If She had Been Better

I'm drowning.

This is so hard.

When did life get so hard?

It had always been hard. I never had it easy growing up. But this? I could handle it when it was just me. Looking into the eyes of those precious little babies we had created made it unbearable. How do you tell a child that they never get to bake cookies with Grandma? How do you tell them they will never go fishing with Grandpa? That their aunts don't care whether they're alive or dead?

Family isn't supposed to be this way. I always tell myself it is what it is. That I can handle life alone.

And I have.

I have faced every problem and accomplishment without the support of a loving family. I self-harmed for five years before anyone ever noticed, and when they finally did- I was only doing it for attention. Story of my life... every tear, every outfit, every scar. It was always for attention.

Attention that I never got nonetheless, which really confused me. I spent my childhood sitting alone outside on a porch where all I did was write poetry and draw. Punished for being the youngest girl in a family of daughters that had the freedom to make their own mistakes. Punished because my sisters chose to do drugs, drink, and get pregnant.

They got freedom while I was forced to leave school and the few friends I had to help raise their kids. That's a lot of responsibility for a kid. No high school football games. No homecoming. No prom. Just me... and my disrespectful mouth.

Maybe, if I had been a better daughter...

Mom would have defended me against her husband who punched me in the mouth. If I had been a better daughter, I wouldn't have been in Yahoo! chat rooms at the age of fourteen talking to strangers on the internet. I wouldn't have met the twenty-year-old who told me to trust him and that I'd be safe from the abuse at home if I came to live with him. Maybe I wouldn't have been stupid enough to fall for it.

Maybe... in another life...

If I had been smarter, I wouldn't have ended up crying in the back of that Ford Bronco alone as that man held me down and stole my virginity. Maybe I wouldn't spend the next seven years being pushed around and yelled at. Maybe I wouldn't have been vomited on in his drunken rage. Or made to clean up his urine off the walls.

Maybe I wouldn't still have that lingering cough from the bronchitis I caught at 18 that he wouldn't take me to the hospital for. If I had been a better girlfriend... he wouldn't have cheated. I wouldn't have ended up with HPV.. and cancer.

If I had been a better person, I wouldn't have graduated high school alone. I would have actually attended the ceremony and had family there to celebrate the accomplishment. The first person to graduate high school in my family... and yet, I sat at home alone with nothing but a piece of paper in my hand telling me I did something right.

If I had made better choices, I wouldn't have allowed so many opportunities to slip away. I would probably have a great paying job, and my dad would actually see me as someone worth loving and not just this mess of a girl who let some guy get me pregnant three times.

Maybe I wouldn't be sitting here on the floor, crying and trying to figure out how to afford groceries, water, and electricity for a family of five on just my husband's income. Maybe I wouldn't be thinking of all the ways I could be a better daughter, wife, and mother.

And maybe we would have a support system. A village. People to celebrate my kids on their birthdays. A place to take them to visit their grandparents and their cousins.

If I had just been better...