2

My tone regresses a little, sorry.

To get home I walked through a trail. The trees cut into the path, making each turn unexpected and abrupt. Each of these trees, as well as anything on the edge of this path, was coated in spray paint. I could read some of it, but I always tried not to. One that I never could look away from was a bright yellow smile with x’s for eyes. Under that, the dripping paint read, “He’s coming for you.” Before the wooded area around the trail became the heroin hot spot that it is today, it was an unofficial dump. I watched an abandoned baby blue stroller decay day by day. I often wondered why it was put there, tossed haphazardly and forgotten about. In a way, I saw myself in this stroller and was consequently terrified of it. Before opening my front door, I glanced around, doing my best to avoid looking suspicious. After confirming that I was alone, I cracked the door open just wide enough to slip inside. This skill was just a piece of my unique set of abilities that includes the lies I listed earlier. The times my parents did interact with me were composed of telling me that if I didn’t keep their secret we would all be punished. “We” being my younger brothers and me.  In many ways I thought of myself as homeless, I often thought it would be easier than explaining reality. I wished I was homeless, I thought about all the things I could do to help myself if I was homeless. I started out as a pretty cute kid. My mom always brushed my hair and put little bows and clips in it. Growing up I could have stolen so many sympathetic hearts, food, shelter, and maybe even a pair of adoring eyes. But I wasn’t homeless, and I did not get any help or sympathy. What I did get was lots and lots of blame.

Neglect is different from other types of abuse for a few reasons, first of all, no one talks about it. If my mother was beating me (she didn’t have the energy or drive) then people would have cared. I try to recall a time when my life was a movie. My mother was the supermom. She handmade anything and everything, we had three home cooked meals a day with a snack in between each one. We sat down to dinner every night. She has a binder filled with daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly jobs. I vividly recall the day I stumbled upon this binder when I was maybe 10. I was shocked, I didn’t know what it meant to polish furniture, much less that it had been done in my own house. I was five years old when my mother slipped into a depression phase. Five years old when I had to live off of whatever I could find. Five years old when suddenly there was no one to force me to brush my teeth or my hair or shower or make my bed. So, I didn’t. I did nothing. She did nothing, I did nothing. My three-year-old brother bounced off the walls with me, adding to the various stains that painted the white walls in patterns that looked suspiciously like blood. Spare food was spit out or throw into any old corner. As my youngest brothers, the twins, grew up a bit they found themselves without at least a good start like the two older kids had. They were even worse than us, defecation and urine coated their rooms. As a child, I loved reading, I loved escaping. So, I read anytime I could and if I wasn’t reading I was playing with my brothers. My favorite game was called “town.” It was relatively simple, one person (me) would be the banker and make fake money out of anything we could find (paper, socks, coins, a mix of the three) everyone else would pick a role to fill, these ranged from owning a toy store (selling matted stuffed animals and broken cars) to being a grocery store (scraps of food served on dirty paper plates.) We would play this for hours before someone would get mad and quit, soon the remaining participants were on their way out. There was an unspoken knowledge that if my brothers left me alone in whatever room we were playing, I would be forced to look around me. I get within an arm’s length of reality, which was far too close for me. So, I begged them not to leave, I cried and started to hyperventilate. I desperately made up any game I could, even if it didn’t make sense to get a few more minutes of blissful distraction. 

Author's Note

/I don't know what to say/