Without you and me

"I'm Jaime Delgado"

When I was a little girl, about nine years old I dreamt of being someone important, someone with a purpose. I've always felt like I was in the shadows watching people become somebody and I was just there.

I was beginning to be overlooked by my grandma and I never actually felt needed by anyone else around me. I had my best friend Jessica but there's only so much a friend can do.

I felt hopeless, I felt like I should've never been born, it sounds harsh but the overwhelming feeling of self hatred blurred my vision of hope and living life.

My mom had given birth to me when she was seventeen. Got pregnant with me when she was sixteen, she fell in love at a young age and did some things she might've regretted, she ended up telling my "dad" after she found out but he refused to accept I was his.

He knew that he had a kid and he knew I was his kid, but even throughout all of that he still left.

He ignored my mom through the rest of highschool and treated her as she never existed and they ended up never speaking again, well that's what my grandmother told me.

Shortly after she graduated my "mom" left, I don't know where she went and I don't know why she left, hell I don't even know if she's alive.

My grandma told me she packed two bags and took a picture of me in one of the bags and soon after she was gone, like she completely disappeared.

Her name was Leanne, I don't remember her. I don't have any memories of her and I'm not sure if I still want them.

She gave parental rights to my grandma and I grew up with her all my life, she was my mother, my father, my grandma and even my grandpa.

I never met my grandpa either because he passed away before I was born, so it was just her and I, just the two of us.

My grandma was my best friend, the person I laughed and cried with, the person who taught me everything I knew, but soon after we both got older and it affected her more as time went on. I became lonelier and lonelier as time went by when my grandma lost her memory slowly.

I knew she wasn't going to live forever but the cluelessness took over me for a while.

When I found out she got sick I was 12 years old and I realized what I had to do for her to not worry about me and to love me until her last breath.

I remember once when I was around 13 years old I wrote a fake news article for my class in middle school, and people liked it. Ever since then I wanted to become a writer or someone who told stories and that's who I became.

I wanted to be someone that my mother wished she wanted to keep.

Or someone my father wanted to stay for.

Of course things changed and reasons why I do things changed but this one thing never changed, I knew I was going to make my abuelita proud of who I was.

I studied hard in high school, I was the valedictorian, I wrote for the schools newspaper, I anchored on the news channel for school, I was also a cheerleader and I was on the soccer team.

I'll be honest, I didn't like sports, hated the feeling of being sweaty and out of breath and I hated being on TV but I needed that feeling like I could do something for myself, so I stuck to it and I worked my ass off for years.

My grandma ended up passing away my senior year of highschool, a couple of weeks before I graduated.

I had just finished my last soccer game of the season and I was sitting on the bench joking with my friends and soaking up the victory of our win.