FORGIVE ME

PART ONE

  My first memory? I can remember climbing on top of the kitchen counter. High above the upper cupboard, stashed just on the top of it had been a box of goodies. I'm not sure what kind it was, but I know it was a snack and I wanted it. As a child I always went through things. Searching for something I had no business having. Searching in places I had no business being in. Scurrying away to eat the snacks of which I had found, filling my fat face and tummy with goods and juice whilst my mother slept in the dark of night. 

I remember my mother watching scary movies in the night while I was suppose to be asleep and sneaking behind my fathers recliner to watch Freddy carve up neighborhood kids in their sleep. Somehow they always knew I was there, but endured my nightmares and creeping into their bed. A normal thing children did with their parents, however; there was no father beside my mother. He'd leave before I woke up and I suppose to them I would never know. 

To me my father was everything. As a child I could see no wrong in him, and only saw the wrong of my mother. Always away from me. Working. Not spending time with me as other mothers and daughters had. Envious of their relationship because we had none. Of course I lashed out with verbal insults accompanied by curse words and middle finger flicking. Thinking it was fine because the adults did it.
As an adult I realized that she had worked her many jobs to keep a roof over my head, food in my stomach, and clothes on my back. Sliding through just to pay the bills. Such a horrible child I had been, and grew to loathe myself simply because I had treated her like shit. An unfair means to be rid of the anger I kept inside for so long. 

As time went on of course I had gotten worse, no matter the help she had tried to get me. Sounding as though I were normal to each therapist that she threw at me. Knocking them back like a bat to balls hitting home runs out of the park. Diminishing the prospect of getting helped and showing that I didn't need it. Back then they had a term for it. Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Then again all children have that issue. Combative with their parents for any given reason and not caring about the consequences of ones actions. Regretting it each day of my adulthood. 

The disappointment in my father finally came when I became aware of the constant broken promises. I will be there in the morning. We can go to the park. How about a dinner? Over and over excuses, excuses, and still he had my heart because we hadn't lived together and he was, after all; my father. Someone I should have disrespected instead of my mother. 

I remember the first time he spanked me. I thought it had only been my mother and I in the house, and she yelled at me for something, something I to this day can not remember. Yelling at her; "FUCK YOU!" In anger, and him, my father, storming into my room, verbally scolding me before telling me to bend over atop his lap where his bare hand spanked my bottom over and over until I cried and tears fell to the wooden floor below. It was the first time he had ever laid a hand on me. Certainly not the last. 

I remember lighting candles in my room, but not the reason as to why I had done so. I remember hiding things under my bed so no one would see the devious plots I had been involved in. My aunt coming to clean the house and finding said items under my bed. Even to this day I couldn't recall getting yelled at for it. If I had been yelled at at all. 

I remember hating to get up for school in the morning. I remember that I was able to hold my breath for such a long time and faking that I wasn't breathing just so I didn't have to go to school, yet not knowing that it would cause fear and panic in my mother. Thinking I was dead in my bed. Hearing her call out to me after checking for breath under my nose and waking me alive with shaking hands on my shoulders, nudging me back to life. Another regret I fear shall never leave my soul. 

In school I was a monster. Standing on my desk and shouting fuck you to the teacher. Telling her that I hated her and how horrible she was. Only, now, perhaps it had been myself that was horrible. When second grade came around I felt alone. My teacher taking extra care to me as a student and a human being who perhaps needed a bit of extra attention and help. There were many days where I would get frustrated and she was there to help me calm down. A teacher that I wouldn't get to have in my life in the years to come.