MORE,” The specter shrieked, three-clawed tendrils reaching toward me. I stared up at it with wide eyes, swallowing.
“Uh… The-there probably won’t be a Portal 3?” I asked.
The specter hesitated, the thing’s claws retreating half an inch. A large bright ball of fire seared right through the specter. It shrieked, writhing as the fireball exploded, sending me flying back.
I grunted out as my back hit something. That something shifted back and fell over me. The flash of blue I got before the light of the explosion had me sitting up.
“Y-you okay, Lawrence?” I asked unsteadily, reaching out and grabbing him.
“Ow, that’s hot,” Lawrence said, his voice flat and weary.
I retracted my metal-clad hand, “Oh, oops. Sorry. Uh, what should we call that? It feeds off pain, so maybe a Wraith? Nightmare?”
“Shade,” Lawrence said, pushing himself up, “That’s a shade. What happened?”
“Oh…” Well that was a kind of lame moniker. I glanced up, towards the cliff I was walking toward, “Um… I… Uh… It… It was… going… through… uh… n-nothing. It was nothing. Just… y’know. Feeding off pain. Making me feel like shit,” I looked back toward Lawrence.
He shifted in the darkness, frost escaping his form as he wrapped his arms around me. I accepted the hug, arms not moving to return the hug. My eyes were glazed over as I recalled my life once more.
I… I really did lose everything once more, didn’t I…? The arms around me tightened. I blinked, reaching out, my arms finally answering my mind’s calls and returning the hug.
No.
No, I didn’t. I may have lost material items, but I gained something invaluable and unable to be replaced. I gained a friend who actually cared about me.
I gained Lawrence.
I closed my eyes, holding him tighter. I would never let him go.
He was all I had.