Recovery | Hood

six

Growing up, you'd think your parents would always stay together.

Even if they would fight, scream, spew awful words to each other, throw things, leave in the middle of the night because they couldn't do so much as breath in the same house together...you always knew that they were going to stay, because siblings fight all the time, but that doesn't mean we weren't brothers and sisters.

I would rather hear them scream and argue over the littlest things than see them apart, my sister had told me once. I was probably around five or six when she said this, she being around the age of ten. I remember we were hiding in the back of the closet because it was the farthest away from our parents' screams.

At the time, I had nodded my head, agreeing with her, because our whole life my parents had threaten to sign the papers for divorce, but they always changed their mind last minute. At the time, I thought it was because they realized they love each other. But now I'm fully aware of how much a divorce cost.

My belief that my parents loved each other had not diminished when my parents fought, when they threatened to file for divorce, the day they signed the papers or even the day my dad walked out of the house for good. It took a couple of months for me to realize it.

I was thirteen and my sister was seventeen, both very delicate ages. I was on the verge of puberty and Mali was just at the age before adulthood.

We both went through a period of grief. Mali went through severe depression, she had stopped eating, pushed Andrea away, and her grades started to fall right when they mattered most.

She'd lock herself in her room and cry while I had started drinking and getting dangerously violent, beating every other boy that came in contact with me.

I didn't understand why my father left. I first blamed myself, and I did everything in my power to somehow impress him so that he would come back. I joined the football team, I started making more friends and going to more parties, I tried to bring my grades up and I tried to wash the car or earn extra money, and I told my dad on the phone about everything I had done, hoping it would make him come back.

And when that hadn't worked, I got angry. I blamed my mom for everything. I believed she wasn't good enough of a wife and she made him leave. I also blamed my sister from time to time, expressing through gritted teeth that she wasn't good enough for this family and that was he left.

When my mouth had gotten me in trouble at home, I took my anger out on anyone else outside of my home, and there was a part of me that believed my behavioral issues would bring him back, too.

But my dad was gone. My dad had left and found a life on a whole other continent, resulting in his visits to be rare. I've seen him twice, maybe three times since he left.

That's why when my sister told me he was coming this week, I had strangely thrown up the very food my mother was feeding me.

In the movies, people somehow are always able to run to the nearest trash can, but I've never even been able to move. So when it came up, it came up all over me.

I was covered in my own vomit, reeking of a foul smell that only my mother could handle cleaning off of me as I stared at her in front of me, unable to move.

Tears brimmed my eyes as I looked up to my mom, and down to myself and I realized what a fucking mess I was.

"I'm sorry," I had whispered to her. She lead me to my bedroom and peeled my shirt off of me, telling me to change my clothes.