One Thing On Top of the Other

Numerous Malfunctions

Once December came around, things took a turn for the worst. There's so much that went wrong I can't even keep my timeline straight. There is one date that I will never forget though, and that date is December 7th.

The 7th of December was supposed to be a good day. It was my stepmom's birthday, so we were going to make cake and have some fun. Things started going wrong almost immediately, from the moment we woke up. My stepmom said she just wanted to relax for most of the day, which made a lot of sense. But she wasn't relaxing. My dad was making breakfast that morning so my stepmom wouldn't have to, but she still came in and insisted on helping. My dad told her to just relax, which resulted in a bit of an argument. Then later on when my dad asked who wanted to volunteer to help make the cake, no one said anything except for me. I wanted to do something nice, and I'd been wanting to learn to cook for a little while.

While my dad was getting the oven ready and I was mixing the cake batter together, my stepmom came in and started telling my dad to make sure I was doing it right. He said that he had everything under control, and he told her to go relax again. She didn't like that, so she began watching me. I tried to not let it bother me, so I just carried on with my singing and cake mixing. After about ten minutes she said,

"Could you not sing while you're doing that, I see spit flying into the cake. It's not that I don't like your singing or anything, I just don't want your spit in the cake."

I couldn't help but feel a little bit annoyed, because I was trying to be helpful and she was saying that I was spitting in her cake. I didn't say anything of course, I just told her okay and stopped singing.

After I was no longer needed in the kitchen, I decided to write some poems. As I was writing, my sister Alyssa came in and asked me what I was doing. When I told her that I was writing a poem, she was intrigued.

"What's a poem?"

Alyssa is only seven, so she's very curious about new things. I was really happy that she wanted to know more about poems, because my poetry is something that was very close to my heart.

"A poem is kind of like a short story. It can be about anything you want, it can be about something you feel, someone you care about, something that makes you mad, anything."

"When my friends are mean to me that makes me mad, and sad. Can I write a poem about that?"

"Of course you can! Do you want me to help you?"

"Yeah! Poems sound fun!"

Alyssa didn't typically enjoy my company, so the fact that I was getting to hang out with her while teaching her about something I loved was amazing. Everything was going great, until Alyssa took a break to go to the bathroom. A few minutes after she left, I heard my stepmom yelling at her. She came back to my room in tears, and she told me that her mom said that she needed to stop being a whiny baby. When my stepmom heard this, she stormed in and said,

"What the fuck are you saying over here? If you think your life is so hard and you're so miserable just go die!"

Alyssa began to cry even more. I wanted to cry too, and I wanted to scream. How could a mother say that to her own child?! But as usual, I was frozen by fear.

"Oh, what are you two doing in here anyway?"

"We're just writing poems mom.."

She took the poem from Alyssa and read it out loud. Then she looked at me and said,

"Don't teach her how to write this depressing shit. We already have one mentally fucked up kid, we don't need another one."

I wanted to kill her and then myself. How dare she talk to Alyssa like that! The poor girl is only seven, and she's hearing horrible things from her own mom. It was beyond fucked up.

I knew I wasn't okay. I knew that everyone would be happier if I left, but why did she have to rub it in..? It hurt enough without the added pressure. I wanted to go into the kitchen, get a knife, stab myself right in front of everyone and scream,

"This is what you did to me!!! You hurt me and then you kicked me when you knew I was already down!!! And now you're forcing me to watch you do the same thing to my little sisters!!! I'll see you in hell bitches!!!"

But I didn't. Instead, I hid in the bathroom and locked the door.

That conflict lasted the rest of the night. At one point, my stepmom began mocking me. I still remember how bad I was shaking.

And that was only one incident. Not to mention that I was struggling as it is. Lavontrae had become even more distant, the voices in my head became even more powerful against me, and I had been cut off from the very few people who understood me. I used to go to a group at my local church, where I would get to talk to Allison.

Allison understood me. She was always able to make me laugh even when I was on the verge of tears. I would also talk to Levi, the director of religious education. He also understood me, and he could shine light on me even on my darkest days.

But then my dad began using my grades against me. He very rarely took me because my grades were so horrible.

I continued to cry out for help, but it didn't help anymore. I began feeling numb. My teachers wanted to help me, but they couldn't do anything. I needed professional help, and they couldn't provide that for obvious reasons. I would cry almost every day, begging for a cure. But then the voices would tell me that I was broken beyond repair. And I believed every word they said.

I wished I was who I wanted to be, a confident and strong girl who could stand up for herself. But I just wanted to keep the peace for as long as I could. It got to the point when I liked being invisible, because if no one knows I exist then no one would ever hurt me.

You deserve to be hurt. It's karma.

I couldn't agree more.