a look into my life

As a teenager just moving into my adult years I look back on my childhood and try to think about my life. I realize that for most of my existence it was my duty to protect the ones I love. If I didn’t have the courage to stand up to the one that caused us so much pain, it would never stop.
The only problem with me being in charge of keeping my family safe was I was never allowed to be a kid. I always had to be an adult and raise the kids that weren’t mine. In the few short years that I had to be a child I never was able to move past the fact that I had to be there night and day for friends and family alike. At the age of nine I had already seen more things then most kids my age, some good but most bad. I had so many people look me in the eyes at fifteen and tell me that my eyes tell a story of pain and deceit, and that I was far too wise to be how old I was. To them it appeared that I had the eyes of a seventy-year- old. I never had the courage to stand up and say no, but I did have the resolve to fight till the day I died.
As the days passed and I began to transcend into my teenage years I began to see something that I had missed in the years of my childhood. My oppressor was afraid of the fire that I held inside of me. He would put me down at every chance he got because I was the one who posed the biggest threat to him. I was the one who would no longer stand by and watch my family being tormented. Whenever he would go off on one of his tangents I would be there to tell him to knock it off.
There are a few times in my past that my family’s life hung in the balance of what I did and did not do. I once again had to stand against everything that I feared, and I had to make it clear for the final time that he was not welcome in my family, that he would never be accepted in my eyes. I no longer cared what he thought of me, I knew inside that he hated me, hated everything about me. I was never good enough for him, never smart enough for him, never straight enough for him.
HIM that is what I call him. He lost the right to have a name the minute he decided that I wasn’t worth the light of day. No I was never hit, never once was I physically abused, unless you count excessive spanking abuse, but it was the mental degradation that I had to live with for twelve years. The mental beating that we all sustained eventually drove my older brother away. He just disappeared happy to be out of the house, out of his grasp. When he left, he left me alone, he left me to fend for myself, to protect our family with only my will power and what little self respect I had left.
At fifteen I began seeing someone, it was an on and off relationship. I fell in love quickly and she became my escape. I will admit she broke my heart a few times but eventually we became engaged, and are happy to this day. Whenever I was with her I found the courage to let everything go, to take a step back from my life and see where I was headed. She gave me someone to lean on when I could no longer support myself. Having her around made me see that life could get worse. And I thank my lucky stars to have her every day I awake and see her sleeping beside me.
At the age of sixteen I lost all the will to fight that I had in me. I was fighting a losing battle, and for what? No matter what I did, nothing ever seemed to get better, nothing changed. My faith in everything was slipping, I no longer wanted anything to do with the person I was. I hated looking in a mirror; I hated seeing my face, the face of a failure. After ten years of fighting, ten years of being told that no matter what I did I would never make it in the real world, I began to believe it, began to slip into a black hole.
My interest in school began to slip, I felt no need to be there, no need to try and continue that existence that I maintain during school. My once safe haven became my own personal Hell. I began to think my way through many situations. Could I make it without a diploma? Could I have a good life if I didn’t finish high school? I wanted nothing more then to leave this hell behind me and make a new life for myself, become someone new.
Life at this point was not terrible but it wasn’t great either, somewhere deep inside I kept saying to myself that things could not possibly get any worse… I was wrong, dead wrong. Later that year I was told that the man I grew up thinking was my father, the one living with us is my step dad, wasn’t really my father. That I had never met my biological father before, that he wanted nothing to do with mine and my brother’s life. If I had any leg to stand at that point, it was ripped from underneath me. I was left to hang in the balance alone and scared, and I was expected to be ok with what I was just told. I lost everything I held dear that day. That man was my support, my light in the ever expanding darkness.
My saving grace came in the form of a complete stranger. Somewhere I had never thought to look because I had conditioned myself to make sure I never ever became involved with a school official. Mrs. Z had the most piercing eyes that I had ever seen; she was unlike anyone I had ever known. She cared about me, and made it a point to make sure everything was going ok at home. Having someone who didn’t really know who I was or what I was going through make sure I was ok, made me see that maybe not everyone in life was going to hurt me, that maybe just maybe there were good people here on Earth that truly wanted to help.
After I opened my eyes to the world around me I began to see that there are many people that cared for me, that no matter how bad I screwed up, no matter how much trouble I got in, they would be there to lend me a helping hand, and a caring glance.
During my senior year I met a teacher who told me that no matter what she never wanted to become friends with her students, that it wasn’t right. I began to spend more time with her because she intrigued me more then anything else. A woman to proud, so intelligent, so beautiful could have anything in life and I respected her for that. I respect her more than most people in my life. To this day I still say that she failed in her attempts to not make friends with students because no matter what she ways I see her as someone I would like more then anything to remain friends with. I feel as though, although I make a fool out of myself sometimes and I might be immature on occasions that she is someone I could have a real conversation with. But who knows what will become of this. Only time will tell.