To whom this concerns
I was born being told i can be anything i want to be, told to follow my dreams and if i ever get told your dreams arent good enough than simply ignore them. But its hard to ignore the people telling you your dreams arent good enough when those people that say it are your family. I was born into a family that couldnt understand who i was nor who i wanted to be. I was an introvert with wild aspirations trapped by a cult of extroverts whose dreams never seemed to pass the self belief that they should follow in their parents lacking achievements, instead of seeking out for an option that they could proudly say was their own. My name is Bailey Walles (pronounced Wallace *this will come into play later so remember that*) and this is the story of how a 19 year old boy went from dreaming like Icarus to being a bird who will never be able to fly.
1999 on March 11th, a healthy baby full of potential and oblivion wailed, being welcomed into an un-recognisable world. With a struggling yet fierce mother to hold him and gice him a face to surround his toothless smiles around. An older brother, one that would not only be the sole reason i 'lose my shit' once a week for my entire teen life but also be the one to teach me life lessons about trust (mainly that you should never trust someone that says you are player 1 if this has happened to you, you understand what i mean.)
And finally a missing father whose viscous mental state bombarded his ability to give his flesh and blood a reason to be happy. Now you might think that is harsh and it is i wont lie about that but so is the reality i had been forced to live with being told by a third party that my dad loved me even though every birthday i ever had was filled with more and more questions about him "Is he coming back? What does he look like? Does he even love me? Does he even know i exist?" each year i waited for an answer from someone, anyone in my family to give me something to dampen my anger. But not a single word was spoken.
I am half Sri lankan and half Uruguayan odd change of topic yes but it is relevant i swear; for many of you a big family is maybe 50 people a few aunties and uncles with a splash of cousins, now for those of you that understand the birth rate of both asian and latino families my splash became a drowning countless family members growing more and more by the hour from marriages to more births they number never stops growing. Now that you understand lets get back on track to my story. Having the brady bunch on steroids for a family torments my very existence not because they are rude or mean to me but because they all believe that their stories about my dad and about how happy they all were is exchangable for an explanation. Wanting to know why he left yet being delt with the same story about him getting stuck on the train. 19 years of diverting the question to a story made me feel even more of an outcast, an outcast because all those happy stories never included me, looking back through photo albums praying that i was in just one photo with him.
I never was, the greatest information i ever got about him was when i was 6 finding out that he had overdosed on drugs and alchohol, a suicide, following a family lineage beginning at his mother. I always feel joy in thinking about his death not because i think it is funny, no suicide is horrible i laugh at the irony, the awkward moments of unknown people thinking i care about who he was, the same people who would say nothing about his past except "god he loved you boys". The voice inside my head always wants to yell "Then why isn't he alive?" but instead hide behind a messed up dead dad joke making light of a situation which creates so much misery in my life. I have been told i am like my dad too many times to count but to be completely honest i dont even feel like im a part of this family. When they all smile its genuine, pure happiness but everytime i smile its to hide the hours of screaming i so badly want to release.
Im not a Walles im just Bailey. I hate my last name i hate everything about myself. The name Bailey Jordan Walles should be for the perfect transsexual not a post pubescant teen. My name is for lack of a better term bloody crap. There is no heart in it, no meaning, no thought, the only sense of connection i have to my name is that its vague in its appearance. You dont know who that kid will be a girl? a guy? a tough athletic teen with an overly sharp jaw and a knack for drinking his weight in alchohol or a slim academic whose intellegence brings silent jealousy apon his classmates, im none of those (and now for the catchphrase) I'm the most average person in the world. I'm slightly tall 6'1" but not the tallest, I'm athletic in all sports but not enough to be a stand out in the crowds, im not great at academics a strong c grade student or lower enough to keep me in school but not smart enough to be anything worth being proud of. Which sucked because my mum would always try to make any achievement i accomplished into a nobel prize award. Third in a swimming competition celebration, teachers award in health for doing not as terrible as he was expecting she would tell the whole world. How could i live up to that expectation. Not hers. My own. The expectation to be something more than just the pre-customised character in a video game. The only good thing i had going for me was that i was good at maths, until the alphabet decided to take over than i was good at art (i wasn't an art student but you understand the meaning). I only ever got three A's in my entire life and they were all in my name.
You know that moment in your highschool life when you are asked what do you want to be when you grow up? I'm sure you do whether you answered an actual job or "i don't know" you had some idea in your mind. For me i had nothing i was like the tv colour bars with the long bland beep. See the problem i had wasn't that i didn't like anything it was the exact opposite i wanted to be everything. I despised the idea of doing the same job until the day you die but where would i start. I loved animals so i could have become a zoo-ologist, no but i loved music more, then a musician?. No i dont know anything about music but i love fashion, than why not a fashion designer? I couldn't hurt an animal just to get a fur coat. THAN WHY NOT A ZOO-OLOGIST! Every single time i thought of a possible job i could think of one better. And it sucked because id always get asked by my family if i knew what i wanted to be because "i need to hurry and start paying my own things" as if i didn't realise already that a single mother wasn't already struggling to support two teenagers. If only "I don't know what i want to be, i just want to be happy" was a good enough answer because i still dont understand what happiness is yet i have only gotten a glimpse of it once but we wont go there (not just yet)
"Why can't life just be easier?" every teens slogan, and for good reason life sucks we are born into a world we didn't ask to be a part of and yet told we need to appreciate what we have been given. But why? Why should we? Yes they gave us life but they also placed all their struggles onto our shoulder without giving us the capacity to help them. How can i help a family who not only wont help me but wont even help themselves? From rumours about one another to the longest game of chinese whispers ever, we arent a family we are a gang with no leader just a general understanding of the definition of love. Melodramatic is an understatement of that description but i now there are some people reading this now thinking the same thing about their family. I would love to say but "you should love your family and that they will alays be their for you", but id be lying they aren't always there. They are there when they want to be, to make themselves feel a sense of accomplishment. "But Bailey im sure they have helped you along the way?" of course but not in the way you think they have. they have helped me lose all sense of compassion all sense of emotion and feeling. Im numb to them i have lost the ability to cry and death has now become nostalgic to me. Side note- I don't know if its just me but is it weird that the ones that never cry are always the ones the cryers seem to gravitate towards? as if seeing someone not cry will help them become stronger? sorry for all these cuts my mind wonders a lot.
I'm honestly the worst at being emotive nowdays my smiles are fake and i am consistantly in a nuetral state of mind sometimes in a state of oddly evil teen but who isnt at our age. Teens are dicks. I'm saying all this as if people are going to read this, but i know they wont im invisible to everyone its a weird thing to say but its honestly how i feel, god im 19 and i already feel as if i dont belong, i just want to be seen not as the struggling teen but as someone with something worth listening to.
Love
Bailey
