The Boy I Could Never Love

Ready, Set, Go...

{Currently undergoing revision}

The belief that a pregnant woman does not live with her family, she marries and moves in with her husband saw my parents forced into marriage, because of an unplanned pregnancy at the age of twenty-one. My teenage self used to joke that I'd been to alter once already.

Preschool found the three of us with my father's family. A group of people who toted the phrase, today will never come again. I'm told, these raging alcoholics gave their sixteen-year-old son a bottle of booze for Christmas. By age three we became isolated in the French district of Hartford, a place that no longer exists.

Two aunts, my parents, and grandparents rented the upper apartments, and a pair of elderly French ladies lived in the basement. My first memory shows me chasing my cousin down the hall. The few memories I retain of that time see me lying in my bed against the wall of my parent's bedroom while they slept. Laughing in my mother's arms when suddenly everyone starts yelling. I'm told to stand in the corner even though I don't understand what I did. Nonetheless, trying to ask gets me screamed at, and time added to my punishment. Crawling into a pretty lady's lap after getting up from a nap to discover my parents gone. Only to fall asleep again and wake up to the family coming home with groceries, and visiting my aunt at Dunkin Donuts where she worked.

My parents bought me a swing set that they set up out back. However, I was never allowed to play with it. Not from any ailment or deformity, or because the neighborhood we lived in carried a risk, but at my grandmother's behest. Dad's parents refused to give my mother a key since she only ever stayed home with the baby and didn't need one. The lease in their names dictated they held all the power, even though my father paid the full amount of the rent.

My grandmother would lock us out of the apartment whenever we went outside. This left the two of us to wait in the heat, rain, cold, or any other harsh elements until the time he stood due to arrive home. Only then would his mother unlock the door and deny it ever happened, excusing mom of making up stories.

There was this one gemstone exhibit we went to where my parents lost me at the display of my birthstone. They looked pretty, and I felt a connection to the shiny objects behind glass cases that represented me. It made me feel special to know someone deemed such a beautiful thing worthy of my existence.

When I got found, I was in big trouble. I received reminders for months after that of why I couldn't go places. It made so I never dared to leave their side. Even when going to the bathroom in our apartment, I would not disappear without them knowing exactly where I was going and made sure they repeated it back to me, sometimes twice, before I left.

Nana and Papa, my mother's parents, came to visit us, and I felt so excited that I eagerly showed them around the place. After a few hours, in which I monopolized their time, they got ready to leave. The drive back would take them hours and the cows needed feeding. I became so upset that I couldn't go back with them, and they wouldn't stay, that I refused to talk to them. My father took me aside and said I made it look like I didn't want to be here and would rather live with them.

The day my father broke probation, which he landed on for a drunken brawl involving a knife, by shoplifting saw my father breaking the law as a blessing. My mother took him over the border to escape punishment and moved us back home to her family's farm where she received a job in the mill, seeing us freed from that nightmare.

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Author note: This story acquires updates as more about this period in my life comes forth. Due the condition brought on by my experiences, sections of these events went forgotten for a long time. For those reading this at the start of posting, you will travel with me along my journey. If you only just joined my readers assume my work remains incomplete.