Unbalanced

x

Wasted. That's how I felt. And not in the cool, normal sense that everyone means when they use the word. I meant it in the way that indicates complete, whole-hearted giving up.

I pulled the blinds down to hide myself from the one source of light that leaked into my room. It was one of the four windows in our entire apartment, the one that I had ownership over, and the one that had broken three weeks ago after my fist went swiftly through the glass. In reality, I was partially hiding myself from the outside, and partially hiding the window from my mom. This was either the tenth or eleventh hole I've put in our apartment, and more specifically, the second window.

Mom was always trying to make our place look nice. She had just bought new couches a few months back and my constant wall crunching was a huge inconvenience to her "look!-we-have-it-all-together" front. In her defense, there was honestly nothing wrong with her. She was a geometry teacher at my high school, and a pretty popular one at that. She did have it all together. It's just that the people in her family did not share that virtue.

My sister, Kelsey, and I were part of the problem. Kelsey had been notorious in our school for throwing parties. She was the go-to for everyone to see what was up for the weekend. She had people over our house constantly, drinking beer that she had gotten some older guy to buy for her and her friends, and smoking weed that she had conned her way out of paying for. I had no idea how she did it, I guess it was a girl thing, and I had no desire to figure it out.

It's not even just that she had parties at our apartment, though. She would also orchestrate parties in the woods just outside of town. There were two spots where people would hang out, and they were cleared out by Kelsey and her friends God knows when. She was well-known, by peers and parents alike, and widely regarded as troublesome. Mom was in denial about Kelsey's insubordinate behavior for years before there was a knock on our door from Kelsey and Officer Blanco one night. I don't even know what she had done that time, because no one in my family had spoken to each other for about two weeks afterwards until it was ultimately swept under the rug and forgotten about. Regardless of Kelsey's delinquencies, she at least had a life and friends. I just sucked.

I didn't even know what my problem was. I didn't even know where to begin. I never successfully socialized myself into my school. Everyone knew my mom and my sister but I was kind of just ignored. I had grown to like it that way now, but the frustration from constantly being dismissed fucked with me like nothing else and ended up spilling over in bursts of anger and destructiveness. I would never let anyone outside of my family see me that way though. People at school, if they thought anything of me at all, probably thought that I was just some quiet kid who went home and lost himself in video games until early morning. And that's basically what I was. I just hated being so simple and so boring while everyone else seemed to live with such excitement that they never took a second to actually get to know me or maybe wait for me to speak.

"What's up, freak?" Kelsey remarked as she abruptly opened my door. "Why is it so cold in here?"

Fuck. The window. "I don't know."

"What do you mean it's cold in here? I have the heat blasting throughout the whole apartment." Mom was now at the door, drying her hands on a towel from the kitchen.

"I don't know," I repeated, obviously annoyed by everyone suddenly thinking that they could come into my room whenever they wanted.

"Cole, you have to keep the door open so that the air can circulate," Mom said as she walked back to the kitchen, picking up on my growing irritation.

Kelsey, on the other hand, walked further into my room and dramatically sprawled herself out on my bed. "Do you have the window open?"

"Yes. Now can you please leave my room?" It had only been a few seconds but I was tired and just wanted to go to sleep, and here she was, taking up my entire bed.