Growing Up

"I'm sorry, Jude, I have to do this," my dad said, putting down the phone.    

"It's fine. I don't care," I muttered. And I hadn't. I hadn't cared about anything.                                                            

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If you had asked me how I was before any of this had happened, I'd have told you, "I don't know," because truthly, I didn't. I never payed attention to my feelings. What did they matter? What did anything matter? A lot, as I would later learn.                                                                 

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"I'm coping," a stressed Mom told me as she rubbed her temples, her brown hair hanging limply in her face. The early morning sun pooled in from the window, giving the yellow kitchen a glow.      

I never paid attention to Mom's stress. I was indifferent to it since she was always stressed; always worried about something small.      

I finished my orange juice and slipped back upstairs and into my room, which looked like a tornando had gone through. Clothes piled up on the floor with pencils, pens, and papers taking up all the space on my desk. I was always disorganized and my Mom hated it. She, being the tidy and neat person she was, had me make up these lists to organize,  but the lists hadn't done much. I was still messy because I didn't care, but I made lists in my head and it became a habit to make lists about everything and everyone. I had so many, that I couldn't keep track of them all, and my head became as messy and disorganized as my room.