An Unconventional Move - Original Writing

was present at home, my mother attempted to keep the peace. Emotionally, he would erupt in angry over the slightest things. At times, my father subjected violence against my brother and I. He physically abused my brother and emotional abused me. I recall that one night, when I was seven years old, my brother and father were arguing. In a rage, my father hit my brother repeatedly and once he was done hitting him. He threw my brother outside on the porch. I remember that night because it was freezing. My brother had no shirt on and my father locked him out. I cried and so did my mother. After ten minutes of my father blocking the door he eventually walked away and unlocked the door.

I started to write about how I felt betrayed and unloved and how angry I was. I was typing feelings that I didn 't even know I had. I wrote about how he somehow was able to get inside my head and become part of my every day thoughts. It was almost as if I was speaking to him through my writing, and I think that’s what it became. I sarcastically thanked him for not being there when I needed him most. I told him that I suffered through many hardships that involved my mental and physical health, and that I was broken and didn’t know how to handle it.

That doesn't matter. Anyways we ended up probably lollygagging somewhere. For some I didn't like him and I can sure he didn't either. He got jealous of all the toys that I had and I did too for what he had. Dumb right? Well we I was only five and he was four. Yep I'm a year older and yet people say we look so much alike that we looked like twins . I hate when they tell us that. I always tell myself that I'm different from him. Am I? I don't know. I got off topic now. Where was I? Oh right! Jealousy it’s what made us hate each other as kids. Because of jealousy we would fight. Every. Single. Day. No joke. We fought each other for the most idiotic reasons ever. One time we had an argument on whether to call a burger a hamburger or a cheeseburger. I learned nothing about burgers that day. I don't remember why I pinpointed on that fight. Maybe it was my conscious reminding on how stupid fighting is. This was just one of our infamous fights because everyone in our family knew about our violence and we didn't just fight each other, we had a war against one another. We just had a long history of battles that never ended. We bited, punched, scratched, etc. anything that a six year old and five old could use against each other. We fought so often that I couldn’t count as a kid, and I could only count to thirty when I was five. It started to be such an ordeal that our Moms would argue about what to do with us. I feel guilty about it

Her attitude changed. She didn’t want anything to do with us, the family. I chalked it up to being a teenager, but I was so wrong. He was teaching her to be sneaky, to lie, and to hide things away from the people who cared for her the most. She was becoming reclusive, withdrawn. I didn’t realize it at the time but his jealousy was keeping her from befriending the children in the school. At 16 a girl’s fancies should turn to sleepovers, makeup and boys. All she wanted was to go to oboe lessons.

“After the shopping trip fiasco, my mom decided she wanted to learn to paint and ended up trying to purchase an entire art supply store over the phone. When my dad forced her to hang up, she went into a rage so fierce she pulled a knife on him. She kicked and screamed and yelled at him, called him the worst names I had ever heard, until she was crying on the floor again. Dad put her into the hospital after that.”

On a Sunday morning of March 15 1998, we woke up super early to the phone ringing on the other side was my dad. My grandmother answered the phone her face paled as she heard the words “mom I shot myself.” After talking to him for a bit my grandmother rushed out of her room to get my uncle up and they rushed to the house to see him up walking around with a hole in his stomach. Ambulance came to get him then rushed him to meet life force. He flat lined once on the helicopter. They were able to bring him back and stabilized him, and kept him stabled till they got to the hospital. They rushed him immediately into the OR, it was around 15 to 20 minutes into surgery that he had passed away, they were unable to bring him back due to the major loss of blood. My mom soon remarried and I gained two annoying step brothers and a step dad. One step brother didn’t bother me to bad, the other one poked and picked on me trying to pick fights. My step dad had episodes where he was violent and threw things at me and my mom. I withdrew more and more until a few of my friends literally grabbed me by my arm and told me to wake up that they were not going to let me push them away

My oldest brother was hammering on the door, shouting to open it. While I stood there, frozen in fear that this moment in time would never end. He asked why my brother and I didn’t want to be with him, what had he done wrong, how could he make things better? Next he tried to persuade me to come live with him, that he would “change,” but I knew that would never happen with him and he would go straight to being a patriarchal dick of a father that would threaten his children with a

