rage • l.h

prologue

I've always been this way.

It's all I can remember. Everything that led me to the point of no return can be traced back to my father. The starting point in the race I've been running while shoving down all of my opponents, caring only about who waits at the finish line.

I never knew I was sick, not until I got to 6th grade and realized most girls my age didn't have to curl into a ball and cry at the slightest sign of frustration. Not until I realized most girls hadn't punched a hole in their closet door when their brother spilt water on their favorite shirt. Of course I knew water didn't stain, it was just a symbol. A symbolic metaphor for my breaking point, which proved to be many things. It seemed I had a breaking point nearly every day. Each day I woke up was just a new day to throw things and scream at the most minor inconvenience.

You see, when you're a little girl and these things happen, you're seen as sick. Mentally ill. Nothing a little bit of therapy can't change, right?

Wrong.

Then you get to high school and you're a stone cold bitch with a mean streak. It only took me one month of 9th grade to realize I'm better off just not talking to anyone. The irony? I hated seeing people upset. I physically felt it low in my stomach, begging my brain to stop it's abuse and just turn off. Don't we all just wish we could turn it off?

There's a little bit of irony in playing the blame game when you've never once been a victim in your life, save for the few times my father's wrath was directed at me rather than my mom.

My mom quickly realized that he was the problem. He was my problem. Every behavior, every tick, every venomous word that spilled from my lips, I learned from him.

She kicked my father out when I was twelve. I haven't seen him since.

Genetics are a beautiful thing.

My mom is perfect. Calm natured, even tempered, nurturing, and never condescending.

I seem to have inherited every single strand of precious DNA from the man who hurt her, not physically but emotionally, for years.

The irritability. The impatience. The manipulation. The pessimism.

The rage.

I took it all from him. His brain may as well have been put on a surgical table and placed into my own head .

That's the beauty of being sick. You can always blame it on genetics. Having a shitty day? Must be because of your shitty father that left you with not even as little as a goodbye. And of course, the $100 bill he set on the kitchen table as he walked out, as if that made up for the years of missed child support.

There's also beauty in the fact that I'm not special. I'm not even remotely close to special.

I'm just a bitch with irate anger and an absent father. There's a million of us. Girls who never got the love they needed and never saw the love they're supposed to want between their parents. Here we are, left with no indication of how this shit works. How do you treat someone who loves you? Yell at them until your vengeful tears streak your face? Become emotionally absent for days at a time?

And the best part of it all, my personal favorite curse, is the fact that we won't be loved.

We don't deserve it.