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I've always wanted to sit down and write something about my life, I've always had this idea in my head that my life story would be a big deal, that people would care and want to know about my past and how I've lived my life. Well, not always.. but for a long time I thought that it would matter, that I'd matter. I guess you never really realize until you get to a certain point that finding someone who really cares about who you are is an almost impossible task. Everybody's too wrapped up in their own lives to give a shit about yours. The longer I live, the more I grow up, the more I realize I'm pretty much on my own. Maybe if things were different I wouldn't feel this way.. but if things were different I probably wouldn't be sitting here writing this either. I never had a brother, or a sister, or an aunt or cousin, or anything other than my Mom, my Dad, and my Grandma. Don't ask me where the rest of my family went, why they weren't in Oregon with me, I couldn't tell you and I don't think it even matters. Those three people were my whole world. Then one of them died. My Mom died when I was 12 years old. It sounds like the start to a really emotional novel, those few words, and it pretty much is. Maybe it's a downward spiral, but I try not to see it that way. If anything it's just been a rollercoaster, ups and downs, some places that throw you for a loop. My Mom died, and I didn't see it coming. No one really did. How she died doesn't seem important, but to me it always will be because it taught me one lesson I plan to always carry with me. Smoking kills. Cliche, right? But it's the truth. She got lung cancer and she passed away, and to this day and for the rest of my life I will never touch a cigarette. But let me tell you about my Mom. Her name was Lily and she was the most amazing woman I've ever known. She was a pianist, she was a Mother, she had big dreams that never came true, and she sacrificed them and her entire happiness for me and for my Father. I'm the only child because I wasn't meant to be, I was an accident and a miracle all wrapped up in one. My Father, let me briefly explain, is a bastard. He never wanted me and he never wanted my Mother to want me. She went to get an abortion because she was willing to give up her life's blood for a man who didn't deserve it. Obviously I'm here, I'm writing this, so we know the outcome. It didn't work, and a few months later there was no denying she was pregnant. My Father wasn't there, there were a lot of points in my life when he'd just disappear for weeks at a time, and by the time he came crawling back to my Mom, I was already there. It's probably a miracle he didn't strangle me in my sleep. The next 12 years of my life, up to my Mom's death, were good. They were okay. It was life, it was a rollercoaster, but for a girl who was completely naive and sheltered as much as I was, it was good. It took my Mom dying for me to realize what kind of man my Father was. It took her death for me to see the ugly truth about life. Sometimes I wish my Mom had let me see the side of our lives she never showed anyone, because maybe I would have been prepared, but I can't fault her for protecting me. If anything it's made me love her more, for giving me those 12 years that I can look back on and miss and love and want to go back to. Let me tell you about Lily, the woman she was before she had me. She was a pianist, a damn good one. She had dreams, she wanted to be on a stage in a concert hall and dazzle people. She could have done it, she could have done anything, but she gave up her chance so she could have me, she made me the center of her world. She gave up those dreams to love a man who treated her like shit, who beat her and verbally abused her and made her feel completely worthless. She gave up those dreams willingly, and she sacrificed her happiness for the people she loved. If there's anything she taught me, it's self-sacrifice. Love is sacrifice. Giving up everything you hold dear, even if the person you can't help but love could never do the same. My Father was one of those people. His name was Ted and he was a bastard. He was an addict, he was a monster, and he deserved to die the way did. That sounds horrible, it sounds harsh, but you didn't know him. And before I explain how he died, let me tell you how he lived. Before my Mom died, he was around now and then. He took me to football games and bought me what I wanted for Christmas. I never really got to talk to him because he was always telling me to be quiet, but he seemed like an okay guy. He wasn't always there, but when he was it was never bad. He never hugged me, or kissed me, or even told me he loved me, but I presumed that he did. My fondest memories of the man he used to be were always during the Superbowl. He was always a big football fan, and we used to watch the games together. We'd always cheer for the same team, even though I didn't know who it was half the time. Even after I realized what kind of monster he truly was, those games brought back who he used to be, if only for a few hours. After my Mom died, I wasn't protected from the reality of who he was. It didn't take months for me to see it, or even weeks. Literally in days, he was a different man. He was drunk, he was high, he was angry, and he was being abusive. Two days after my Mom's death when I came home from school in tears and interrupted a drug deal he was trying to make, he grabbed me by my hair and threw me into the wall. He told me, "Stop crying, you stupid little bitch. She's dead and she's not coming back." From that moment forward, I was never the same. There was never a point where I was able to go numb to the things he told me. He said I was ugly, fat, disgusting, deformed. He called me stupid, pathetic, retarded, worthless. He told me I'd grow up to be no better then a whore, that's that all women were good for. He antagonized me when my crying wasn't enough. He belittled me. He made me feel like I should have never been born, which is exactly how it should have been to him. He never loved me or cared and that was worst part of everything he said or did. He hit me, he slapped me, he smacked me with his belt and put welts on my skin. He shoved me and called me a cunt and a worthless piece of shit and then he'd make me do everything he didn't want to do himself. Clean the house, make food, bring him more alcohol. Everything short of wiping his ass.. oh wait. Two months after I turned 15 he woke up with his lower body completely paralyzed. I'm not sure if it was the years of heroin abuse or a hot load, but whatever it was turned him into a paraplegic. After a couple weeks of therapy he was released and he came back home. Even though there was some in-home care, I was doing things that I shouldn't have had to do. Helping him with baths, with his catheter. I could have left, but some part of me pitied him, some part I think still felt obligated, or still looked up to and loved the man he used to be. Love is sacrifice. Even though he still said the same things, he knew he needed me there. It was almost as if the tables were turned. I would sit there and force him to apologize to me, meaningless words in the end, but it was satisfying making him