A Teenager's Journey Read Free Page B

knowing what to expect.
    It’s not like I can ask someone who’s done it
, I thought.
    I sat and pondered some more, this time about when I learned that my neighbor down the street had jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. She worked for the local phone company. When I was eight or nine years old, I used to secretly spend time talking to her when Mom was too busy with other things. As I thought about that day, I recalled the emotions that her mother shared with me: The sheer sense of emptiness and wonderment was overpowering. I kept wondering what could have caused her to actually go through with it. She was a pretty girl who seemed to have friends. I didn’t know what was on her mind or what was lacking in her life, but I knew that she felt strongly about it. She must have had a good reason. I recalled the few ink portraits I made. She had introduced me to a whole new form of speech by teaching me how to take ink to canvas and how to use pictures and not words to express myself. I wondered where they were now.
    I knew that I would never know the reason why she did it, and I felt empty inside. The only people I would want to understand, when I was truly ready to do the same, were my two brothers Ross and Keith. They were the only ones that would even care, the only ones that would miss me.
    Once I realized that there would be no answers to my questions in my conversation with God, I felt a sense of sorrow.
    Please, please help me
.
    I don’t know what to do.
    I’m afraid. I’m lost.
    Why are you letting me do this?
I cried.
    The next few minutes ticked by so slowly. A part of me wanted some sort of divine intervention, yet another part of me wanted confirmation that my decision to take my life was the right one. Neither came as I lay on my back looking at the clouds passing overhead.
    Well then, I have nothing to lose
, I said.
    I stood up and looked back. I could see the tree line and the trails made by the hundreds of us kids as we all walked the same path to school each day. I recalled the years before when I would wander the school grounds looking for an answer, the hours and hours I’d spent sitting in the school bathrooms crying.
    All I want is for someone to love me
, I thought, as I started to make my way back home.
    A few yards farther on I found another place to sit and mull things over. I recalled better times, me sitting on Mom’s lap being comforted when I had a fever or banged my knee as a little child—I knew that she was capable of love.
    But that was back then, before David left. David was older than me; he was born after Ross, my favorite brother, and before Scott. For as long as I could remember, David had taken the brunt of Mom’s venom. He lived in the basement. Often when Mom referred to him she called him “It.” Mom made him work till he dropped, and most of the time past that point. She beat him daily, kicked him, cut him, and starved him. More than once she locked him in the bathroom with a pail of cleaning solutions mixed together to make a toxic gas. She made him eat out of the dog dish under the kitchen table when the rest of the “family” ate in the dining room.
    Then when he was thirteen or so, he disappeared. I thought at first that Mom had finally killed him; perhaps he’d failed to do something she’d told him to do. I was terrified. If she actually killed him, who else might she kill? It took me a while to learn that he was actually rescued and that the police had taken him away.
    One thing I had known. I’d just felt it and it was as real as those apparitions in the basement that night: Mom needed a victim, and I’d be the next one. It hadn’t taken long for my feelings to turn into a frightening reality.
    On the one hand, I hated her with every ounce of my body and wished her dead more times than I could count. On the other, I remembered the times I’d wanted her never to leave me, to protect me from all the bad things the world had shown me. In a way I felt sorry for her