Relative issues

Chapter 1.

My birth was an unfortunate one. I was born on a September night during an unpredicted thunderstorm to a mother who never had any intention of raising me. I was the product of an expired wallet condom. The product of a teenage cliché. Many tend to forget to check the quality and expiration date of condoms before using them, something my parents fell victim to. It was a time before plan-B pills had been approved by the FDA. A time when even if they had been available to the masses, my mother would have been too young to purchase one for herself as she was a minor.

She waited three weeks before taking a pregnancy test. When it came back positive she was devastated and angry, something she took out on those around her. After being informed of my mother's pregnancy, it took my father a few days to pack up his things and leave the state with his family. He did not say a word to my mother. One day he was just gone, his house empty and his number changed.

And that's all I know about the guy. My mom ran away from home frequently when I was a baby. She stayed missing for a few days before being escorted home in police cars. Later, she moved out after graduating high school and never really came back, leaving my grandparents as my legal guardians. She visited a handful of times, but it was only when I grew older that I realised that she only visited our house to ask my grandparents for money. Not because she wanted to see me.

Despite that, I could never bring myself to hate her when I was little. I craved her attention and every time she visited I would cling to her and cry out for her when she left. Somewhere in her heart she must have loved me, a little at least. When she visited, she would smile warmly at me, hold me sometimes and take pictures of me. But despite the warmth in her smile, I always saw pain too. She hated seeing me, I could tell. It reminded her of what she went through. I had caused her abandonment, betrayal and wasted her youth. That's why she ran away. Because she could not stand looking at me.

As I grew older her visits became rarer, until one day they stopped entirely. With her disappearance, the love I felt for her slowly turned into resentment and eventually spite. I would get into fights at school because of small things like a nasty comment or a whisper. I would be easily angered and my temper was so short that I would often snap and yell at my grandparents when it all became too much.

A few weeks after my sixteenth birthday, my grandfather died of a heart attack, leaving abuela alone. She was devastated, and for a long time, she refused to eat. Only a few months later she followed him into the grave, dying from a heart attack, just like he did. It was as if the world was mocking me. I was still a teen, still a kid with a bad temper and poor control of my fists and suddenly, I was thrown into a world completely unknown to me. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, bills and house management, all of it had to be learned and maintained on my own. In the absence of a stable mentor and adult, it became very clear just how much my grandparents had done for me and I became lost and lonely in the small house we had once shared. It took a month or two before I sold the house and moved in with an older friend who had his own apartment. In exchange for letting me stay with him rent-free, I agreed to do all the chores and take care of his meals; in turn, becoming overly fixated and interested in cleaning, sorting and cooking. I stayed with him for two years before going to college and unfortunately, we fell out of contact.

⚥ ⚥ ⚥

The sun shone past the treetops, wrapping the afternoon in a golden hue where we sat by the shore. Smith lay half-asleep in Micah's arms, suckling a bottle of formula. It was late October and the secluded beach was empty. In front of us, the lake was calm, the wind bringing with it the scent of water and falling leaves. The trees around us were bright red, orange and yellow, a pallet of pleasantly warm colours. Micah's nose was red in the chilly breeze, his eyes focused on our baby. Smith was wrapped up in a fluffy bear onesie, looking adorable. At five months old, he was a lot more active than I could have ever imagined. He enjoyed playing, smiled and laughed a lot, rolled over and threw things if he got the opportunity. I smiled at him. My son.