This isn't a cry for help. It's already too late for that.
What I'm leaving behind isn't an excuse, either. I don't expect forgiveness. Suppose you've thought yourself stronger, smarter, better than good. You probably are. But tell me honestly, without lying to yourself: what would you do if you were me?
If I'm being honest, I didn't start as a bad person. I didn't mean to hurt anyone. I only wanted to stop the pain, the loneliness from eating me alive. That's all. One small, stupid wish—that childlike optimism—was my first mistake.
Fate is too cruel to consider my plea.
My story was never going to end well, because I wasn't supposed to be here.
I should've died then.
I was supposed to.
I just know it.
But the truth is, my story was already poisoned before I ever took my first breath.
My mother and father were never what you'd call healthy. She loved him—that much was true—but I can't say the same for him.
I wasn't sure if he even had the capacity for love. He was a drunk, a war veteran with more ghosts than friends, drowning his nightmares with every overpriced bottle.
A traumatized narcissist with a high libido and a defective withdrawal, impregnating women around every corner. You'd think every child came with some kind of commission. But still—she stayed. Bound by her love.
That dumb bitch.
She always wanted me to understand why she loved him, why she couldn't leave. Defending him even after he'd left her alone—And each excuse made me more disgusted with her. She said after every fight they had—after the bruises, the blood, the screaming—they would still sit together every Thursday night, watching Full House. And in her mind, that was proof of love.
Oh, how beautiful was their love?
The story of how I was even born was more proof. Proof that I wasn't supposed to be here. My father tried to kill her. She was eight months pregnant with me when he heard a rumor she had cheated, that I might not be his. He dragged her into an alley with a gun pressed to her stomach. She told me she saw it in his eyes—he would've done it. He would've ended both of us right there.
But the stress sent her into labor too early. Instead of pulling the trigger, he panicked and rushed her to the hospital. And there were complications. Her blood pressure was abnormally high. She had a condition called… Pre—?
Pree—
Dammit, what's that word?
Preeclampsia. Yes, that's it. Death was a high risk for me and her. Yet they pushed it. They wanted me to survive. And sadly I did.
But with a few hitches…
I came out upside down. The umbilical cord was wrapped so tight around my neck I couldn't breathe. My face—blue. What should've been a beautiful birth turned into an emergency surgery just to drag me out alive.
That should have been proof enough that I wasn't supposed to be here. But instead, they called it a miracle. They said God intervened, that I had a purpose.
Anything to make me feel special.
Like a gift.
Like I mattered.
After seeing me, my father's eyes lit up with joy. Apparently, I had a birthmark on my thigh—the same one he carried, the same one all his other children carried. That was enough for him. I was his.
I was his first daughter.
He apologized. Over and over again. My mother believed him. She believed every word.
She thought this was it—the beginning of a new chapter, a family finally pieced together. She thought we'd be a model family. Us three. A snapshot moment, the turning point.
But as I said: fate is cruel.
Two years later, he was gone. Barely reachable. And another year after that, the woman he left her for became his wife. They had four children together. It seems my mom was fine with his cheating, fine with him stepping out, as long as he always came home to her, but now he wouldn't.
Question: when a victim with unresolved pain, who feels worthless, refuses to seek help—what's the next thing they do?
Ding… ding… ding.
That's right.
They find someone else to blame.
And that's how the victim turns into the abuser.
My father's disappearance became my fault.
"It was your fault he left."
"Why couldn't you have been cuter?"
"Why didn't you laugh more?"
Why. Why. Why.
And whenever she screamed those questions at me, all I could do was cower, swallow the tears, and whisper the only answer I had:
"I don't know…"
She looked at me with disgust, hazel eyes cold and wide with anger and disbelief.
"Why are you crying? Huh?" She beat her chest with her palm, clutching at her shirt as her voice turned hoarse. "I should be the one crying! You have no right!"
"I'm sorry…" I mumbled the words again and again.
"I'm so sorry, Mom…"
Like a prayer, like a solemn song—and that only heightened her rage.
I lost my first tooth at four.