Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

Over the past few years I've felt my life tumble out of control while I'm still standing still. Honestly stopping and thinking about things that are going on makes me just want to shut it all out forever. I'd rather be numb than have to deal with it all. There are happy moments, I will not deny that. I am not mistreated, at least not physically. And the verbal abuse is just an equal opportunity thing in my family. There is no lasting peace. Not between my parents and not between my siblings. But I am also to blame for that, so I cannot point a finger at anyone but the mirror and say "It's your fault".

Just like my siblings can't, but they've yet to honestly see it that way in a long time. I can remember as a child that when my mother would get angry at Jessica and Caleb that she would yell. Granted most of the time they had done something to deserve it, but it still upset me. I would try not to cry and say it was my fault, just to get the fighting to stop. I hated it. I still do. It makes me feel so hollow because even my happy childhood memories are tainted with anger and upset feelings.

The saddest thing I've come to see though, is my father falling from the man I once thought he was. Every little girl who has a good father loves and adors him. Thinks that they want to marry someone who'd be just like him, caring and kind, always there for you when you fall down with a kiss and a bandaid. I can remember asking him to go on bike rides with me when I was maybe six or seven years old. Loving the time I would get to spend with him, just because he was my father and that made it special. We have not done something like that, where I was honestly happy just to spend time with him, since I was in the sixth grade. So for the past five years I feel like I don't have a father any more.

He went away because his unit was activated for duty to the Middle East. My father went away and he never came back. He had a drinking problem long before we left and it seemed like when he got to visit once during his duty that he might have broken it, but then he came home for good. And the drinking got worse. The vibrant, laughing, singing, guitar playing man I had once known as my father when I was little was gone. And he'll never come back. His drinking has affected us all, and we have affected him. It's unfair to try to point the finger at just one member of the family when there are so many problems that cannot be solved by laying blame.

Secrets are still kept, sometimes to the point of viciousness towards the people you thought you cared a lot about. My family is pulling itself apart slowly because of the choices we've made in our lives. And it feels like it's pulling from the center of my heart and one by one the strands come undone painfully and can never be put back in place. It's like pulling apart a rose and then having regret when the petals that were once so beatiful, colorful, full of life, have withered and died. You can't take it back, you can't say you are sorry and have it all be better. You can try again, but it wont ever be the same as you once remembered it as.

So, I try to just bite my tongue and ignor the pain. But it doesn't go away, it's just a dull ache. Like a wound that never quite heals. That you almost forget it's there till it flares up again and painfully reminds you that it will never go away. We are a family, we love each other, but we cannot live with each other. We would be happier if we had to deal with everyone less. Or atleast I know I would. The people I am closest to, the ones I want to be happy around each other with, are the ones that push against me and the idea of getting along so hard that I fear my bones will not take the strain should I try to hold on for too long.

I know it sounds like I am mopey and emo and just whining and being over dramatic, but seeing the smiling faces of other people just makes me sick sometimes. To look at happy couples in the park, with a small child between them, holding onto both of their hands and smiling at them with all the innocence in the world, makes my stomache turn. I can hardly stand to think that one day they could be like us and have so much unhappiness bred into them that it's accepted as normal. When it's not and it never should be. But I am the baby, what could I know?

I am seen as the child of the family because thats what I was. I was the youngest, I was the one who could not possibly know anything at all. But now I am seventeen and I feel so old that when I was alone with my elderly grandmother -who has recently died and left an even deeper hole- in the hospital just after she had her legs surgically removed and she was crying, I leaned in close to her and stroked her hair gently; I whispered "I know, I feel the same way too". Despair and an impossible need to understand, but knowing that there is no way I can. I don't know if she understood or not, but she stopped crying for a little while...

Everything going on, it just makes my head spin. And now I will have to return to school at the end of the month and try to pretend that everything is alright so I can do my best with my grades. I don't know how I've managed to live this long and I'm unsure or how much longer I will. It hurts and I want it to stop. I don't know who I am when I look in the mirror because I look so angry and hollow but I remember laughing and not caring because I knew that I was loved by my family and everything would be alright.