I Want To Burn

   My whole life i was ignored, ridiculed, or punished when i was treated unfairly. I was the youngest child in a poor household to an angry post-teen pregnancy single mom. I was the last to arrive when everyone had already learned the "Law of The Land". 

    My oldest sibling had classic "Parentification" taking on the role of the parents, expected to clean, cook, and care for everyone unable to have a life let alone childhood. My two older siblings, brother and sister, facing challenges at home and in school clung to each other. My eldest sister, not being an option because of the resentment and anger she held towards us. That left me, coming in last at every checkpoint to a race that we were all set up to fail. While my two older siblings became crutches to each other that bond did not extend to me. I cant tell you why i was treated the way i was by them maybe i was unwelcome, just another mouth to feed, here to make things stretch even farther. Making their hard lives even harder. In short, i was tormented relentlessly, borderline abuse, with the physical and emotional scares to prove it.

   My brother was the favorite, the boy my mother had wanted all along and finally gotten. Then came me, seven months after having him, she found out she was five months pregnant with me the product of the on and off again eleven year relationship she had with my father, the abusive alcoholic she swore would never be in their lives again...again. Time and time again i would be the target of my brother's bullying. It wasn't terrible when it was just him but when my sister joined in, which she often did, it would confirm more and more that life wasn't fair and people were shit. That's a hard thing to learn so young, when you're too young to even fully comprehend it.             Meanwhile, when i was taunted, bullied, hit, and terrorized my oldest sister was too busy trying to be a teenager to stop them and too angry to care. When mom came home from countless hours at work with a five dollar pizza of course, i ran to her looking for her to comfort and protect me. In the end when she came home and saw whatever bruise on my brothers face he received through my retaliation, heard whatever stories about what i had said or done she never cared to ask what had happened or question what they'd done. " Moms not gonna believe you" was a phrase i heard often.

   When she came home to me locked in a dog crate, crying, blotchy burns covering my little arms there was no demand to know what my brother and sister had done. It wasn't until a day or so after that my grandpa had taken me out to breakfast alone, Coney Island, he said my mother had told him what happened and, he was sorry. He was the only one that acknowledged or apologized for what had happened.

    When she came home and i was banging at the back door in my pajama pants and a t-shirt in the middle of winter, crying and begging my brother and sister to let me in it wasn't her "last straw",  she never saw the damage that i was left with at the end of every night when she came home from work.

   I was such an angry kid, and now? I'm still angry, I am defensive, mean, and quick to hate. Every time i'm wronged, when i'm called a liar, i feel like I've been thrown back into that house, sent to my sister and I's room. I feel the same overwhelming anger and sadness i did while lying on the floor at the top of the stairs, crying and kicking the wall, screaming how "I hope you all die, I hate you! " It was so hard to understand then, i still don't ,even now.

  Now, I hate to admit it but I am sensitive and emotional. A few years ago it finally clicked, after being told countless times how "letting it get to you" just made it worse by my oldest sister, a relationship that didn't begin to heal until she moved out at 17. At some point it became clear to me after she chose one person after the next over me that she didn't deserve my respect, I didn't crave her validation and love so desperately anymore. Still though, it gets to you, you can't ignore it forever it just festers and grows. Now when i feel the same anger i'm quick to shove it back down but when it bubbles back up i want to die, I want to tear the skin off my face, I want to inflict so much pain, not on them but on me, so much so that, I cant feel the anger and sadness anymore. 

Don't misunderstand, I still yell and curse, I just don't feel bad about it anymore.