Knife

9 - Existence

I wanted my parents to love me. Before now, everything I wanted was easy to get. Challenges were unknown territory. Something I had never understood, never would understand. I'd never be able to work through anything that took effort, sweat and blood. I'd never improve, never learn to chip away the obstacles that stood in my way. I'd always end up destroying everything in a deadly rage that would also destroy the ultimate goal.

What use were goals to me when I'd always blow them up when I tried to get to them? I always needed to stop using such explosive tools and stop such deadly rages, but my little control over my emotions never let me get close to my goal, close enough and careful enough to reach it and not run over it.

But my sister got it. She got past her challenges. A lowly, lowly human with no special powers could do what I could not. It infuriated me. As I begged and pleaded internally for my parents to notice me, to notice my grades, to notice that I existed, i was constantly shadowed away by my ill, firstborn sister, who constantly needed their help, needed the things only they could provide for her.

What about me? Huh? Where am I? Do I exist for you? Do you see me? Am I here? Do you hear me? Am I a person to you?

Sometimes, I just wanted to scream at them, let them know that I was there. I'm here, you know! Look at me! Notice me! Please! I'm not nonexistent, right?

Or am I?

Sometimes, I broke down in tears in the middle of the night, salt and tears streaming down my cheeks because I had to keep all the feelings, the anger and sadness, the loneliness and hate to myself.

All because I justed wanted some attention.

***

Somewhere along the line I realized that I didn't need their praise if I just wanted attention. I only see it looking back at it now, but I was really doing was just getting any attention I could salvage. Not going to school, starting drugs, getting drunk and destroying my body. Well, of course I never actually hurt my body; my simple wishes always cleared up my body to have perfect health, not a single trace of drugs or alcohol. Never being caught, I got to experience the thrills of stay out late at night and getting drunk and high without the threat of getting caught.

The only problem? My parents hardly twitched.

It was like I didn't even exist. Once I came home at 2 AM; my parents got up, looked around at me, and then went straight back to bed.

Hello? Am I invisible or something?

Even as I lay in bed in the morning, my parents just left without me, like I wasn't even a child of theirs, like I never existed in their minds. Sometimes I never even got a meal to eat for a day because I was simply forgotten. Looking back, it wasn't really their fault, I just didn't fight for my attention. They didn't forget about me, they were just so busy that their daily schedules couldn't fit for me if I never tried hard enough for what I wanted.

For me back then, it was always their fault, never my own.

Now, I realize that everything's my fault. I was lacking in anything and everything, an incomplete person that could hardly complete even the easiest tasks.

And it was now that my mind started to twist.