Knife

8 - Of Failure

Everything was easy before I experienced failure. Isn't that true for all of us? The experience of failure isn't really failure until we realize that we aren't good enough, that we didn't manage to do what we wanted to do. It's more like a try again later kind of feeling. Instead of the feeling that we didn't do what we needed to do, we're still happy-go-lucky and think everything's perfect and that we just need to try one more time. Failure's never failure until there's a sense of hopelessness and defeat.

But I had never experienced this thing called "failure" before then. Everything was simple: wish for it, and it would be at my fingertips. Even if I couldn't simply wish for something, the plan to execute it would be so simple that it would hardly even challenge me. I was never challenged. Everything I did and everything I had to do were just simple steps on the road of world domination.

And when I did meet failure? When I did recognize that some things I simply couldn't do? Everything just went downhill from there.

***

Parents, love me.

Friends, love me.

Sister, love me.

Everyone, love me.

Especially my family. I would tolerate nothing less than the most affection that they could offer to me. I wanted to be swarmed by my love. Because even at the age of 7, I could see that my parents favored my sister and--dare I say--detested me. Why? I only realized years later, but my parents didn't need to pay attention to me; they saw good grades, they saw a smile.

They didn't see my thoughts though; that's probably what brought about the eventual outcome, one that neither of us were happy about.

And so I went about my days, hating my home, going to school only to be slathered in fake love. Love that I had only gained through superficial wishes, love that would never truly be mine. I spiraled, my thoughts going deep and deeper, dark and darker. Wishes filled with malice flowed from my mind, sending my sister into week-long comas, coughing fits, and hellish fevers. Bruises formed on her forehead, and she'd often break into hives even though she had no allergies. Falling behind in school and suffering from the fact that her friends all left her side, that only made my parents pay even more attention to her.

I was furious. This wasn't how it was supposed to pan out. This was just her punishment. She took all my attention; she had to suffer too. But my 7-year-old brain didn't know anything. All my life, I had only known punishment. Nothing even like rewards existed for me. All I knew from my parents's occasional lashings were horrible ways to reprimand those who did me wrong.

That's you, my sister. That's you.

Somehow, I never realized that when a person is deeply sick for an unknown cause, that draws attention towards them. Did a sick person get abandoned or cared for? How did it ever work out in my little mind that my sick sister would get less attention than perfectly stable (actually, "perfectly stable") me?

My parents were constantly taking my sister to the hospital, to the pediatrician, spending lots of money on her and trying to make her feel comfortable to the point where I almost felt nonexistent.

Where was I in this family chemistry? Nonexistent, taken for granted like the average person's air. My problems didn't matter. Not enough, anyway. I was left to take care of myself, save food and shelter. I had to buy my own things with money I hardly had, and I took good care of the things I did own.

My barbie dolls became my best friends. They might not have had feelings, but I knew they were the only things that truly loved me from their hearts. I didn't care about the hierarchy I had built up at school before now. I needed my life, a true life that wasn't just pure manipulation.

But I didn't know how far that truly was from my sight.