"Blame It On Me"
Grabbing my bags from the change rooms, I walked out of there before anyone could talk to me. I wasn't in the mood. I hadn't had the best training, and I felt like it was all my fault because I hadn't trained over the two-week Christmas break. I was the only one too blame for that.
Seeing my brothers car, with my brother standing at the bonnet of the car, with a group of friends hanging around him, I knew that we would be here for a while. He had a girl hanging onto his arm, and I knew when he would see me, it would turn into an argument about how I was ruining his fun.
He was the lucky one, out of the two of us. Everything he did would fly under the radar, until I was the one that had to pay the price for it all. Walking over, I stayed silent, as the rest of them continued to talk, and my brother hadn't noticed me yet. The only person that had noticed me, was the girl that was still hanging off his shoulder, a deep glare pointed at me.
I felt disgusted, that she thought I was going to take my brother from her. My brother said something to her, but he hadn't seen me, and because she was looking at me and not my brother, he got a bit flustered. He then saw me, and immediately threw his head back, almost in anger that he had remembered I existed.
"Get in the car" he grumbled to me, as he unlocked the car, and I walked around him and his friends, and to the back seat of the car. I climbed into my usual seat, knowing that I was too blame for him being in this position of driving me home. It was my fault, not his, that I didn't have a license or could drive myself anywhere.
May as well just blame it all on me.
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Stepping through the front door, my brother had already raced off in front of me. I stumbled into the kitchen, grabbing something to eat, only to turn around and find my mother, standing there, with her hands on her hips. She was in one of those moods, where whatever I said, did not matter to her at all.
If I told her something wasn't my fault, it was, and I just had to deal with it. Everything was my fault at some point. "Why was there a load of washing sitting in the machine, not hung out, and another load sitting in the basket!? I asked you to do it yesterday, and both of the loads were still soaking wet" my mothers voice made my blood boil.
She always put it back onto me. I had to do everything for her, because why not? I was the youngest and I had to carry the load for everybody else. "I don't know" I grumbled, being too exhausted to even care about yelling back at my mother. It would not get me anywhere, and saying nothing was probably the best option, but even then, you could never win.
Whether you said something or not, there was no winning with my mother. If she told you to do something, you would be doing it wrong, but if you didn't do it, you were lazy and ungrateful. If you didn't ask to help her, you weren't doing enough, but if you asked her if she needed help, you were being annoying and needed to shut up so she could hear whatever she had on the TV.
There was no winning when it came to my mother. "What was that?!" she spat back, and I almost felt the need to cover my ears for the shouting that was about to come. I stayed silent, not wanting to say anything. "That's what I thought. Phone on the bench, and get out of my sight" and with that, she turned on her heel as the tears brimmed in my eyes.
I never knew why I cried so much over this. It happened all the time. None of this was ever new to me, so I don't know why I always broke down into tears over it. Maybe it was the fact that I knew that my mother yelling at me and taking my phone over the smallest of things was not what happened. I had watched other parents sit with their daughters and talk to them about anything and everything.
Never in my life had my mother asked me to sit with her and just talk. We never talked about anything special together. If we did, it was about sports and about everybody else's child but not the one that was standing in front of her. My father was the same. They had always made it clear that everybody was better than me and I was the only one to blame for it.
Brushing the tired tears from my cheeks. I took my phone out of my bag, before swinging it back onto my shoulder, my snack long forgotten. I tiredly walked out of the kitchen and towards the stairs, take them slow and steady. I was so tired from everything that had happened today, that I was just so ready to collapse on my bed and let the sheets swallow me whole so that I wouldn't have to deal with anybody else right now.
But that was not the case. It never was. I always had a load of things to do while Sebastian would sit on his asse and watch me do it all. I would be blamed for it all, even if I made him hold something. He was a fragile one, and for no reason. He was my mothers baby boy, and she cherished him so much, it made me sick.
Sebastian gloated in it all though. He thought it was the best thing that could ever happen to a person, was to be favorited and loved by their mother. I didn't think so. I didn't really care anymore, or at least in the moment, whether or not my mother even liked me. The thing that I hated the most about the relationship with me and my mother was that she would yell and scream, then turn and be nice to me, saying sorry, and I would forgive her.
We would talk like normal people then. Only for a certain amount of time though. Almost like a ticking time bomb between us. If I did something wrong, the whole house could blow up and I would be the one that was covered in smithereens and at fault. I was always the one that carried the world on my shoulders; I carried this household.
Slipping into my bedroom, I threw my bags down into the corner of my room, where I normally leave them, before walking straight back out and down to the laundry room. For such a big house, the laundry room was sort of small. Attached to the side of the house, it led you out to the big backyard that we had once all used for something.
Looking out there, seeing the sun setting, reminded me of all the times in the last two years that I had been practicing for gymnastics. With the foam mat out under the sun with the wind blowing was just how I liked it. A little danger mixed with summer could never hut anyone. I stopped this season, turning my focus into running, before the volleyball season was back up and running.
