Masked

A mask, something to hide behind. A barrier between your identity and the world. No one knows who you are, and no one knows your story. Many people hide behind masks, it just takes someone who cares enough to see through the mask and see the pain someone is trying to hide. I go through life everyday with my mask on. A happy-go-lucky, funny, and clumsy person is what most people see me as. But who I really am is careful, shy, and sad. A mask can wear you down, and when you start seeing how much people like your mask you begin to wonder, would anyone ever care enough to see past the mask.

~~~

I look in the mirror after I put my contacts in, my face is rounder then I would like it, my nose is bigger than what I would prefer, but the one thing I truly love about the way I look is my eyes. How they range from dark blue to bright blue reminds me of the ocean and its depths. I look to my right and there stood a short, pretty, outgoing and popular blonde girl. My younger sister. I really shouldn't let her get to me but it's hard. She's always happy and I crave for happiness and acceptance. After my sister, brother and I pile into the car where our mom was waiting to take us to school; I put on my mask and prepare myself to head into the middle school for another day of torture.

After the seven hours of prison are up for the day I meet my dad in the parking lot for him to take me and my siblings to his house. I'm still getting used to the whole divorce thing, going from one house to another all the time. They still fight. My mom still loves him even after what he did to her. He broke her heart and cheated on her with a woman named Brenda who has been seeing him for I believe around 2 years. I just recently met her but I'm not allowed to tell my mom because my mother forbids it until my mom gets to met her. She says it's to protect us but honestly I think she just wants to see who is replacing her in my dad's heart.

Finally my sister arrives to the car after kissing her boyfriend good-bye. I hate seeing her happy. Her 4th boyfriend and she's in 7th grade, I've never even had one and I'm about to leave the 8th grade. No one has ever liked me, I can't blame them. I'm weird, because I collected ducks but they don't know I'm donating them to a children's hospital and selling some to donate the money too.

I go home, go to dance, study, and go to bed at around 11. This is how my life goes, just repeating itself each day. School, come home, parents fight, go to dance, study, take off my mask.

~~~

I thought summer was a time to let go, be free, and not have to worry about anything; I guess I was wrong. My 2012 summer could not have been any worse. My parents fighting got extreme, I felt what it's really like to be scared. I've cried enough to hydrate a whole village in Africa. But two incidents changed my life forever.

It was a normal day, I was over at my dad's house and my brother and sister were out with friends. Out of nowhere my mom calls my dad and they start fighting. It got really bad really quick. My mom drove across town to come and argue with him face to face. I was alone watching them fight. I began to get scared, my mom was not acting normal. She was crazy, angry, enraged and hurt. They fought for an hour, then my mom had enough. She walked out, slamming the door behind her. Her keys were on the table. I ran out after her.

"What are you doing?"

"Go back inside, its to dark out here." She replied.

"No, here's your car keys just drive home and go to bed."

"I just need to go for a walk and cool down."

"Are you sure? Will you come back?"

"Yes I will." She hugged me and gave me back her keys.

I went back inside, a half hour went by and I still haven't heard from my mom, I told my dad to drive around town to look for her to make sure she's ok. We drove down the road to get to her house, and there she was. Walking 7 miles to her house. She still couldn't stand the site of my dad as she yelled at us to go away and leave her be. We kept telling her to get in the car and we'd take her the rest of the way to her house and we can bring her her car in the morning. She kept refusing.

"Congratulations Don you've won! After tonight you can have your prize and you will be happy!" She would scream through tears as we followed her in the car. I knew what she meant. She was planning on killing herself. My own mother, planning her death. I was shaking uncontrollably, I ran out of tears to cry and I was screaming at her, "Don't leave me! Don't do this to me! I can't imagine life without you." She eventually agreed to get in the car. But when we dropped her off at her house she wouldn't take her house keys from us. She said she would rather freeze to death then to live in her house that my father helps pay for. We threw her keys at her and drove off as fast as we could, as we turned the corner I looked back and saw her throwing back her keys at the car. We got back to my dads and called the police to go to her house and take her to a hospital so she wouldn't hurt herself. I feel asleep that night crying and shaking. My brother and sister were lucky enough that they did not have to experience it.

A final goodbye, a last hug, a farewell kiss. Things most people never expect to have to do when a loved one is wanting to get their life over with. A few months after my mom got out of the hospital the first time, another fight broke out between her and my dad. Another horrible, unimaginable fight. This time my brother and sister were there. My mom drove to my dad's after they got off the phone over a fight and told us all to come out to her car. She wanted to say goodbye to all of us. Kids should never have to say goodbye to their mom, they should never have to experience anything like it. It scars you, and effects who you are. A kid should never have to go through this kind of pain my mom put us through. We cried and argued with her not to, but she kept saying she couldn't go on with her life with all of her pain. After she drove off and I got my brother and my sister inside the house, my dad called the police again to go to her house and take her back to the hospital.

~~~

My mom is out of the hospital now, and hopefully will be for a long time now. I'm going through a depression, making things hard on me. My self esteem is very low, I don't want to be around people, school is becoming harder and harder. And with trying to keep my mom happy and myself too, school is the last thing I need to worry about. It stresses me out, wears me down. My parents are having me see a psychologist now but I don't know how it will help. My dad gets mad at me because I want to be over at my mom's house more than his and he even told me he was going to kick me out because I won't tell him anything about what I'm going through and that he thinks I love my mom more than him. Meanwhile I feel he favors my sister more, but he always has but now it's starting to hurt me. My mom still cannot know that I have met Brenda, in order to keep her happy. I feel my dad is even replacing me with Brenda since he prefers spending time with her over spending time with me. It makes my life very hard to concentrate on things and it stresses me out far too much. At school I wear my mask, around my mom I wear my mask, around my dad I wear my mask, without my mask people see I am broken, people see I am weak and I do not want people to see me as broken. I need my mask in order to live.