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Chapter
Five: Who I am Hates Who I’ve Been
“I don't want you to
know where I am
'cause then you'll see my heart
in the saddest state it's ever been.
This is no way to try and live my life.”
I cut myself.
Infrequently at first, but things got progressively worse. The harder life
got the more frequently and more violently I would cut. If was my way of
coping with life, but more than that it was a distraction and a silent plea
for attention. I moved from cutting my stomach with a pin, to slicing my
right wrist with the inside edge of a pair of scissors. Then I stole a steak
knife from the kitchen, and it wasn’t long before I found a razor to
use.That was the last step, you could say, in my climb to the top of this
serious problem known as cutting. It was harmless at first- just a few
scratches here and there. No big deal. But it grew and pretty soon it became
an addiction. I was dependant on the pain. I needed it, and that terrified
me.
There were five horizontal gashes that made their way up my forearm.
“Jacob’s Ladder,” I called it. I’d cut one open one night and while it
scabbed over, I would work on the others. Some days I would push up my
sleeves or remove the arm band I was constantly wearing just to give someone
the chance to find out what I was doing. They’d tell my parents who would
freak out and feel horribly guilty for what they’d put me through, and then
I’d be sent to a therapist, who would finally give me the help and medical
attention I needed. It was my greatest fear and my greatest hope that
someone would find out what I did to myself. But nobody noticed. Why would
they when I was only one person in a house of fourteen?
***
“Look at me! Look what I can do!”
I was dreaming and in the dream I was sitting outside with my immediate
family on a warm, sunny day. My youngest sister, Hayley, was smiling at me
and begging me to watch her, “Come on!” She yelled, and then began running.
I ran after her but could not keep up. In the dream she was running at an
impossible speed and I could only just see her off in the distance. By the
time I had caught up to her she’d climbed up to the top of a pair of 80 ft
high monkey bars.
“Hayley, get down! You’ll fall!” And even as I spoke those words her grip on
the first bar loosened andshe came hurtling toward the ground at a dizzying
pace. Her scream was cut short as she hit the ground with a loud crash. She
was dead. This dream was like so many others: another example of how hard I
tried to protect my siblings, but with so little success.
***
There was a boy named Luke who used to live at the Foster Home in my house,
of "Cottage" as it was called by the houseparents and administrators. He was
small, athletic, and very southern. We were around the same age, fifteen,
and got along pretty well. We were friends without actually talking much,
therefore I knew him without knowing much about him. There was an unspoken
rule that we all abided by, which was not asking about anyone's past.
We were walking home from the Hospice that we would occasionally go to to
get snacks from the vending machines, not talking about anything important.
He was making fun of one of the other boys who lived here.
“He’s just so girly!” he said with a laugh. “Have you seen his room? It’s
got little sailboats and bright blue sheets”
“What’s girlish about that?” I asked as I ate a handful of M&M’s. “Lots of
guys have blue sheets and sailboat toys.”
“Yeah, but they’re everywhere. He likes to rearrange them. Probably
dresses them up in little barbie dresses, too.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “And how would you get a toy sailboat in a
barbie dress?”
He ignored me. “He’s thirteen years old. He shouldn’t have toy
sailboats.”
“I suppose he should have toy race cars like you.”
“They aren’t toys,” he chided. “They’re models.”
I grinned.
He continued, “He sings ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ year round.”
“Oh, and thats definatley a sign someone’s gay.” I was getting irritated
now, “Look, just give him some slack. He was molested by one of the other
guys when he was younger and it screwed with his mind. He’s not gay, just
confused.”
Luke stopped walking and looked over at me, “So? I was raped by my uncle but
I’m not going around playing with Ken dolls and singing christmas songs in
July.”
It was all I could do to not stare open-mouthed at him. He had just told me
that he was raped by his uncle, like it was no big deal. All I could think
about was what strength of character it must have taken to endure that and
look back on it as no big deal. At the foster home, molestations weren’t
exactly infrequent. I myself had been molested my first year here, and I
know I wasn’t the only one. I had suspected that my sister, Amy, had been as
well, but that was one of the few things we didn't talk about. The foster
home was not a good place to live. There were suicide attempts (one, in my
memory, that was successful), death threats, unplanned pregnancy, all sorts
of abuse, and (although not related to the Children’s Home) there was a
triple homicide in our back yard. This is no joke.
After I regained my senses I said, “I’m so sorry.”
He raised his hand and combed through his light brown hair. “It’s fine,” he
said, shrugging it off. “The point is I’m not as creepy and messed up as
Troy.” He made a great show out of looking disgusted. “I heard that he takes
showers with his sister!”
“Luke, that is an outright lie!” I said, playfully shoving him.
He laughed then ran ahead of me. “Meet you back at the house,” he shouted.
***
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by
Tegan L. Elliott
© Copyright 2006 Tegan L. Elliott (UN: ganlynde at
Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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