Safe Place

22

AIDEN
14 years old.

Journal entry - (September 4th, 2018.)

Well today wasn't the best day ever, it was my first day of high-school though! It actually went great. Eli goes to my school and turns out we have most our classes together, except anatomy because they tried to make him dissect a frog and he started bawling his eyes out and then got removed from the class.

Turns out there was lacrosse tryouts today and guess who made the team? I did!
My coach said I was a natural, like I was born to do this. I made some friends today as-well, but I suck at sticking with friends, I think Eli is good enough for now.

Anyways, let's get to the reason this day sucked.
After I came home, I tried to make small talk with my dad so he can eventually ask me how my day went, but he never really cared enough to ever even talk to me.

I got too excited and ended up telling him I made the lacrosse team and that's when he lashed out on me.

I've got yelled at many times before but this one hurt. Today was the day I realized that I've never expressed myself around family.

What really hurt me was when I saw dads dropping off their kids to school. It's a normal thing, it shouldn't affect me. But why don't I have that? I walk an hour to school everyday. My dad forced that on me.

He blames it on his work but he has time to bring me to school everyday before work. I know his schedule! What did I do wrong?

Why can't he love me?
He loves my brothers.
I'm not any different.
I hate myself for not being able to have a relationship with my dad. I'm doing something wrong.

Once he lashed out on me, he was yelling about how I shouldn't do lacrosse and that football is what our family has been playing for decades.

I want to be my own person. I want to be myself. But I couldn't tell him that. Instead I stood there like an idiot until I got the sudden courage to tell him that this is what I wanted and he can't change that.

And right there I would love to go back in time and switch up what I said because that is when he hit me.

He punched me.
This was the first time my dad has ever hurt me.

I would say I never expected that from him, but I did. I always did.

After that Eli showed up to my house and I ended up telling him what happened. He told me to bottle up everything I felt and to write it on a piece of paper and here I am at midnight about to write a bunch of stuff in my diary of what this day made me figure out about myself.

Aiden's bottled up thoughts!

- The pain of your dad not loving you never goes away, it follows you at all times.

- Sometimes you can't always follow your dreams.

- I've never had a normal conversation with my dad.

- It sucks having to force myself to have 3 meals a day instead of 2 so I get to talk to my dad at the dinner table more.

- Am I not good enough for his love?

- Will he hit me again?

Present day

I slam my old, almost rusted diary shut, washing away everything I just read.

Long before my dad hit me, my brothers hit me. When my brothers did it, it felt casual. I thought it was all fun and games and that every sibling did it to each-other until they broke my arm for the first time when I was 8, that's the day I realized that what they were doing was not a joke even though I ignored the many bruises they gave me.