Last season, my main focus was gymnastics, with a side of cross country. The season before that, I was a rhythmic gymnast, that did swimming in the offseason. Before that, I was a swimmer that played tennis for something fun on the side to keep my fitness up. I did that for three year's, and then prior to my swimming and tennis, I had been a dancer. Most of my childhood was filled with switching between dancing and playing soccer.
At some point, I had been good at each sport before I had to give it up. I had to give it all up because sure enough, one of my older siblings was doing that sport or had done something like it. My parents wanted us to each have something unique to us, which meant trying out every sport known to man kind. I was pretty sure I had done at least half of the sports known.
I had never touched the ice, but at some point, my eldest brother Elijah had been a pro Ice Hockey player, even making it onto the USA team. I don't know what happened but he was then more invested in football. Probably couldn't handle the aggressiveness he exerted or something towards the other players, which I had seen first handedly.
When, as a small child, I had been chased around the very kitchen bench that was just outside this room, because Elijah had thought it would be funny to see the terror on my face. I had hated for a long time, to be standing in the same room as Elijah and knives, which was hard when none of your family would know how much strength it took to do so.
I would stand in that kitchen, and shake uncontrollably but no one had ever asked why I had gone so silent. They never even cared so much as to ask why I didn't ask as many questions about their day because they never asked about mine, before they had to tell me to shut up and be quiet. I knew that they never wanted to hear anything about me or my day cause no one has ever asked.
"Evelyn, that washing better be done" slamming the lid down on the washing machine, I had switched over the loads, bringing in the dry one, seeing my mother, as I sidestepped her, and walked over to the dining room table to sort out the washing as I knew her heated gaze would be on my back. I knew that I had always made it hard on her to find something to yell at me for when I was doing something right, but I still made it easy at the same time.
I was always an easy target to blame. "How's the slave?" Sebastian had to walk right in just on time for me to be sorting his clothes. His fucking clothes, not mine. "Just great" I sighed, hearing my mother and brother already on another topic with one another, laughing. They would have their hands wrapped around one another, probably looking at something on one of their phones.
Admittedly, I was jealous of the two of them and what they had with one another. I was jealous of the entirety of my family. They loved each other so effortlessly, forgetting about me. And that was for the better. It was better that they forgot me cause then I didn't have to deal with the heartbreak of knowing that they didn't do the same to me.
I grabbed the piles of clothes, placing them each back into the washing basket, before I was walking upstairs, giving the clothes back to their respectful owners. This was the usual for me. Walking into Elijah's room, always shocked me. I always had to take a moment in here, just to make sure that this was the same person that I knew as my big brother.
If he ever knew that I sat on the end of his bed or that I was even in here, I would be murdered. This was his space and I had my own, but for some reason, his space always intrigued me the most. He was rarely here, and when he was, what I saw in here never matched to the person that I could potentially see downstairs or in the same hallway as one another.
Sitting on the end of his bed, I plopped the washing basket down on his bed, just taking a moment of silence. The silence spoke louder than any word ever could, because I was looking at my own brothers life. The one where he included me in the photos that he had on the walls, but that wasn't the one that caught my eye every time that I stepped in here.
No, it was the photo that was on his nightstand, that always made me want to run and hug my older brother, but at the same time, I wanted to run away from him and hide away somewhere forever. It gave me so many mixed signals, as I never knew this side of my brother.
Most of the photos that I was in, which was not a lot, but enough to warm my heart and to make me stay longer, held either the whole family, just the four of us siblings, or maybe a few of us scattered together. Either way, I had made it into some of the photos that were on my brothers wall, and I knew that meant a lot to him, but more so to me, the girl that would never know.
The picture that was on his nightstand, every time I looked at it, made everything go away. It made everything in the world stop and seem like it was okay to be in here, and see my brother the way that I know everybody else sees him, just not me, and that was ok, because it had to be okay.
The photo that was displayed on his bed side table, cracked my heart. It was a photo of just the two of us, where I must have been about three years old, and he would have been about 9 years of age. I am propped up on his shoulders, where he is looking up at me, with such a look that I have never seen him display towards me. The two of us a smiling; I'm looking at the camera laughing, while my brother is looking up at me, with a smile and adorning look on his face.
We are outdoors, but that makes no difference. You would think we are siblings, from the same nose to the same eyes, and just the love for one another radiating from one another. I don't know where he found this photo or how I never noticed it till the past couple of months, but it makes everything feel better.
Placing his washed clothes on the end, I move on. I blame myself for stopping and being in my brothers room. Everything was my fault. It was my fault that we had grown apart, and that we would never be like the two little children that were in that photo. There was no going back, so it was all my fault.
I was the only one that was there, left to blame.
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thoughts? xx