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Description
"It is easy to forget how full the world is of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined."
-John Green, ‘Paper Towns’

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September 13, 2013

I wiped one last tear out of my eye and turned my gaze to the sky. The streetlights had gone out by now, and the stars were starting to shine their lights past the light cloak of clouds. The ducks had already gone back to their pond, realizing I didn't have any bread on this visit to give them. Normally they'd flock around me, even letting me pet them lightly on rare occasions. But not tonight. I had nothing, nothing but my own personal demons, which were ripping me apart from the inside out.

I looked back at the neighborhood. The cold, uninviting neighborhood. I stood, deciding I should probably get back to the house. Though, to be fair, that was the last thing I wanted to do. I could've ran away, I suppose, but where would I have gone? Who would I have turned to? My dad? Chelsea maybe? But they lived so far away. Even if I could've made it on foot, I didn't know the way. I'd be lost after just going a mile. It really felt like I was stuck in my own personal hell.

Another tear rolled out of my eye. That happened a lot. Every other thought that raced through my head seemed to induce a new spark of pain, a new layer to add to my depression. The world seemed to hate me. And, to be honest, I kinda hated it back.

I stood there in silence, still debating whether to go back to the house or not. I actually considered just laying by the duck pond all night, despite how wet and disgusting the ground was around it.

That idea was kinda kicked to the curb, however, when I saw a police car turn the corner a few blocks down. It's siren was silent, but its lights were flashing. It was driving slowly, the cops inside scanning the streets. My shoulders drooped. I felt a mix of worry and annoyance. “Oh God,” I whispered to myself. “Tell me she didn't actually…” I sighed. Of course she called them. I knew that she knew I wouldn't come back at the time she told me to. I didn't think she'd call the cops though, because it was only a mere ten minutes later than what she said. Than again, she always had a tendency to blow things out of proportion when she didn't get her way.

The car was starting to drive in my direction. I started getting nervous that they'd spot me. I quickly ducked behind a bunch of bushes, hidden from sight… hopefully.

Thankfully, they eventually passed by, not seeming to notice me at all. I waited until they were out of sight before making a move. I looked down the other street. Another cop car turned another corner, but it went the opposite direction. I looked around, and found another group of bushes. Thank God people in that neighborhood liked to garden so much, even if they sucked at it. All the plants were half dead. Maybe it gave them the illusion that the place was better than it actually was.

I didn't have much time to think about it, though. I had to sneak back to the house. I made the decision, albeit unwillingly, to go back. There was absolutely no way I was gonna let the cops drag me back, scolding me, thinking they had every right to tell me what I was feeling was ridiculous or just a phase or something like that. They had no idea. They didn't care.

I bolted for the bushes across the street, hiding as well as I could. Just in time, too. Another car had just turned the corner. It passed by me without noticing anything. I took a deep breath. “You can do this, Carter,” I told myself. I started making my way through the bushes, freezing whenever a cop car came around. I managed to get passed them whenever they came, and I continued on. I had to cross the street a few times, and I had to round a few corners. I stayed in the bushes, hidden by the darkness of the night.

Eventually, I wound up on the street that the house was on. I could see it in the distance. It disgusted me. The outside wasn't as bad as the inside, but that's not saying much. It still looked beaten up and dirty. I hated that place so much. I refused to call it a home. At the time, it seemed to represent everything bad in my life. It was the crap place I had to move to after moving out of such a nice place in a nice town. It was a filthy, uncomfortable, cramped place that was ready to fall apart. But above everything else, above everything else I hated about that place, there was one, single reason the sight of it filled me with such spite: my mother lived there.

My mother, my own worst enemy, the person that tried every single day to make my life as miserable as it could possibly be. I really, really, did not want to go into that house and confront her. Almost every time we talked, it became an argument. Nonetheless, I kept stealthing my way in that direction. I had nowhere else to go… But God knows I wished I did.

I was only a few yards away from the door, still hiding in the bushes. I waited until I couldn't see any cop cars around, and then I stepped into view. I walked up to the house and stepped onto the front patio. The wires that made up the screen windows that lined the walls of the patio were torn and rusted. I stood in front of the door, took a deep breath, and walked in.

And sure enough, there was my mother. She was talking with two police officers when I walked in. She spun around to look at me, her face furious. You may think it was because of a mother's natural worry for her child, that she was mad because she cared, but that wasn't the case. It was never the case. She was just mad. Mad because I didn't do exactly what she wanted at the exact time she wanted. She was mad because she couldn't stand any resistance to her grab for power. Mom loved power, still does, but back then, she really loved power. That was what she cared about, not me.

“Where were you?” she shouted. “I told you to be back before the streetlights went out!”

I rolled my eyes. After months and months of hearing her spout her bullcrap, I was getting sick of it. “They went out like ten minutes ago,” I spat, not bothering to hide my irritation. “I'm back, aren't I?”

