Before I Die

Part 1

I am running out of time. I'm like an old clock that people keep repairing, soldering the pieces back together, hoping the hands will move and announce the time once again on a gilded and beautiful face. It's funny, that the the people that destroyed the clock are sometimes the ones that desperately try to repair it. 

I have decided that it's useless to fight the hands of time, but instead, live with them and do the best I can to tell our story. I don't want it left unrecorded, like so many of the names in my ancestry timeline. The names mean nothing and all I want to to know  who they were, what were they like and what happened that made them the evil they were. Why? Why was it so easy for them to destroy children's lives? I can't fathom the lack of empathy that drove them to be as disgusting as they are to me. 

I know, it shouldn't matter anymore, but being the last of an entire family left alive, I still want to know why it happened the way it did. I need to know even though my monsters are all dead and my questions will never be answered. I leave this for my children so at least they will not  be left wondering someday why their mother pushed them so hard, made them do things they didn't want to do and be more than they wanted for themselves.   

There are five main players in this macabre tale and if you're faint of heart, stop here. It will do you no good to listen to this tale and will only bring you to the place where you hold nothing but ashes in your hands.  The love that held you together gone and only ghosts that haunt your sleep. The only good it is doing me is knowing the truth won't go with me to the grave. It will be here for all of you and maybe, just maybe, there will be a woman that sees me when she looks into the mirror. 

First, I'll introduce you to Rocky. She and I still talk at least a couple of times a month. It doesn't sound like much, but there isn't much to say except we're still alive. I don't understand her at all sometimes, but then again, I do. She has always hated me, quietly, and hid it under the guise of empty words of how much she loves me. Let me tell you all the one thing I've learned about love in this life. People can say they love you all day, but their actions tell you the real truth. I loved her with all my heart. I taught her to drive. The very first job she ever got was because of me. I introduced her to all my friends, shared my meager wardrobe and we shared a tiny apartment together. I did this even though she had convinced my grandparents to throw me and my sister into the foster care system instead of living with them. I did this even after she slept with my boyfriend for a year behind my back while I lived in shelters with other homeless and abused children. 

Why would I keep reaching out to a person who constantly slapped me back? Because when we met when I was four, and I thought she was going to be my best friend for life. I was wrong, but I never stopped trying. I wanted her love, but I have come to accept the fact that I will never get it. It doesn't matter what I do or don't do. You see, I let her down once, but I did it because I was lied to by the only person I loved more than her and that was my sister, Jenny. 

Jenny was my best friend, sister and sometimes, my worst enemy. Mostly it depended on her mood, but I can't blame her. She was starved for love her entire life and no one could ever love her enough to make up for it. She was warped by my mother, but all of were. She simply bore the worst scars. That is another long story and one that ends as horribly as it began. Jenny who never had enough love to make up for the lack of love she had known as a child. I could never love her enough, nor could anyone else. She had her revenge in large bites by letting others down, using the love they had for her against them, hurting them with bitter words and then telling them how much she loved them. She enjoyed the spectacle, and then hated herself for causing it, as if somehow, something we said or did would add to the already bottomless chasm of trauma.

The last girl in my tale is Bridget. She was my real best friend my whole life and the one I took for granted in my quest to win the love of Rocky. It's stupid the way we throw away love with both hands and reach out for people that reject us the most. 

Despite my thoughtless and selfish cruelty, she forgives me all my faults. We remain friends, real friends, bonded through shared grief and memories. She remembers things I've blotted from my mind out of sheer self preservation, but her perception of those days is different. She sees it through the haze of a child that raised herself alone. We stayed together until she moved away and I had no idea how much that would hurt until later when it was too late. 

I see life through the eyes of a girl that went through a war zone that had no guns or uniformed soldiers, but was a war just the same. It was a war for survival. I went through it alone most of the time, though no matter what,  I had Jenny, though there was a time even she abandoned me. I can't blame her. She had to escape by staying away with our grandparents and Rocky, leaving me alone to deal with our mother. 

Our mother was the most evil woman I've ever met. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just like her and I don't know it. It's my worst fear. I try so hard to make sure my own children have everything they need, because I am haunted by the sounds of my sister Nancy's wheelchair and the screams that came from my own bloody mouth. I stock our kitchen with food because all I can think of is the empty refrigerator and eating crackers because that's all there was. It's amazing what you can do with coffee creamer when you're hungry enough. 

These are the demons that haunt me, even though they are all only shadows now.  The strangest part is missing those shadows, missing the places and the people we were then, as if I could go back and save them. I wish I could save all of us,  but life doesn't give us those chances. 

Perhaps it's too late to tell this story. I hope it's not too late for me, but it could be. The doctor told me that I was going to die and I know it's true. I just want to live long enough to tell the truth before I die and look in the mirror without hating what I see.