The Dandelion of Our Broken Minds

Part Two

        The bangs of my hair are dirty blond, too long, slightly uneven, and my everything. I have no room, no home, no family, no place to belong … all until I am truly alone where no one can see me, where even I can’t see me, for that is best. I am behind my bangs always. My vision is starting to falter, and I’ve decided I don’t really care all that much. I am sure it’s for the best if my eyes fail, because that means the rest of me isn’t far behind.

        I can’t remember what I am supposed to. All day long I listen, I do, and I try, I really do. There is only one problem: I can’t think right. Can’t see, can’t think. Can’t live? I wish.

        What’s in my mind doesn’t work itself out. I know so much, but God, pain is all over. It’s as if my head wants to punish the rest of me for being so damaged, at my own hand, no less. Every second of every minute of every hour of every death inside, I am told what to do, and I put that information in my head and I know so much of what I shouldn’t and it’s too much and pain, pain, pain, and I can’t think right. It’s actually a fairly simple process, but no one cares enough to understand, to take even a real second’s pause and understand. It wasn’t a miracle I skipped a grade, it was a mistake, and it ruined me, put me closer to him and insanity.

        I have a brother. Jaden. Jaden and Joy, four years apart, matched hair and matched eyes and matched souls. To the world, at least, this is true, as we’re blond haired and dark eyed and quick to smile. To me, it is also true, and why, you don’t ask, but I will tell you anyway? As we’re both filthy haired and lying eyed and quick to harm. My hair is not golden blond, it is speckled with brown; he is too lazy to wash his. I have lied about every question about me to everyone for as long as I have been abused, which is forever; he has lied about every question about me to everyone for as long as he has abused me, which is forever. I have harmed myself regularly for two years now; he enjoys causing just some of that harm, and I hear it in every laugh, laugh, laugh, every disgusting and breathy sound he makes when he wants to hurt me most. I am his little sister, just a joke.

        We make Jaden and Joy, a matched set. Matched we will be as I join him in hell, as if I haven’t been there, here, for all of my life.

        Fifteen years pales in comparison to nineteen or forty-five or forty-six or eighty-seven, which are the ages of everyone who should matter but no longer does, Jaden, Mom, Dad, Grandpa. They all tell me I’m so young, but I am older than all of them, I am, and I am honest, I am. I have not lived as long as they have, no, I haven’t lived for even one year, for even one month. But does that matter? No, and I’ll tell you why, though you don’t want to know: even in life, death is all that counts. It’s true, I am honest, I am. The largest impact on anyone’s life ever is a death. I have died every year of my fifteen. No one else who should matter but doesn’t has died that many times. Jaden has died once, yesterday, as he tried to run me down with his car while I ran. He hit a tree and was struck by the airbag and his weak heartless heart was crushed in his weak chest. Mom, Dad, Grandpa, however, are all happily alive, though painfully alive now from their fresh loss of their precious son and grandson.

        I have hidden for fifteen years. My bangs are my everything. I can’t see or think right, or maybe at all. I have a brother. I had a brother, but it still feels like he’s here, and now the haunting is worse. I have died instead of lived.

        Jaden verbally abused me for fifteen years. He was killed yesterday as he tried to kill me, perhaps not for real, but real enough to leave me gone, and he was laughing before he died, laughing at me. I am supposed to mourn. I don’t think I will do that. I think, and look at that, I can think, and look at me looking, I can see, I will come out of hiding instead. Here I am, Jaden, Mom, Dad, friends, teachers, coaches, everyone who saw me hide and didn’t seek. I’m making myself count. Every day I died inside I should have counted. You all should have cared about me the way you care about your lives and care about him now, a day later.

        But you didn’t.

        This time, I’ll be sure to make it count.