feel as worthless as he'd made me feel through all the years. To pay him back for what he'd done to me. In the end I feel like it was me who killed him, because before my 16th birthday, he took a shotgun to his head and blew his face off. After that? After that I was totally alone. I mean, I still had my Grandmother, but she was it, and she was already at a point where she didn't really know who I was anymore. She was too old to take care of me, my family never had any money, and without anywhere to go, I ended up in an orphanage. I was shipped off to Seattle because that's where my Gram was, and I became a ward of the state and went to live at Westfield Hall. I don't know, something about being able to have a fresh start there made it seem so much more promising than it should have. Everyone else who was there hated the place, and maybe that should have given me a clue, but I was just grateful to have a roof over my head and three meals a day. I was able to concentrate on school, and things I loved, like playing the keyboard and learning guitar. Music was always a big deal to me, especially the keyboard. Before my Mom died, she tried to teach me some things. She wanted me to get good so I could be like her I suppose, and I guess that's what made me kind of blow it off when she'd try. What I did pick up turned out to be a great help later though, because once she was gone, playing music was the only way I ever felt really close to her anymore. She meant the world to me, and I know she'd be proud of how much I've learned just on my own over the years. But back to Westfield.. that place, I don't know how to explain it really. It was good at first, it really was. I met so many kids my own age, I made friends, eventually I fell in love, but that comes later. Just at the beginning, it was some place I felt loved. I felt protected, and nourished, and just.. welcomed. Like part of a family, or something equally cheesy. But I guess.. I don't know. It was too much, too soon. Too many friends, too much happiness. I didn't deserve it, that's how I felt. I tried to be friends with everyone, even today I still try to, and I thought it was what I wanted, but in the end all I wanted was to be completely broken again because it's all I've ever known. You can't be everyone's friend, unless you're nobody's. They expected loyalty, and didn't care that I had to tear myself apart to give it to them. Everything about my life there was a confusion. I fell in love so many times. With my first love, the guy who tried so hard to show me how amazing I could be. I thought I could love him the rest of my life, until I did the worst thing in the world and cheated on him. And another guy, he had a boyfriend that he loved more than life, and I tried to take him from that. I tried to make him love me back, but it never worked. Just the fact that I would try to break apart what meant the world to him proved I never loved him in the first place. I moved on, I found someone else I wanted and I tried to go after them. It was a vicious cycle that I got trapped into. I fell in love with all my friends, and I mean that. I never even knew what love was, and sometimes I'm not even sure if I do now. I took caring and understanding for something deeper, I gave myself up emotionally and physically and handed everything to people who never wanted that much from me. I just turned everything into a mess and made everybody I knew there hate me in the end. There's so much more I could explain, but I just can't find the words. I kept a journal the entire time I was there, but reading over it now just makes me want to cry. I'd loved and lost so much over such a short time that I'm amazed I'm even still standing. There were points where I wanted to die, where I didn't think life could get any worse and then it did, and then there were times where I felt beautiful and amazing and worth something, and then I'd ruin it again and be back to another low. I feel like I barely got out of there alive, that's the worst part. I turned what started off as a beautiful place, somewhere I could be accepted, into a battleground for love, loss and loneliness, and I'll always regret that I did that to myself, and to everyone there that I once cared about. When I finally turned 18 I had nothing left there to tie me down, and that's how I started to really grow up. Those two years showed me more about who I was as a person than any other point in my life. They showed me I was almost everything my Father said, but I didn't want to be. I'd heard the words so much and so often that I'd become what he'd always called me. Ugly, stupid, worthless. No better than a whore. And I've spent every moment since then teaching myself not to believe it. I know better, that's the thing. I know I'm nothing he's said I was. I've made mistakes because I didn't know better, and for the most part I've learned from them. There are still moments.. a lot of moments.. were I break down. Where I don't believe that anyone could love me. Where I don't feel like I deserve to be someone's friend. Where I say something wrong. Where I try to turn my life into a mess again because I don't feel like I deserve to be happy.. but I'm trying. I'm trying so hard to not be that person anymore. To try to be normal. To try to accept the friends and the love and the caring and passion that people want to bestow upon me. I want to deserve that normal life. I want a husband I can trust with all my soul, who will take me for who I am, but won't be afraid to help me change when I need to. I want the beautiful baby boy and baby girl, to be needed by them and give them my all, and teach them everything beautiful in life. I want friends I can open up to, that I can have heated arguments with and still hug at the end of the day. I want a family and a home and a career and a life. I just want to be normal, and I want a mind that's clear and not teetering. I feel like my entire mental state is anything but healthy, and I want that to change. I don't want to worry about how my life has scarred me and how I might hurt other people. I want to keep living the life that I was meant to live, the one where I didn't grow up feeling like I didn't deserve to be alive. I just want.. life. Just life, and everything it has to offer. I know I'm not perfect, and normal never is perfect. I know where my mistakes are, and I know there's ones I've yet to learn from. I just want a chance, or two, just to prove to myself and the rest of the world that I am worth something and I do deserve to be here. That's what this is all about, this word vomit I'm just gushing out for nobody. It's reflection of imperfection. It's me trying to make sense of my life, and trying to learn from it. I know where I stand now, and I know it's a good place. I may be on a roller coaster still, but I think the rides finally getting easy. A few more years and who knows. Maybe I won't cry at the drop of a hat, maybe I'll be strong and stand up for what I believe in, maybe I'll stop trying to make everybody love me and just accept those who really do. Maybe that perfect life isn't as far fetched as I'd once thought. And maybe, just maybe, I'll be ready to accept that I deserve to be happy.
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