He completely ignores you. When he gets tired of that he will talk over you and start telling you things that YOU need to fix. This would happen everyday. Strike Two. When Cannie and Cassidy moved in things didn’t change. Only thing that did is that sometimes Cannie would clean up what Muse left behind. That continued for a couple weeks and then it the first breakup. Cannie and Muse broke up a total of 5 times before November. August - November, basically once every month. Each time after they broke up it was so peaceful at the house. Everything was clean, in order, the house was quiet. But every time Muse came back it got louder, messier, and he got crazier. The last time, this being November, they broke up Muse lost his marbles. By this time Muse had already lost his job with Sprint, got his car stolen, lost his job with lyft, got his phone stolen, had started selling drugs, started using more drugs, started beating up homeless people, and stopped sleeping altogether. I would come home to find him passed out in the middle of the floor most days, no one would be able to wake him up. I had enough, I wanted him out. Muse wasn’t on the lease, I didn’t care if my rent went to 550 a month I didn’t want to deal with a drug addict in my house. My roommate Cassidy wanted to save him, I said the only thing that's gonna help him is a wake up call. Plus we tried getting him help before, he didn’t want it. I’m not going to force someone to change their life but I am going to keep them from ruining mine. The middle of November came along and this was the worst day for Muse. I’d came home to broken glass, trash everywhere, pop on the walls, and drugs on the floor. Strike

Revealing what was behind his mask was more difficult than I had originally thought. He was a rock. He was unmoving and would not budge. But I had set a goal and was determined to not give up until it was accomplished. Day after day I would ask him simple questions and try to get him to have a conversation. For example, I would ask how his day was going, what his favorite colors were, what his favorite food was, etc. At first the answers to the questions were the only thing I received. There was nothing more or less that came out of his

I on the other hand, was always the quiet girl who just got her work done and never strayed from the rules. I thought my brother was an imbecile before he left for college, always valuing trouble way more than diligence. When he left, I thought there was hope in the world. Like if my brother could do it, then I could too. When he came home, those expectations were shattered. There was constant fighting between Joseph and my parents. Arguments would echo throughout my household and create a thick tension that felt heavy in the air. Their voices would penetrate my room and bounce off the walls until they surrounded me. They would argue about basically anything. Joseph just had a constant itching to be right even when he was dead wrong. Our family slowly but surely became miserable with one another, like we were no longer family, but instead we were just people living in the same house. I dove deeply into reading and writing, hoping to drown out the sound of the obsessive combativeness that plagued my home. It triggered anxiety for me when he came home. I now have a deeply rooted fear

No memory loss or anything. Around Halloween, you went to the therapist. Boo hoo, you cried, I don’t like it! I don’t need help! I’m so fucked up! Well, guess what! You’re not supposed to find it fun or entertaining. It’s supposed to help you. And any time I tried talking to you about anything, you basically made conversation do a 180 towards you. Feelings were to be respected, only if they were yours. And do you remember when I told you about my stepdad? I told you about him dying and you said “Well, I ever had a stepdad.” Well, that doesn’t affect me, does it? All I wanted was for you to go “Oh, okay” Or something. I didn’t want sympathy. What I wanted was for you to know something had happened to me and I may need a little support. But nope! And let’s not talk about what you texted me. Remember that? ‘I one upped you’ you told me. You cut yourself 64 times. You invalidated everything I had gone through, told me you didn’t care about me, and kicked me in the gut. All in one message! Wow, round of applause! And I ignored you for a few days, needing time to cool off a little and not

It all started 17 years ago not my birth but the birth of my little brother who was mostly the reason that my father left and the reason that my mom is overweight but still loves him to death including me who I always dealt with him since the beginning also my little sisters who had cared for him but had given me a hard time sometimes because I never knew how to properly control him or how to properly keep him inside the house instead Leo which is his name sometimes wondered off and in the 90’s many did recall boy calls wolf which Leo who loved to climb the water tower did giving people a fright and thinking that he might kill himself for it which was the complete opposite of his attentions which could’ve been that he loved the view and

Emily is twelve and her brother Daniel is fifteen. Their parents recently went through a divorce, which destroyed the sibling’s relationship. They each blamed the other for their parents’ divorce. However, before the divorce they were close. They would play games together all the time and they would even go to the park together. Daniel treated his little sister as every other brother did and he protected her and looked out for her. They would even have sleepovers in the backyard where they would set up a tent and have a fire to roast marshmallows. When the divorce came, they went their separate ways. Daniel went with their dad and Emily went with their mom. So, on weekends they would go to the other parent’s house. This destroyed their relationship. Now, instead of playing games they would ignore each other or fight. They only get to see each other every other weekend. They had to share their space at their dad’s so they were together for hours. The entire time they fought and occasionally threw things. Their parents noticed their behavior and sat them down and talked. It didn’t make a difference. It actually made it worse since each sibling thought the other told their parents about everything. When really the parents noticed what was happening.

“I was wondering Mrs. Evans, if you don’t mind telling. How has it been for you since, uhm, since Mr. Evans’ uhm, departure. Do you know what really happened? Why there was a fight?”

Or so her father had always told her. “Be careful out there, Margaret,” he would say, his eyes hard and sharp like ice. “There are people who would take advantage of a pretty thing like you. Always keep your guard up.”