Love and Fury

Chapter 1

     How many times can your heart break and you still keep going? That's what I am thinking to myself as I lay in bed, in my apartment, alone. I have been through so much and I honestly do not know how I am still here. Trust me, I know people probably have been through way worse than me, but that doesn't change how I feel. It doesn't change the fact that I think life is just so unfair.

     Don't get me wrong, life is unfair in a multitude of ways. There could be some real changes made to the entire world for the better, but we aren't going to get into that right now. What we're going to get into is why I think my life is unfair. Time and time again whenever I think life is going to get better, it always shows me how fast that can change.

     So, let us start at the beginning. I won't go too into detail because this isn't an autobiography, but it also helps knowing my past of unfortunate events. I guess you could say it started as a child. I couldn't even tell you an exact age because it was happening for as long as I can remember.

     My parents are drug addicts. No easy way to sugarcoat it. My parents have made my childhood, not a childhood. There were times that were so rough. Times that if I ever had a child, I would make sure that they never went through those trying times. I remember days of the electric being turned off. Why? They couldn't pay the bill because they were too worried about their next fix.

     I remember having to go to the neighbors and asking if they had any food I could eat. It was embarrassing. I had to do it. There was nothing to eat in the house and I was starving. My stomach was hurting so bad from hunger pains. That's probably where my crippling anxiety started as well.

     I remember each and every time that we had to move. We got evicted from every house in the town we lived in, so we had to uproot my life and move to another town. I was both happy and sad. Happy because maybe a new town would mean my parents cleaning their act up. Sad because I was leaving all my friends who were helping me get through this thing you call life.

     Don't get me wrong, not everyday was so bad. There would be days my mom would cook so much food that we would have leftovers for a couple days. I would savor it too because I knew that there were days coming that we barely had food again. That's when I learned what food stamps were. I started to understand that whenever they came on the card at the beginning of the month, we had food. Towards the end of month when we ran out of the food stamps and all the food, that's when the struggle began. Just the last 2 weeks till the next month when we got them again.

     So that was the cycle, month after month. You would think they would have at least saved just a little bit of money to get by for the last two weeks. Nope, they just had to have their fix. Back to getting to the unfair part of it all, though. The unfairness of it all is that I know they love me. They would tell me they were proud of me whenever I had achievements in school. They supported me in almost everything I did. Addiction is just a bitch.

     Then there were days at school whenever I longed to be a part of a different family. Everyone is talking about all the family vacations they go on. Even just them talking about going out to eat at a restaurant or going to see a movie, I envied them. I envied them because while they are living that nice life, I'm taking care of my parents. I'm the child, they should be taking care of me, but that isn't always the case. Some days are good, some days are bad.

     On good days, my parents are happy and carefree. They cook dinner, they clean the house, they play family games. Now that I am sitting here saying this outloud, I am embarrassed. Those aren't happy and carefree things. Those things are normal everyday things. Normal things that people do. Maybe not everyone has the energy to do those things everyday, but my parents literally could not do it without drugs.