I Wasn't Born Crazy

The irony of a name

As was previously stated, my name is Hope. Ironic right? I'm in a mental institution, what is hopeful in here? All my life I have tried to figure out what my name means, like it's a tool that will help me figure out a deeper meaning of myself... That's stupid though. Every time I asked my parents about it they simply replied, "Cus' it's pretty". So much for that deeper meaning bullshit. My parents were never much into deep thinking, too time consuming my father always told me, and between the booze or drugs the word "consuming" was a mile stone for him.

The drinking started before I was even born, but the drugs on the other hand... that started when I was seven. Dad worked on the farm hours on end, Mama was a home body, didn't step foot outdoors. I guess opposite do attract, but these two, they were more like the poles of the earth. Couldn't stand be near each other sober and could hardly say one word to each other under the influence before China was flying acrossed the room. I never knew how two people could hate each other so much could remain together, and before I knew it Mama was pregnate with Jacob. If you thought that with Mama being pregnate that all the drinking and abuse would stop, you thought completely wrong. Dad didn't believe the baby was his and Mama about killed herself from liq poisioning. Let's just say my childhood was less than ideal, maybe that explains why I'm screwed up so bad...

"It's what they made you do, not your past. You know that!" fills the cell. I shut out the voice and attempt to focus again.

When Jacob was born everything changed. Liquor was not to be seen in the house and the use of drugs dropped exponentially. I thought that this was really strange and I was jealous of Jacob, I believed that he could change everything for us because he was special and I wasn't. I was ten, what do you expect? When Jacob was added to the picture my parents could actually tolerate eachother, Mama started cooking again and Dad actually came home at night. Once the jealousy passed, I thought that maybe, just maybe, we could have a normal family. This image came crashing down around me within the next four years.

It started when Jacob turned four, I was fourteen at the time and I was helping Dad on the farm. We came home and we noticed the house was unsually quiet. Dad called out for Mama but heard nothing. I looked outside to see if she let Jacob out to play in the garden, no one was there. I returned in the house to see that my father had disappeared as well. That's when I heard it, a slam of a body against the wall. My father's earth shattering screams filled my ears and I sprinted towards the source of it. The bathroom filled My view and the smell of liquor filled my nose before my mind could register the whole situation.

The bathtub was filled to the brim. Empty Liquor containers littered the floor. I look to my right and see my mother's limp body crumpled against the wall and my father standing over her, fist bloody. I couldn't see what he got so worked up about until he turned around. There Jacob layer in my father's arms, completely unresponsive to the world around him. My father hits my brother's back in rapid succession until Jacob let's out an earth shatering cry. My father's shoulders relax and Jacob throws up about a gallon of water. He's shaking when he's done and Dad hands him to me. "Go clean him up, I need to talk to Mama."

I walk out of the bathroom with a crying Jacob in my arms. I clean him up and rock him until he goes to sleep. My father doesn't come out of that bathroom until late in the night. I couldn't sleep because of what I saw and to be completely honest I had no idea what I saw. I couldn't make sense of it and I didn't until a couple years later. After that life before Jacob slowly started to return. The drinking began, the screaming and fighting was an everyday occurnace, drugs began entering the house and filling the rooms with the awful odor, and yet again I was left in the shadow of a once happy life, forgotten and unwanted but this time I Wasn't alone. Together Jacob and I grew up, became friends, and took care of each other. I was a mother to him that I never had and he was a protector I had when times for hard. He was what kept my sanity for so long. My mother never left her room anymore and my father spent more and more time in the fields every day until I saw him only once every other week. I didn't know where he went, I just knew he always came back. This became routine for us and Jacob and I actually grew up accepting our reality and promising to get out of here as soon as we could. I started working in town at the age of fifteen trying to support what little we had. I didn't want to work on the farm anymore, the less I saw of him the better. That's what I beleieved until the night of the accident.