My Side Of The Story: Freshman

Around a year ago, I decided to stop writing this and leave it the way it was. I didn't want to continue it any more. It was very difficult for me to pick up where the last chapter left off-I felt exposed, and I kept looking at it and wondering if I really wanted to say this. I'd sit there trying to figure out what I should filter out, what I should be honest about, what I should keep a secret, and what was an acceptable way to present things. It drove me nuts, so I just threw my hands up and said "fuck it".

But around a month ago, a friend of mine had a brush with death. She caught a stray bullet to her leg because she had been at the wrong place at the wrong time and just happened to be there during a drive-by. She would call me, telling me about dreams she had where the bullet had hit a vital organ instead of her leg and she did not make it out alive.

The city I currently live in-Baltimore-has an average of around 300 homicides in it every year. I remembered when I had been listening to the radio on New Year's, and only two hours into the year they announced that the city had its first murder of 2009. They couldn't even wait three hours to start killing each other.

It'd be stupid of me to assume that I am incapable of ending up as one of those people.

My mind would flash back to all those people I knew who had died. People that I had seen just the previous day, smiling and laughing and talking...and then were placed in coffins and buried underground not too long after. Some of the bodies I'd seen looked nothing like the person had in life. It's a completely different look when the blood stops circulating.

Then I remembered the people who had been vibrant and very much alive who, while not dead, might as well have been. The ones I used to argue with who had been in car accidents unexpectedly and were now in the hospital, walking a thin line between life and death in vegetative states. Their lives had gone to waste. Everything they'd ever worked for was gone. And they'll never be able to tell anyone about their stories, no matter how badly they wanted to.

I fear that I might wake up someday and not even remember my life. Or worse, I may not wake up at all. Therefore I decided to continue this. Now where was I? Fourteen.

I fucking hated going to Magruder, and having everyone assume that I was from the other middle school most 9th graders came from. Regardless of that, I tried my best to start a new life there. I enrolled in as many advanced courses as I was allowed to take, remained honor roll, and completely immersed myself in extracurricular activities. I stayed after school every day because I didn't want to go home. As much as I hated having to wake myself up at five a.m. (yes, five, dammit) to go to school, I hated having to come home to my family even more. If I had to be home at the same time as my parents (I didn't mind my brother so much), I locked myself in my room and did not come out except to take care of my basic needs.

When I couldn't find school-related excuses to leave my house, I always told my parents I was socializing. That made them happy because they hated how much of a loner I had been. Occasionally I went to parties to give them the illusion I was fitting in.

But I hated the parties. Adolescent parties aren't the same as childrens' light hearted, carefree sleepovers, no way. Before then, girls would invite a small group of girls they were familiar with over to do normal childhood stuff, gossip about boys, give each other makeovers and dance. No one did that anymore. High school parties involved enormous crowds of guests you didn't even know. They invited complete strangers to their houses. There was no fun; there were only substances and getting high. There was plenty of food. There was dancing, yes, but it wasn't fun. It was more like they were trying to imitate the act of sex...sex with clothes on was a more accurate description of what we were doing than "dancing".

Did I partake in it? Yes. My will was weak, and I was afraid of looking scared in front of everyone else if I did not experiment sexually like they were doing. But I hated it, and after my parents got the illusion I was popular somehow (I always arrived early so they'd see the place set up for the party and never see what was actually going on), I stopped going to their little sex fests.

Fact was, there was only one girl I regularly saw-and that was to write songs with her. I made my first audio recording through working with her due to the fact she was willing to use her hard-earned money from her job (she was older) to pay for both of us to use a nearby studio, and we called ourselves Addictive. I ended up forging my parents' signatures because they didn't want me to do anything like this asides from the occasional thing at school, but it was a worthwhile experience.

I spent around four to five months that way, and before I knew it, half the school year had drifted away.

One day I had missed the bus and dad was driving me to school. We got in an argument-I don't know what it was over-but somewhere along the discussion, he said he was tired of me talking back to him and punched me.

It was the first time in a year or so he'd hit in a visible spot, and also hard enough to leave a mark, but my mouth was filled with blood.

"When you come home from school, we'll settle this. I'm gonna take care of you." he kept repeating.

How was I supposed to interpret that? What the hell did he mean that he was gonna take care of me? My parents had been upset for a while over how "Americanized" I'd become, because I had the nerve to speak my mind. Eastern belief is that children, as property, were to accept any and everything their parents did to them without question. Be seen and not heard. If you dared say anything, you were insane, spoiled, and needed to be put in your place.

I'd been speaking out-not disrespectfully, mind you, but I'd still tell them if I didn't like what they were doing-and they had not been beating me as hard as they used to. My opinion is that it seriously made him want to assert his authority and dominance, and I'd kind of crossed the line. He'd made up his mind to stop being "nice" (in his opinion) and really let me know who was boss.

Remembering what they did when they weren't holding back, I made up my mind to not go back home. I was too scared. I would just stay in school, never go home, eat from the cafeteria or something-but I wouldn't go back home.

With that in mind, I tried to go throughout the day like normal but being fourteen...I kind of found it hard to keep a straight face. In gym I actually shed tears in the middle of class and drew attention to myself. I went to the bathroom to hide, but another girl had seen me and become worried; she told the teacher about me, who, in turn told the guidance counselor.

At first I refused to talk. I just sat there in her office, crying like a whimp, not telling her why. She had to let me go. But as the day went by and more people noticed something seemed not right with me, she was called again. And this time she got it out of me. I told her about everything going on between me and my parents.

Unlike the first counselor I had talked to back in fifth grade, she was very understanding and I felt it easy to just pour my heart out to her. She even checked my mouth and looked at the scar dad had left.

"...What I'm gonna do is, I have to call CPS." she told me.

I don't know why I didn't see that coming. Maybe while talking to her, I had forgotten to think about the conseuquences of my actions in my distress. I told her not to. I remembered fifth grade, when the lady didn't believe me, called my stepmom to school, and returned me home with this hanging in the air between us and left me to deal with my parents' reactions.

"I'm sorry honey, but when I'm faced with something like this, I'm required by law to report it."