Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 95775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 479(@200wpm)___ 383(@250wpm)___ 319(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 479(@200wpm)___ 383(@250wpm)___ 319(@300wpm)
He didn’t like being confronted. He preferred the preteen version of me he met to the near adult I grew into. He liked the version of me he could push around without being pushed back. The version of me he could manipulate without me calling him out.
That version of me left between the ages of fifteen and sixteen. Once Tim realized he couldn’t threaten me physically anymore, he tried ruining my life in other ways. One of those ways was leaving me without a place to live.
I eventually swallowed my pride and came right out with it. I told my mother I had nowhere to go.
My mother’s expression wasn’t just void of empathy, it was full of annoyance. “I hope you aren’t asking to move back in after everything you did.”
“Everything I did? You mean when I called him out because his gambling addiction put you in debt?”
That’s when she called me an asshole. Or ass whole, rather. She always said that word wrong.
I attempted to plead with her, but she quickly resorted to the person I was used to. She hurled the screwdriver at me. It was so sudden and unexpected because we weren’t even arguing at that point, so I wasn’t able to duck in time. It hit me right above my left eye, in the center of my eyebrow.
I rubbed my fingers across the cut, and they came away smeared with blood.
All I did was ask to move home. I didn’t disrespect her. I didn’t curse at her. I simply showed up and fixed her front door and tried to reason with her, and I ended up with a bloody gash.
I remember staring at my fingers, thinking, “Tim didn’t do this. My mother did this.”
For so long, I had blamed Tim for everything that went wrong in that household, but everything wrong with that household started with her. Tim simply amplified what was already an awful environment.
I remember thinking that I would rather be dead than back with her. Up until that moment, there was a part of me that still held something for her. I don’t know if it was a sliver of respect, but I was somehow able to appreciate that she had kept me alive when I was younger. But isn’t that the most basic thing a parent should do when they decide to bring a child into the world?
I realized at that point I had been giving her too much credit. I always blamed our lack of a bond on her being a single mother, but there were a lot of busy single mothers out there who somehow still bonded with their children. Mothers who took up for their children when they were being mistreated. Mothers who wouldn’t look the other way when their thirteen-year-old came away from a punishment with a black eye and a busted lip. Mothers who didn’t allow their husbands to force their school-aged child into homelessness. Mothers who didn’t throw screwdrivers at their children’s heads.
Despite realizing what an uncaring human she truly was, I made one last attempt to pull humanity out of her. “Can I at least get some of my stuff before I leave?”
“You don’t have anything,” she said. “We needed the space.”
I couldn’t look at her after that. It was as if she wanted nothing more than to erase me from her life, so I vowed in that moment to help her do just that.
The blood was dripping into my eye when I was walking away from the house.
I can’t tell you what the rest of that day was like. To feel so incredibly unwanted, unloved, alone. I had no one. Nothing. No money, no belongings, no family.
Just a wound.
We’re impressionable when we’re younger, and when you’re told you are nothing for years on end by everyone you should mean something to, you start to believe it. And you slowly start to become nothing.
But then I met you, Lily. And even though I was nothing, when you looked at me, you somehow saw something. Something I couldn’t see. You were the first person in my life to show an interest in who I was as a human. No one had ever asked me questions about myself the way you did. After those few months I spent getting to know you, I stopped feeling like I was nothing. You made me feel interesting and unique. Your friendship gave me worth.
Thank you for that. Even if this date leads nowhere and we never speak again, I will always be grateful to you for somehow seeing something in me that my own mother was blind to.
You’re my favorite person, Lily. And now you know why.
Atlas
My throat is so thick with burgeoning tears, I can’t even verbally respond to what I just read. I set the phone on my leg and wipe at my eyes. I hate that he’s driving right now, because if we were parked, I’d throw my arms around him and hug him tighter than he’s ever been hugged. I’d probably kiss him, too, and pull him into the backseat, because no one has ever said such heartbreakingly sad things in such a sweet way to me before.