Teaser Tales (Short Stories)

I am nothing like my parents: High school (13+)

When I was in high school, I was nothing like my parents.

I joined the LGBTQ club, against my mother's wishes. She stopped yelling at me about it, but she never missed an opportunity to make fun of me. My mother is very good at taking a question and turning it into a gut wrenching insult that I still carry with me to this day.

"You're fat now too? Oh that's great! Now I don't feel so bad."

"So how many people in your club are mentally challenged?"

"Do you count as LGBTQ if you're half straight?"

Ignoring her is the easiest way to get through it. It hurt for the first few years, now her words are just dull, like trying to cut me with a spoon.

I want to go into Videogame Design, so I took several art and computer classes in high school. That was one thing me and my father actually got along about. He supported my art passion, but he hated what it was "doing to me", as he would put it. He hated my dyed hair and the piercings I bought for my birthday. He even left my Bisexuality alone. He was the first person I introduced my girlfriend too.

Her name was Jenny. She was a short brunette girl with glasses, and I found her absolutely adorable. She had one flaw that I didn't mind but she hated, and that was her lazy eye.

I never brought it up. I only ever talked about it when she did, and that was to assure her that I didn't care, and it was what made her "her".

Valentine's Day came around, and I was absolutely broke. We spent it like we would a normal Sunday; eating Cadbury Eggs and watching The Walking Dead.

I looked down at her face and smiled. Her head was leaning on my stomach, the rest of her body was laid next to me and her legs swung freely over arm of the couch. She caught my eye and smiled back.

But happiness lever lasted.

I don't remember how the argument started. I don't even remember what it was about. It's all a blur at this point. I do remember how deep my insults cut. Her body, her personality, her friends, her family.....her as a whole. Nothing was left untouched. The scary thing was that anger was the same anger that my father always showed to me. Those foul words were the same kind that always left my mother's mouth. I didn't see it at first, but I see it now.

The anger, the bitterness...this is what they're like, and I just crippled another with that same ferocity.

It was about a year ago when I became self-aware. I could see myself in them, and that terrified me. It's crippling at this point; the depression that I still hide. I've learned to deal with it without medication. The anxiety and self-disgust I hide behind that cocky smile that everyone knows me by.

I'm not lazy; I'm just bad at everything I try to do. Just more on and abandon any notion of giving a shit. I don't care anymore. I'm too depressed and sour to care anymore. This is what they did. This is the child they made together. They made a self-loathing pile of garbage and they couldn't care less.

And you know what?

I don't either.

All I can do is not make the same mistakes as they did. I'm not passing on this mind, these emotions or these genes to another. I don't want to be with anybody, and I certainly don't want to do this to another person, especially a child.

Because, I'm exactly like my parents.

And this needs to stop.