The Way Out

I didn't understand life, how hard it can be. How difficult just being able to live is. To get by, you need to work endlessly all week, even two minimum wage jobs aren't enough to pay your bills. People are always in a shitty mood because they have to kill themselves to just get food or have a roof over their heads.

I thought I had a good life, being a kid, I knew life was hard. But I always managed to get by, to survive. My parents were sometimes there. But other times they were there, but not there at the same time. 

I have a hard time explaining to people how I feel, sometimes I feel like no one understands, no one ever really cares to listen, I am tired of telling people on the bus ride home from work each day. It shouldn't be the fact that a total stranger on the bus seems to listen to me way better than my friends and family,

So that's why I write. To explain and show how I feel, people will read and others will skim, but I will get it out, in story mode. And you can believe me or not. Up to you entirely.

Here goes nothing though. Actually, here goes everything.

Where should I start? Well, for one, I am suffering. And I do not mean I am hurting or someone is making me suffer, I mean, writing is the only thing that helps me cope. I am suffering, alone. I am dying slowly on the inside, but I am 100% alive and happy with myself. At times.

I hate myself, hate how I am. I love what I am and what I have done. I have a couple regrets but above all, I am who I am because of myself. For as long as I could remember, I was bullied in school, I got picked on for the smallest of things, from wearing a damn dress to having holes in my clothes. I was never taken care of, so I would go to school dirty, my parents never really cared to get me feminine hygiene products so I would go to school with a sock, a shirt or even bunched up toilet paper between my legs in middle school. 

Got talked about and bullied because it looked like I had a bulge, people would always ask me if I was a boy or a girl, and when I told them I was a girl, they would bust out laughing. 

I got made fun of for being tall, for being quiet, for writing at free time, for having my hair straight, for having my hair down, for having my hair up, for asking a stupid question, for being late, for being white, for being a girl, for having acne at such a young age, for my teeth that aren't perfect. 

I was tormented each day, and at home, it wasn't different. Walking home from school one day I had almost got kidnapped, some guy in a white van stopped and cat-called me for me to come over to him. I was 13. 

In middle school, I was chased home by a group of teenagers as they threw snowballs at me and my mother calling me a white bitch. I remember falling in mud and them laughing. I remember being called pimp-bull because I had acne and used to act like a dog. 

Kids can be cruel, the area I grew up in was really bad, for any kid back then, but especially a white kid. For years I was scared to go to school, so I would cause a scene and not go, my parent's never liked that. I was always the troubled kid in my parent's eyes, and I knew it. My mom understood though, but honestly, my parents were never in the right mindset to tell me otherwise, whenever I would miss a day, they would get mad. My dad would get angry, and I would always be in tears. He never hit me, but I remember him yelling and punching a hole in my door because I didn't go one day.

But it wasn't like they understood.

From as long as I remember my parents have been on drugs. And as a kid, I didn't know better. I would hate my family whenever they said ignorant shit about my parents, but over the years I grew to understand that everything we had gone through, it wasn't right.

That's when I understood. My parents aren't perfect, whose is? But there were times I felt like they weren't there. I mean, when I was young, they were. They were there for all of us. But things changed. When my little sister was born she was born addicted to opiates, and I was about 14, maybe 15. We lived in a bad spot, my parents were doing bad and the entire time my o older sister and aunt were taking care of my brother and sister.

But when we got kicked out of our house they went and lived with my aunt, and I was left taking over. Taking care of my brother and sister at just 14. That's when I got my first dog when I started writing. When everything went down hill and never looked up.

It was in Claymont, I was in my third middle school and I had like no friends. My brother and I fought, I tormented him like my older sister used to do to me. We were troubled kids and I can't blame anyone. But I regret it because I wouldn't know what to do without my brother and sister today.

My parents were always down the street babysitting this baby when they had three of their own to look after. I remember starving, having to make up whatever was in the kitchen for my brother and sister, having to put my baby sister to sleep, give her her medicine and feed her. I remember just breaking down in tears because I was so hungry because the food we did have, I let my brother and sister eat it so they could eat.

The house was filled with trash, no one ever cleaned up. My parents would always be in their room asleep, knocked out. And looking back on it today, I can not believe I was so oblivious to everything. Honestly, all I ever worried about was my brother and sister. I had to grow up so fast, I never had time to be a kid. To go out and hang out with my friends, to go to the mall, to be a damn teenager for once. 

My entire life has been about growing up, I didn't have time to be a kid, didn't have time to b a teenager. When I was a kid I had to be a teenager, and when I was a teenager, I needed to be an adult. 

I was never taught to live. Never taught to take care of myself. I was too busy trying to take care of everyone else, I forgot to take care of myself. And now that I have to take care of myself, I don't know where to start.

After my dad left my mom, things started to just go down. Way down. I was shown who was actually there for me. I got the chance to take care of myself and to be my own person, but I was never prepared to do so. So it hurt when I moved so far away because I wanted to keep my dog, the only one who I ever turned to. My dog has been there for me more times than I can count. But once I moved, it was like I was thrown away. No one ever called to see how I was doing, no one ever came to see me. I was alone.

And it is still the same way, now, a couple months later, and I come to find out my brother and sister are going through the same thing I went through, and this was not about to happen, my mother had relapsed and put the same shit on my brothers shoulders, but it was a good thing my aunt came and took them away. Now they are happy and get to be children.

My mother and I's relationship was never really that good. There were the good times, and there were the bad. I was pretty much the only one that got hit, that was yelled at, that was the bad kid. Now that I look back at it, I was the only one who got treated differently. 

Now they may deny it today, but it was the truth. 

So yeah, I am suffering. 

I am alone, in a world filled with people who say they love me, say they are there for me and they are family. Where are you at? Where was my rescue? Where was my childhood? Where is my freedom? My mom? My dad? My so-called family?

Why do I feel alone? Why do I feel like the only one who hasn't had a way out? Want to know what my way out was guys? My way out was my dog. My way out was writing. My way out was my head. I kept everything so bottled up, I'm surprised it has yet to explode. I am surprised I am here, surprised I haven't touched a pill or a bottle all my life. 

I am surprised at myself but also proud of myself because I did it. I may have those days where I have no one, where all I seem to look towards for comfort is my computer, the words I write on the screen, these words I am writing on this screen. 

This is me coping. This is me saving myself. This is my childhood, my freedom; my life.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.