I know why I am who I am today. A word explains why, childhood. My childhood wasn’t the best nor the worst, but nobody can measure how bad or great their childhood was, for the reason that they haven’t lived anyone else’s life; to me, mine wasn’t all that great. A couple months after my mother and father finalized their divorce, I had a routine. Walking off the bus everyday at 2:36 was routine for me; this day was different. The gold truck in my driveway displaced my normal routine and made me think my mom suddenly found a new boyfriend, or my brother and I were going to be taken away from my mom for good.
This time felt different, knowing that there was something big, something that was going to change my life, after walking up those unstable stairs to the front door.
Rambling up my pink, unstable stairs had me thinking how unstable my life was in general. Going home, finding that my mom isn’t there for she was back in the hospital, for a disorder she can’t control. Border Line Personality is what she can’t control. The disorder is as if she can’t control her own mind, it made her ill and to the point that she would have to go to the hospital. That had my brother and I traveling, with fully packed suitcases, to our aunt and uncles or our grandparents. Until she was stable enough she was able to go back home, that had my brother and I to repack our suitcases and head back home, which was the unstable part.

The window that I had approached, seeing different faces at my kitchen table had my stomach up in a knot; that would never be undone, never be forgotten, and would not be solved for the rest of my life.

Opening the front door made that knot in my stomach grew tighter, and I couldn’t bare the pain that it had done, which made me curious about how bad it was going to be. I didn’t know what was going on, I just knew the knot had a sense that something was wrong, something had happened.

My mom came running towards me before the seal of the door was fully opened and gave me a hug. A hug that was unbearable, unmanageable for my mind to even forget the pressure that was upon my body. She pulled back from the overpowering hug that she presented me with; my attention was to her eyes, that had been pouring out tears of pain that has been pierced through her heart, that would never be fixed. Seeing her face coated with tears made me thinking that it was one of her off days.

I knew that it was important, I had never seen her cry like this. My mom was an okay mom, she didn’t pay much attention to me as she did to my brother, it had me feeling, since I could remember, as if she didn’t want me, as if I wasn’t good enough for her. The feeling had me confused, I didn’t know if she loved me. Those feelings made me have sleepless nights, crying and wondering if I would ever know her unknown about me.

“Mom, what’s wrong? What happened? Why are you crying? Did something bad happen? Mom?”
“I,” she didn’t know how to put the sentence together. I didn’t understand how she couldn’t just tell me what was going on. “…Don’t know how to tell you this but…” she couldn’t bare the pain that she was going through, thought that I couldn’t take the piercing pain.
“Mom, you can tell me, it can’t be that bad.” I didn’t take it under consideration that the pain was going to take over my body, to swipe all the other worries, put them a side until my heart didn’t hurt anymore.
“I found out…” I could tell in her face that she couldn’t endure the pain anymore, she fell to her knees, spitting out some words that I didn’t understand.
“Mom, what did you say?” I went down to her level, with my cold hands on her shoulders to console her, to take the pain away. I can’t believe that whatever she is thinking or whatever that bad news was didn’t come out in one full sentence.
“Your father got into…” whimpering at what she had just said.
I didn’t quite understand. My mother and father are divorced; she couldn’t tell me that she still loved him, she wanted him out. Out of my life, my childhood, and for the future that I was going to have with him in the up coming weeks.
My mind was flooded with question, comments and thoughts that I couldn’t be patient with; they had to be heard, be answered.
“…A motorcycle accident.”
My feet are totally asleep, along with my brain and of the words that just tried to function. My thoughts are in slow motion, didn’t know where to start nor stop. I didn’t process what my mom had just said, all I know that my eyes were pouring tears. You only realize that something is important in your life after someone significant dies, or comes close to a death experience.
The belief I had of my dad being invincible no longer existed. My dad was everything to me, my father, and my best friend. And as of now, he was gone, taken away, and was never going to be able to be there for me again. My father wasn’t the best father, when my mother and my father were together he started his days by working on the car that was occupying the garage only if he wasn’t starting his day by getting drunk and high out of his mind. My father was an alcoholic, and an obsessed drug abuser; he did many other things that children shouldn’t be exposed to.
If I were to explain those ‘things’ I was put through in my childhood, people who would read this wouldn’t understand how I am still a happy person and how I don’t let it impact my life. The feelings those readers would feel would be, struck by lightening and trying to function, the emotions from the written words would be that much of a shock.
What does this mean? I didn’t understand why this happened. I didn’t have a normal family, and now I lost my dad. My only father, my other half, my inspiration, and everything he could have ever been, was all gone, and that’ll never change, because he is now hospital bound for the rest of his life.
“What made dad crash, mom?” trying to spit out the words, I cried so much as if I was lying in a puddle. My throat, eyes, and heart hurt, the pain through my heart was excruciating.
I’m hoping he didn’t do this on purpose, since my parents just went through the whole divorce situation. He could have been mad, or he couldn’t take the pressure of being an abnormal family, which was going to happen whether my parents were together or apart.
“I’ll tell you when you get older Kel, I think you heard enough.” My mom told me that when she didn’t want me to hear anything more. I deserve to know, it’s my dad, that guy she wanted out of her life.
My mother and father never got a long when they were together. They argued over anything and everything, which evolved my mother to tell my father to leave. I saw my father leave that night; when I heard the front door of the house slam, I went downstairs and I cuddled with my mother until I fell asleep. The situation of my father leaving had me wondering if I would ever see him again, now that I heard he got into this accident, that knot in my stomach was telling me that I would never see him again.
I went upstairs, while lying on my carpet floor; hearing the sound of my mother weeping from afar had the knot in my stomach bundled up each and every time I heard that faint weep. The pain from downstairs followed me as if it would never go away. The dreadful pain through my thoughts made it hard to think.
I went downstairs around eleven that night; tears still coming down my face. I gone to see my mom, that was easy, same objective as when my father left the night my mom told him to get out. I did the same thing; go downstairs, cried and cuddled with her until I fell asleep.
That knot in my stomach never left, and never got solved; neither did the piercing of my heart go away, the pain of the tears was never fixed. All I know, my father is somewhere in this world, and can’t ever be proud of what I have accomplished. I don’t need a father to do so. All I need is to make the right decisions and not have my childhood impact my future. The things my father and mother put me through, makes me know what I don’t want in my future, and makes me know why I am who I am today.