Chevelle's Story

chapter 24.1

If I could say one thing to the person who hurt me the most, what would it be & why?

Farah,

I would tell you that I wish I had been the little sister. I have ever since we were small, because although I may not look like it, I'm fragile. I don't like having to do everything by myself. I want to be coddled and looked after and cared for, and I feel like when you're the big sister, there's all this pressure to be a protector—almost like a second mother. And from such a young age, too. You never really get to be the protected. But when you're the little sister, you're allowed to be selfish. It's seen as natural, rather than what it is: mean.

You're fucking mean, Farah. And you've always been a little mean, but I guess I never really had a problem with it before now because, for one, it was kind of funny. But also, you had a soft spot for me. I never thought your meanness could grow so vast that it would reach me. But it did. And I just wish that you knew how it felt, even if only for a day. How it feels to walk through life in my shoes. To have to sit back and just take it. All the bullshit, day after day, because that's what I'm expected to do.

You break a plate, I get beaten for not watching you properly. You cut off half your hair, I get thrown outside overnight for leaving the scissors somewhere you could reach. You decide to date my boyfriend while I'm in a coma, I get forced to spend my Christmas with the both of you, day in day out. I'm fucking tired.

You really hurt me, Farah. And that's just it. There's not much else I can say except that you hurt me, and I kind of want to strangle you every time I see you, so you should thank your god that I haven't yet. You should be thankful I've chosen to remove myself from that home before something terrible happened.

But, I still love you. Despite it all, I still love you more than I even love myself, and I fucking hate that I can't do anything about it. That every time I pray, I always pray for you. I pray that Jared will never handle you the way he handled me. That you'll get out of that relationship before it's too late. That nobody will ever hurt you as deeply as you hurt me. And I guess I could just say this stuff to you since it's not like you're dead or anything...but fuck you.

You don't deserve to hear this.

What was the hardest thing I've ever had to do & how has it impacted me since?

Moving from Ayiti to America was definitely the hardest thing I've ever done. For a long time, I didn't really acknowledge my agency in that whole process. I looked at it as though I didn't have a choice. Like I was just following my parents' direction, going where they took me, but that's not true. I had a choice. If I really wanted to stay in Ayiti, I could have. In fact, I was going to. Wilson and I had a plan.

He and his band had just signed a $50,000 contract with a silent investor from Florida. They were going to do big things. He had just put a down payment on a house in Port-au-Prince's city center and we were going to move in together. Start a life together.

Wilson always talked about all the kids he wanted, both sons and daughters. I don't know if he would've had them with me since I was only seventeen at the time and not at all ready for something like that, but it was the thought itself that excited me the most. The idea that I could plan for a future separate from my parents'. The idea that my life was my own. That I could choose happiness.

When Wilson died, so did my will to choose my own future. I was so depressed, so hopeless, that I stopped searching for happiness altogether. I didn't want it. And so I chose the easy way out, which was to follow my parents to America. I don't know if it was a mistake or not. I knew well enough that life is not easy for a young woman trying to make it on her own in a country like Ayiti, but every time I wake up and look outside my window—at the never-ending bleakness of this cursed land—I wonder if maybe the risk would've been worth it. Life here is not any easier than it was in Ayiti. Sure, I always have running water, electricity, and internet access. And yes, when it rains the kitchen does not flood and wash in all the cockroaches from the sewer, but so what? These things are not all there is to life.