Heavily Broken

I jolted up in my bed, panting hard. I wiped the sweat off my forehead with the back of my arm. Taking deep breaths, I looked to my left and found James asleep in a sitting position on the floor which if you asked me looked unbelievably uncomfortable. I recalled back the last few hours.

The fight between Kevin, my father, and his girlfriend Daphne, her walking out, him taking his anger out on me. If only James came home a little sooner. I winced as I recalled the pain I had just endured.

I laid back onto the bed and started wondering why god hated me so much to give me such a horrible life like this. I’ve done nothing wrong, so why me? When I was younger, I used to think that this was how every one's life was like until I grew up and reality set in. I gave up on the whole why me, and got over it. I was sick of yearning for a different life.

My family was poor. We lived in one of the cheapest apartments in the whole neighborhood and we couldn’t even afford to pay the rent usually which meant we hardly had electricity or water. Kevin could never keep a job for longer than three months because he was always either drunk, high or just being his usual extremely lazy self. It got so bad that my older brother James had to drop out of school and take on two part time jobs to help out.

Nevertheless, that still would not be enough to cover the rent and our food because every time James brought money home both Kevin and Daphne would take most of it and spend it on alcohol and drugs. It wasn't until James started to give in only half of what he actually made to them so that we could have some money left off for things that we need for our home.

We lived in Brooklyn, New York. The neighborhood we lived in was known to be one of the shittiest and worst. People were always getting into trouble. So many deaths happened around my neighborhood that I could not even keep count anymore. People died from drugs, or were even murdered. Some even committed suicide. Gunshots would always be heard throughout the night, along with drunken guys and girls. There were men from a gang on every corner selling drugs. It started to get so bad that I made James walk me to and fro from school. I was scared of being out there alone. You think after living there for so long you'd get used to it. But I never did, and who could blame me?

I had only two things in the world that I loved more than anything and that was my brother James and my passion for singing. James was only 21 but he didn’t look it. People would always claim how he looked older, more mature. But in my opinion that was only because he was forced to grow up at such a young age. He is tall and has muscular broad shoulders with brown eyes that you could never see because they would always be covered by his shaggy light brown hair that he liked to keep long and tied back. He has a few piercing. One on his lip and both ears were pierced.

I have Kevin's eyes which are soft blue only mine are a little darker but I have my mother’s jet-black hair. I'm only 16 but you wouldn’t be able to tell. I'm mature and wise for my age as people liked to say. I guess living where I lived and experiencing all the things I have really ages a person. It made you see, and hear all the things you shouldn't have to. I'm around 5’6 and skinny from the lack of food we had in our home. I also took care of all the cleaning and the cooking as well as other stuff as best I could because Daphne couldn't do shit without ruining the whole thing.

James always told me I have an angel's voice. He said that I sounded just like my dead mother. She had died giving birth to me and ever since then Kevin has hated me. He despised me so much for taking away the love of his life away from him, but I didn’t mean to. I didn't sit there in my mothers stomach thinking about a way I could piss my father off. Every night I wished that I could go back in time and prevent myself from ever being born. Do you know how much it hurts to look into your father's eye everyday and see that he hates you with all his might because you are the reason his life is so horrible and unbearable? It’s enough I look so much like her that every time he looks at me he sees her.

Every year on my birthday I would sneak out and walk toward the graveyard where she is buried and sit next to her headstone and cry knowing I'm the reason for everyone’s pain and suffering. I am the reason she died, the reason James doesn’t have his mother anymore, the reason why my dad drinks so much to bury out the pain of her out of his mind, and I am the reason why everyone lost their friend, sister, daughter, mother, and wife. I was the blame for everything that had gone wrong in my family's life. And until this day, I haven't overcome that guilt.

Singing was the only way I could get away from all this madness. I felt free when I sang, as if nothing could hurt me. Singing took me to another world where I could be alone and one with my soul, but I didn't dare sing for anyone else besides James when we were alone. I was always to shy. I’ve always thought that they would laugh or judge me. Tell me I was horrible. James always told me I should be more confident about myself if I ever wanted to independent but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn‘t. I've never had close friends; or any friends for that matter but I was fine with that. I preferred solitude. When I first started high school, many girls would talk to me and invite me out with them. But since I couldn’t go, I kept declining them, which eventually drove them away.

My life went in the same pattern. I woke up every morning and just before I got dressed I would make what little we had for breakfast. James would drop me off at my school before going to work. After school was over, I would wait for him to come and pick me up and we would walk home together after occasionally stopping for ice-cream then he'd return to work leaving me with them.

I always hated coming home from school; I would always wish the school day was longer because every day I would have to come home to Kevin and Daphne fighting. After what would seem like forever their fight would usually end by Daphne storming out of the apartment. Which I also hated because it would make Kevin even angrier and he would always take it out on me. My body is full of bruises and sores from my father. But I would never tell anyone and to make sure they didn't find out about them I would wear long sleeve shirts and my long battered jeans; I also never wore shorts no matter how hot it was outside. When someone in school once asked why I never wore skirts or shorts, I replied that I felt a little self conscious about my body. They eventually stopped asking me. I wasn't hated at school. I just became invisible.