I remember the day my mom found my journal. My parents called me into their room and I immediately started thinking of what assignments I had yet to turn in. My brothers were told to stay in their own rooms and not come out until they were given the "Okay". I sat on my mom's bed, awaiting some horrible news-a death in the family, a call from my teacher, a death of one of my closest friends. That news would've been better than what actually went down that night.
"What's this?" My dad set the journal down on the bed, like an attorney presenting key evidence to their opponent. My heart sank as I realized that I poured my heart and soul into that journal. Every bad thought, every suicide plan, every letter to my crush. EVERYTHING was in that journal.
I'm not a touchy-feely person. I don't like to say "I love you" at the end of phone call conversations. I dislike any form of unnecessary physical contact-which includes hugs. Maybe, after all the years of faking smiles at family gatherings and going along with whatever plans my parents had for me, I'd lost my way of thinking autonomously. I wasn't myself for a while. That journal was my only way of expressing myself. NO ONE was supposed to read it. In stead of answering my father, I burst into tears. At the time, crying came as naturally to me as breathing. It was something I didn't know how to stop. Or rather, I hadn't run out of tears yet.
"Your father found it in your back pack." My mom was crying at this point too. I'd never really seen my mom cry except for the day our family dog had to be put down. Even though she'd shed a tear every now and then while yelling or watching a sad movie, I'd never seen her blubber-cry. It made my crying even worse.
"I thought that you were such a fantastic writer from all the pieces you'd send me while I was in Iraq, so when I saw a journal, I was hoping it'd be a compilation of upcoming stories and pieces that you were working on. Instead I come to read that you're thinking about killing yourself?" his voice was raised, in a tone that I'd never heard before in my whole entire life. I'd only come to hear that tone on two other occasions. The first being the time I was failing four classes with grades far below fifties; and the second being when I wanted to transfer out of an early college high school to a "regular" high school.
I should've told him that it was a book I was writing. That it was about a suicidal girl who didn't know what else to do with her life. Or that it was every cool online post on Wattpad that I thought was cool. I should've denied it. I could've saved myself from an even more heart breaking conversation. The "why aren't we good enough" conversation.
"Are we really that bad of parents to you? Do we hit you or abuse you? No. We give you so much stuff. We give you rides and care about you. Tell us. What are we doing wrong?" Nothing. I wish I knew why I always feel like crap or why I feel like I'm never going to make it another day. It as nothing to do with their parenting. It had nothing to do with the relationship between us. I was just broken. It wasn't their fault. Maybe it happened during a fall down from the monkey bars. Maybe it happened when I scraped my knee on the playground during a round of tag. I broke myself somewhere along the way. It in no way had anything to do with their parenting skills.
It's been five years since that day, when they found my journal. I still think about killing myself. I still write in composition books and tiny notepads. But they no longer read them. Because I think they've accepted that I'm not going t kill myself. Because there's too much left for me to write.
