Growing up we are told that there are two kinds of families – nuclear and joint – mine is broken.
Funny how my parents never told me that. It's just something I realized while growing up that how unhappy and delusional we are. Even fraud I would say. In public, we're the perfect little family of one and only daughter Paige Martin and my father Brad Martin and my mother Carol Martin. We act like we are the happiest when in reality we are not even close to that.
My parents have been on the verge of divorce since maybe I was 8. It was a big thing for an eight-year-old to find out that her parents maybe don't really love each other. What husband would be sleeping on the couch while his wife bawled her eyes out in her bedroom? The walls were thin, they still are, so now I don't hear any sobbing but the arguments that are no longer low whispered but are screamed at the top of the lungs.
And no, I am not the sad little victim of this, I, too once a week and three times a month engage in arguments with my parents because apparently, I don't understand how much they have sacrificed for me. Trust me I do. Mom sacrificed her job when I was born so she could take care of me. Honestly, I don't think I can ever do that for my child – if I survive that long – because giving up your career is like taking a bullet to your heart.
They remind me on a daily basis that they have given me a roof over my head and the food to eat and clothes to wear and send me to a good school. Funny how these things they see not as basic responsibilities but something that should make me spill out tears in gratefulness. In my seventeen years of life, the only person who has seen me through everything is my best friend, Brianna. She is my sounding board. My human diary. And the only one who knows about the scars on my wrists. But thats a topic of another day. At least, I have food to eat, right?
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Six Feet Under
Teen Fiction"Always kiss your children goodnight, even if they're already asleep." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr. I have been wide awake for 17 years and yet my parents have never even held my hand and let me experience what it feels like to have a protective father o...
