I WISH THIS WERE A JOKING

Chapter One: Emotionally Drowning

"It would be easier", those ill-fated words shot out of my mouth like missiles seeking the warm flesh of a heart to pierce. I'm not cold hearted, but today, today I am. "it would have been easier if you had had an abortion with me and not them" I say, as not even I know what they were, just that they would have been my younger sibling. "Maybe, maybe they would have been someone you wanted? Someone successful – someone that wanted to have kids." I let those words fall and dig in. deeper as my face contorts in pain and the hot hurt-filled tears i have been fighting all night begin to fall. I'm not a pretty crier, not in the least.

I am one of those people that gasps, sputters, and nearly chokes on my own breath as the storm of my emotion's rages within me. Crying for me feels like drowning, my entire body screams in pain lungs gulping for air like they do when you hold your breath a moment too long. "You shouldn't have had me" I gasp out, while pressing the heel of my palm against my aching sternum. This, this wasn't a line – it wasn't something that I just said for the dramatics of it. It was how I felt at the core of my being, it was something I never put words to until I found out. Until my own mother told me that she had had an abortion when I was just a toddler. I didn't know it then of course, how could I? I was young and unaware and not yet the cynical mess that life made me become.

Even as I sat in the room with them I heard it in my soul and felt it in my bones. The almost constant tirade of mental and emotional hate that I would unleash on myself every time I got into an emotional fight with a family member. No one really knows how broken I am. you are pathetic, I think at myself. Even though it's not really happening, I just feel like my throat is in a vice grip, my eyes even water as I swallow and blink back the pain. You shouldn't exist, I don't even try to deny this thought as it pummels me, I know that they are watching. That I've hurt them, I didn't mean to hurt them – I never mean to hurt them. I never mean to hurt anyone. Why don't you just do them all a favor and end it now? The thoughts continue swirling and barraging me as I sit there trying to remain calm even though I've already done it. I've ripped the bandage off of the one real wound our family has always had. Me.

"You don't mean that," they say in haunting unison. It's the only time I've heard them speak in unison tonight, well, at least when they weren't trying speak over each other like mewling screaming cats – they get that way often. That level of angry that ends with words better off not said and everyone walking off to their respective corner to lick their wounds until the next round begins. YOU ARE PATHETIC – the thoughts, my thoughts scream at me again. My eyes scan the room as I wait for my moment, the little time when I can relieve the pressure in my own soul. Its fleeting but the biting pain I feel as I dig my finger nails into the palm of my tender hand helps quell the storm within.

My mother simply looks over at him letting him speak "you don't mean it Ky, we love you" he speaks. Those words dig into me more than I want to let on. I know he thinks that's the case, but it's not true. It can't be true - if it is true it would kill me.

My parents don't know, they've never known that they are a part of the problem. They don't hate each-other. Sometimes it seems that way to the untrained eye – but what they have is a toxic messed up kind of love. The kind of love story you see used as a cautionary tale — the kind where one or both ends up dying at the others hand. Like Romeo and Juliet if they made the mistake of having two kids, many pets, and having the wherewithal to live without vices. I wouldn't put it past my mother if she up and divorced my father but she won't no matter how many times she's talked of it with me. He's done it, he somehow made her love him all those years ago and even now he's sunk his claws into her like a tiger awaiting its next meal.

"I mean it," I mutter in response to him even though I've done it again. I've resigned myself to my thoughts. I let his words wash over me and for that moment it was like I were a character in Charlie Brown. Nothing mattered, I didn't really hear a word of what he saying. It didn't matter anyway, it was toxic. I let myself think about how they should have divorced years ago. They should have ended things back when my father turned into a gigantic asshole bent on destroying the world. Well, that is an exaggeration but it feels that way. He isn't a ray of sunshine and pepper spray like my mother. He is the one person that makes my skin crawl, that makes my heart ache. He is the one that waits until my mother is away to tell you just how badly you 'fucked up' and even in those words. He'll deny it. He always does.

