HOW TO RUIN YOUR LIFE (LGBTQ+)

5

Joe and Persia were Asa's younger brother and sister.

    They'd looked up to Asa when they were young children. Micah wasn't someone to look up to, really. He mostly played alone, and spent time with Asa. He'd never been very interested in his youngest two siblings.

    But Asa had been a good older sister. She'd pushed kids back when they pushed Joe. She'd braided Persia's hair. She'd read books to them when their parents were fighting in the kitchen. She'd take them outside when their father was beating their older brother.

    She'd tried to protect them the best a small child could.

    But she also scared them. She'd torture fish and bugs, she'd draw scary pictures of demons and monsters, and she would always yell at their mom, telling her that she hated her and wished she was dead.

    Joe loved his mother, and so did Persia.

    Everyone in the house was afraid of the father, but they loved him the most that they could, which was a lot for a young child.

    Asa would tell them that she would hurt their father someday. Her face would get red and she'd clench her fists and grab their shoulders tight enough to bruise, telling them that she would hurt him when she was big enough.

    And she did, but it happened a lot sooner than anyone could have predicted, when she was still small. Their mother chose to keep it all a secret. She loved Asa just as much as she loved Persia and Joe. She didn't trust her or feel safe with her, but she loved her still. So she told no one, and made the family swear to never tell anyone else about what happened.

    After that, Joe and Persia kept their distance from her.

    Asa moved out of the house just a few years later, moving in with her aunt over an hour away from the house she grew up in. Her aunt was old and unfriendly, and had never visited her nieces and nephew before. But she bonded with Asa over their mutual hate for her mother. She died when Asa was eighteen, giving her the house.

    Joe and Persia never visited her, for all the years that she was away. But when the house was hers, she returned to her mother and siblings and asked them to move in with her. She was old enough now to do what she wanted, and Persia and Joe were teenagers.

    But her mother screamed and cried and pushed against her with all her might, saying that she would never allow the children to move in with her. And Asa grew angry, pushing her mother and shaking her and scaring her until she just seemed to snap, and grew very quiet. Joe stepped forward to defend their mother, yelling and fighting Asa, but it was too late.

    The dam had cracked in their mother's mind, and she finally lost her sanity, completely.

    She never spoke again.

    She was admitted to a mental hospital, and Asa asked the children to move in with her, rather than have to be in the foster care system.

    But they refused. Persia was considering it, but Joe spoke up and said that he'd rather go through the foster system and live with hateful families than live with Asa. And that's what they did, for the few years they had left before they were old enough to do what they wanted to.

    Joe and Persia didn't see Asa for those few years, and after they graduated from the system, their mother was reported dead. She had passed away in the night.

    They saw Asa at the funeral. She didn't speak to either of them, and they didn't speak to her. It was better this way.

    But Persia missed her older sister. Very much.