When I was in middle school, I won the UIL playwriting contest: city, state, and national. I remember my middle school principle pulling me out of class and telling me that the kids in my drama class had to drive to Austin with my Drama teacher so that we could compete on the national level. My play was about what if Rosa Park had slipped on a banana and broke her leg, and missed that damn historical bus, how life would be different. I’ve always been a smartass. Anyways, my principle told me he called my grandmother and told her that I was going to Austin, but he lied. He never called my grandmother; he just wanted the trophy for our middle school case. Anyways, we won. We got the damn trophy.
When my middle school teacher dropped me off at my house, I didn’t know that I was in trouble. When my cousin opened the door, he had that look on his face that kids have when they know other kids are in trouble. I don’t remember getting a foot in the door before my grandmother hit me across the chest with the belt. And then she dragged my twelve year old body into the kitchen, because my beatings always had to have an audience, and the belt swung and hit flesh and bruises rose like pain always do trying to escape the body, and I really didn’t know why I was being beaten, or what happen to my trophy, but I would learn that it got broken when I was snatched--the proud person head fell off like a ripped off Barbie head. My grandmother, rest her soul, did speak to my principle but told him I couldn’t go to Austin, and he didn’t listen because he wanted the trophy in our middle school case, and my grandmother was more concerned with me coming home to sweep the patio, and dust the living room furniture, wash off the sidewalk, crush the cans, than with me winning some useless “Rosa Park” play. And I remember that beating, the crash of my trophy and how I held it crying in my bed without its head, but it wasn’t the last beating, it would be the same beating when I wanted to play soccer in high school and did it anyway, and after every game I game home to the belt, then board, and later switches. Or was it the switches first.
And I remember how I just wanted to be normal, how I was hated because I didn’t want to get a gold tooth, another beating, how my family didn’t understand me, because I would be the only male out 36 cousins and 7 uncles not to go to prison, and how they thought of me as the black sheep, uppity. And I remember the beatings, getting my books thrown up in trees, but I didn’t become some Oprah survivor story, instead, I succumbed. I was just tired of fighting. They were my family. My mother overdosed on crack and father got himself killed, so I was an orphaned and lucky that my grandmother was willing to take my 1300 check a month to take care of me. They were my only family, I just wanted to be liked, loved, and accepted. But I could never stop the beatings. I could never stop writing, winning shit, being singled out, having teachers come to the house to tell relatives how special I was, but they would leave and I was just have the beatings, the scolding of why was I trying to be different and then I thought, and hated myself for being smart, started learning to dumb myself down, started to learn not to stick out, make myself unattractive, because who likes the person who have all the answers, the overachiever.
So I became a nobody, learn to blend in the background at the best of my ability. And I thought, if I didn’t want anything, I would be loved, and I thought if wasn’t so smart, I would be loved, and then I thought if I hid my specialness, i wouldn't be punished, a freak. I wouldn't be the child of the prostitute crackhead. I woudn't be teased. Mostly, wouldn't be beated down.
So i learned not to be loved. And when you don't want to be loved, you will not be loved. And when you want to not be special, you will not be special. the world doesn't discover people who don't want to be discovered.
I fight myself everyday. I fight being abandoned by a mother who couldn’t say no to drugs. I fight a father who had to be killed, left my sorry ass in this world with no directions, and fed me to the wolves. But I survived wolves, ran away when I was fifteen years old, never looked back. Never went back.
Ran away when I was fifteen years old, but never got free. It isn’t so easy to get free.
Honestly for too damn long, I felt like this person trying not to drown, and then I realized I could swim, and I got to the shore, but yet I’m afraid of the tide. I keep thinking of tsunamis, that it’s going to rise up and take me back. But right now, I’m doing my sit-ups, running by the shore, happy that I’m not flapping my arms around in the water anymore, but yet I’m still so afraid. When you’ve been drowning your entire life, and you meet the land people, you think they won’t like you, that they will think of you’re as a freak. Everyday I feel like I’m a child, because the first time in my life, my life is my life, and I’m free. I’m a child, like any child, I just want to play. I just want to prove that I’m capable. But I’m not a child, I’m adult, who fought so hard to get to this point in my life. Fought the depression and so many attempts of suicide. I fought myself, so that I can be loved. I want to be loved.
I want to be loved, and when you want to be loved, I know I will be loved. I feel so happy, because despite the struggle, I know I’m somebody. I learn that on my own because I listened to god, not the world. i listen to that voice speaking to my soul. Willing to love honestly. No more pain. No more pain. No more pain.
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