My father is a verbally abusive prick, a drug addict, and ever so seldomly he's even physically abusive. He's a nightmare, and no one really knows about it save for me. If you ask him about any of this he'll deny it, that's his prerogative. My father's addiction is the vice that is a bigger problem than all the rest. It is the vice that people would notice if my mother weren't around tinkering away and bestowing a fog of kindness on everyone around us. Her kindness and her actions make it seem like he's simply addicted to the small things like pot and cigarettes. It doesn't make it as real as it truly is. Business trips that were really stints in rehab for the pain medication he was given during this or that surgery. The problem, is that it isn't always neat and tidy.

Alcohol was also a problem, it made me fear it a bit even now. I never wanted to be like him – even though I'm told constantly that I am like him. Sitting there as he's trying to tell me that he loves me, I just let my eyes glaze over as memories pour through my mind like. It is like there is a broken leaky faucet in my brain that is letting the sorrow seep everywhere. Its reminding me of how this fight started. With drunken unadulterated hate, and all because I had deigned to turn the television off. Sitting there, I'm letting his hate blanket me in the familiar way that it always has I remember things. I remember the stench of alcohol on my dad's breath when I was a child. I remember waiting on the Waldorf playground, sitting atop the log cabin house as the sky continued to darken. I hadn't known then, but he had forgotten me. My sister, even though she and I went to the same school then had play practice and a sleepover at a friend's later that night. I just remember feeling hungry when one of the teachers asked if they should call home. I remember waiting and waiting for what felt like the time it would take for galaxies to form for him to arrive. He hadn't simply forgotten about me. He had been too busy drinking and gave the excuse of getting caught up in research. He wasn't happy with me when he arrived, I didn't know why. I just remember that he had had the idea to tell a child – a third grader to shut the fuck up and stop whining after I'd commented about being hungry. I was only a child.

"I love you, we love you – you're my"

"no" I cut him off, I couldn't let him continue. "No, this is not love. Telling someone to 'shut the fuck up' isn't love. Treating me – your child, like I'm a nuisance, like I'm. unwanted isn't love" I take a second to catch my breath "y-you treat Kate like she farts rainbows and me,...well, with me I'm the gum on the bottom of your show" I shake my. Head, "no, that's not it. I'm worse than that I'm dog shit." I correct myself in a calm broken way, I want to yell – I want to scream but I don't. I just tune out again letting his voice fade into the background like a white noise machine. I know they love me, that was never in question. Today at least. Today after the television incident, which are far too common for our own good, I had had the brilliant idea to ask him not to interrupt me and he had flipped. He had worse reactions before, this time he mainly barred his teeth at me and jutted his chin out like the irate asshole he is. This time he didn't really do the get into my face thing where he stands a hairs width away and leers closer while glowering. It wasn't as bad this time but it was still bad. It was still like I was stuck inside of a slowly moving train car bound for the edge of an abyss.

I can't take it anymore. The tension, the frustration – the utter bullshit that everything seemed to explode into white hot hate and anger. I don't hate him, I didn't hate him. It wasn't like he gave me any time or energy to show any other emotion but disdain. "when will this end?" I mutter to myself at a level that his ears don't pick up..."what did you say?" the anger is still in his voice. He's like a cobra ready to pounce at a moment's notice. Ready to poison the world – or just this room.

"Nothing, I wasn't speaking to you. I said I'm sorry Tig" through my teeth but it was true. I was sorry, I just hadn't said it. Tig, she didn't deserve this – she was a victim more any of us ever were. Her hackles would rise and she would run off every time we got into our arguments but some of the time, like today, she hadn't run off. Instead she had simply sat on my feet. I think she felt my emotions – she read the need I had for companionship and gave it.

I know, deep down beneath all the walls that I have skillfully built around my heart that even though we fight he cares. I care too, I just don't show it in the way he wants me to. I can't be obedient and subservient like a peasant in servitude. I can't. I'm not a serf. I haven't been docile and innocent since it happened. I can't be. Abuse does that to you – sure, you can say that this, is abuse. I know it is. I own the fact that my family life is fire and brimstone and navigating it isn't easy, but it wasn't like him. He was worse.