Voodoo [H.S.]

Eighteen

July 6th, 2022

I fuck everything up.

It's just in my nature. I don't know when this started exactly, but I do know that I've ruined every good thing that has ever been sent my way since I was a kid.

I don't know why I do it. It's like there's a part of me that knows I don't deserve good things to happen to me, and if I don't stop it from happening it's going to turn out bad in the end somehow anyway.

I do know that I am an awful person. Maybe not deep down, in my core, but does it really matter if I'm not living like a good person? All I've ever known is how to adapt to my surroundings and act accordingly to ensure my survival.

It's what I had to do when I lived with my aunt, it's what I had to do in foster care, and it's what I have to do now working with Jim. He's the only father figure I've ever known.

When Jim basically saved me at eighteen years old, I promised myself I would do something with my life. I'd get a job, work my ass off, become independent, and eventually live my life in peace. All I've ever dreamed about is peace.

There's never been a time in my life where I didn't have to worry. Worry about my mom, worry about when my aunt was going to feed us, worry about my sister, worry about what the other foster kids would do to me next, worry worry worry.

I just wanted to start fresh. I met Jim when I was sixteen. At the time, Jim was a manager at a chain gas station up north. I used to leave the school on my free period to hang out at the gas station and smoke cigarette butts out of the ashtrays.

Don't judge me, okay? I was a stupid teenager.

Anyway, one day Jim came outside on his smoke break and noticed me scavenging in the ashtrays like a little raccoon and bummed me one of his cigarettes. Everyday I would hang out there and Jim and I would talk. I felt like he really understood me. He came from poverty himself and said he ran his own side business that paid the bills that he built from the ground up. The gas station was something he just enjoyed doing, he had worked there for fifteen years and saw no reason to leave at that point.

He told me all about how he built himself up from nothing. How after all his hard work he lived in a big house and drove a nice car and never wants or needs for anything. He and his now late wife were happy and fulfilled. I wanted that. I was willing to do just about anything for it. 

It started out small.

Jim would give me twenty bucks here and there for food or sodas and tell me to keep the change. If I mentioned my shoes had holes in them, he would buy me a new pair. When I told him two kids in the group home broke all my pencils for school, he bought me brand new pencils. The nice, mechanical ones that never broke and had tiny little button to dispense the lead. Things like that.

When I got caught stealing from a convenience store, Jim is the one who came down to talk to the police and told them he was my uncle to get them to release me. He gave me a very fatherly lecture on the importance of staying out of trouble, which never stopped me, but it meant a lot.