I've never really felt like life was meant to be savored, meant to be this "thing" we all really loved. I know I've never felt like that when it comes to...life.
I had my own prospective of my day to day life before I could even talk.
I got so used to the yelling, the hitting, and the alcohol abuse in my home. Growing up I just thought it was normal. I felt it was normal to drink every night. To give your wife or daughter a light smack when they didn't do something right.
But as I got even older, maybe around the age of fourteen. I realized pretty quickly that something was different about my family, then the other families around town. When my mother took me and my older sister for a walk, I noticed that my sister and mother were the only women with heavy bruising on their faces, arms and even a few on their legs.
It scared me. It scared me to the point that I got worried I would start to look like them, like my mother and sister with bruises covering my body. I started to hide in my room under my bed when my father would poor himself some of his alcohol and start yelling at my mother. I would scream trying to drown out the loud noises.
One day I remember... probably the most horrifying day of my life.
My father came home, around the usual time of 5:00 in the evening, already drunk. He swung open the door and went straight for my mother asking her about his dinner and where it was. My mother started to ramble not knowing exactly how to answer. At this time I knew exactly what I had to do, I had to go to my room. I could no longer listen to yelling, the terrified screams from my mother. It was so horrible! After about ten minutes of the normal sounding yelling I lifted my hands from my head off my ears, and then hear my mother scream louder then she normally does, as well as a glass of some sort break....
After that it was silent....no sound at all. As if the yelling never happened. As if time had been stopped. Though the silence scared me, I left my room quietly and made my way to the dining area, where my mother and father had been. Once I had walked into the door way I noticed my mother on the floor motion less, there was blood all over the floor. My father with a broken vase in his hand, with big eyes. I wanted to say something but my voice got caught in my throat. My sister started to cry and shout, "No!!! Mom!!!"
I had then realized what had happened, my father actually had killed my mother. I just knew that one day he would go to far, I knew he would just end her life. But I never did anything to save my poor mother, I never called the police, I never told anyone in town. It's almost like I killed her myself. I could have stopped this, I could have prevented it but I didn't, I just let her.....die.
About a week after my beloved mother's death, my father was finally arrested, with no where for my older sister and me to go we were placed with a foster family. They were very nice. The house was beautiful, the father only drank once in a while and when he did he never became violent. He never hurt the mother or my older sister. They were what most children would call, picture perfect parents.
But not to me...I hated them from the minute I placed my eyes on them. I wanted them to leave me alone or to place me in a different home. When they first came to pick me and sister up from the orphanage, my sister opened up to them right away. They took us out for ice cream and they let us pick out a new toy that we could take to our new home. The whole time though I gave them the silent treatment, I wanted nothing to do with them. At one point before were even taken to their house, I spit in the father's face. After we got there I still wouldn't say a word to them.
I would stay in my room nearly all hours of the day before and after school. I would hardly eat if it meant not having to see their faces. I wanted my old family back....even if it was what most children would call the worst household of all time. I didn't care those people are who brought me into this world, and even if my father didn't show me any damn love, my mother did. My sweet and beautiful mother was the only one who gave a shit about me and my sister. I missed her and wanted her back.
Every night I swore I could still feel her hands on my cheek. I could still feel her arms hug me every day before I left for school. I miss my mother still, nearly 6 years later I still miss my mother, I know it's normal to miss family members but she was the only one I truly loved and truly knew. Now I need to move on. The voices all around me say grow up, it's time to become a real man!
Yeah a real man, life begins...now.
