Torment

Chapter One

I was seventeen going on eighteen years old. My mind was spiraling out of control about my future; where I was going to study and what I was going to become. I did dream about it, my future, about how I'd have this big house and this shiny expensive car, driving about with the roof resting down and the wind whisking through my recently, pampered hair. I had dreams like everybody else, and just like everybody else I was faced with the overwhelming anxiety of how I was going to get there, and who I was in this world...

When you're seventeen, people assume that you're reckless, or rebellious, doing as you please enjoying the toxic fruit of overgrown childhood before the bitterness of real responsibility hits you. But nobody truly knows that there is no such thing. I was already an adult, and I already had responsibilities that took the best of me, and maybe I used that as an excuse in the end, I mean, it did pay a toll on the pros and cons about life. But how do you expect one to be reckless when one's entire life is on the line, imagined futures in one's hands, achieved by one's choices, that's what I heard every morning when when I was reminded that everything about me was worthless and the only thing that people would accept about me was whether I had money or status. And that's what I  was reminded about every afternoon, when I had to spotlessly clean the house until my knees ached and my fingers bled. 
I could never forget, I could never run away, I was tormented.

I still did it, irrespective of how tired I felt in the mornings. I still got up the moment my alarm rang, afterall I didn't want a beating just before school. I still did my countless homework assignments every night even though my chores took all the strength I had left in me. And then, I did it again, everyday for 9 years since Dad died. But I still did it. Bottom line, I was not a quitter until one day I quit…

I remember what Dad used to tell me, when he was still here... He used to tell me I was a fighter, that whether I win or lose I was always a champ, that the only thing that truly mattered, was to never give up. That's easier said than done, because when Dad died that one Monday morning, everything changed after that. Instead of me having a support system, I was left with a monster for a mother.

Every morning, if I overslept; that was a beating. Every afternoon if any single chore was left undone; that was a beating. And every night if supper wasn't made; that too was a beating. I was only 9 years old, and I was already introduced to how cruel the world could be.

I didn't want to accept that her beating me was the reality behind it all. I just felt that it was her way of mourning. And maybe she was right, maybe I was the reason that he died, afterall, when you constantly imprint that in a kid's head, they start to believe it. I believed it, for a long while...

Our house became empty, cold and sombre. Shadows danced where colour used to be. My world became a shade of black and grey, like a movie, but nothing in my life was fantastical, it was all real and it was all cruel.

School was no better either. I didn't exactly make it into the cool kids squad, and I didn't mind it either, but high school is a completely different agenda, and when you're completely out of it and only have one friend by your side, you become a serious target to constant physical and mental beat downs that over the time, becomes less and less painful, that is, since I've been going through the same thing at home. Of course I tried talking to someone I trusted about it, even though it was awfully painful to do so... I tried, but nothing was done. It was like I didn't even matter. I was told that the situation would be handled but it never was. I did have a friend, but everytime I brought something so sorrowful up, he quickly changed the subject, as if it was too unbearable to hear, as if actually bearing it like I did, wasn't as painful to hear... I just needed to escape. Maybe there was a way out, I thought. Somewhere or time when everything would just stop and nothing at all would matter...