“You were supposed to be back when I told you!”

“Did you honestly think I'd be back exactly when you told me to?”

“I thought you'd be able to follow orders!”

“Yeah, well, your orders suck, Mom.”

I could see her face turning red, despite her efforts to remain as orderly as she could. One of the police officers behind her raised his hand a bit. “Ms. Spainhower?” he asked. Mom raised a hand to silence him. “I have this,” she said. The cop backed down.

“We have orders and rules for a reason, Carter,” she said loudly, firmly, as if that would've made me listen. Big surprise, it didn't. “If we don't follow set instructions, it leads to disorder!”

I rolled my eyes again. I raised my hands a bit and shook them mockingly. “Oh no,” I said sarcastically. “How horrible! Freewill! Gasp!” I put my hands down and scowled again. “My desk is in disorder,” I said firmly. “Does that make it ‘evil’ or whatever word you define liberty as?”

“You don't understand the big picture, Carter!”

“Clearly.”

The other policeman had just finished calling back his men when he took a step forward. “Respect your mother, kid,” he demanded. I glared at him. “Sure,” I said. “I will when she does something to actually earn my respect!”

“I'm your mother!” she yelled.

“Is that supposed to mean something?” I asked. She fixed me with a glare, eyes like daggers. I returned the glare.

“The freedom you want would lead to chaos!” she said. “If you don't obey the things I tell you, your world's going to burn! You're going to end up in a dirty hole somewhere with people just as ignorant as you. That's what freedom leads to! That's why we simply can't have it. That's why people like me need to run the lives of people like you!”

“Well, if that's the case,” I said sarcastically, “after all the crap you put me through, I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.”

“I am trying to protect you from the world”

“What you're doing is not protecting! You never let me experience any of the world that you don't like!”

“That's because anything I disapprove of cannot do any good for this world!”

“Even if what you're doing was protection, I don't need protecting!”

“You're fourteen! You're a stupid, delusional, arrogant little brat! You know what kind of people think they can do whatever they want? Toddlers!”

“No. Toddlers believe that actions shouldn't have consequences. Toddlers believe that they shouldn't take the necessary responsibility that freedom comes with. Toddlers think they're the top of the world and that everyone should do what they want, simply because they're arrogant enough to believe themselves better than everyone else! Sound like anyone familiar, Ma?”

“You know what? I'm done! Bed! Now!”

“Although come to think of it, Toddlers wouldn't stoop so low as to consistently drug the people they want to put down,” I retorted, ignoring her.

“Bed! Now!”

“You never could keep an argument going when you know you're losing, could you?”

“Now!”

At that point, I didn't have the energy or the mindset to argue anymore. I gave Mom and the police officers another dagger stare and stormed up the stairs. The stairs didn't even have a rail. There wasn't even paint on the walls, just mud and grime. It was a miracle the place hadn't collapsed on itself yet. I rushed into my room, which was equally wrecked and only about 10 square feet. With my bed and dressers, there was barely any walking space at all.

I would've slammed my door shut if the door had a frame, or was still in place. Mom had unscrewed my bedroom door off and stored it in the garage or somewhere after an argument. It was late when that specific fight took place, and eventually I decided to just drop the argument before it got really bad. I didn't want any more trouble, and so I walked away from the fight responsibly, and went up to my room and locked myself in for some alone time.

Well, mom decided it was a better idea to just keep fighting, so she came up and picked my lock and proceeded to take the knob off of my door. Then we kept fighting. I'd later found ways to keep the door shut without the lock, but she decided she didn't like that either. And anything she didn't like, she got rid of, so she took off the whole door one day when I was at school. She wouldn't even let me have my privacy.

So I turned off the dull lights upstairs and in my room. I turned on my fan, and flopped in bed, depressed, crying, and mad. I didn't take the medications she had me take before bed, but to be honest I rarely did. She had like seven different pills for me to take. The sad part is, I didn't even need most of them. I would later find out that only like two of them were actually prescribed by my counselor. The rest were Mom's own meds. She wanted the counselor to prescribe them to me, and when the counselor refused, she ordered extra prescriptions of her meds to sneak into my system. She was that desperate to stay in control, that desperate to seize every drop of power she could. I was actually scared to eat anything in that house, in fear of there being some malicious drug laced within.

Through my sobs, I could hear my little brother, Braden, snoring in the room next to mine. I felt so sorry for him. We're both autistic, but his condition affects him far more than mine. I have asperger's syndrome, and it barely affects anything of mine under normal circumstances. Really it just makes me a bit quirky, and that's it. Most people are never even able to tell that I have a condition at all. Braden's doing so much better now (thank God), but back then, his condition hit him hard.

Mom thrived on our conditions. She thrived on poking at them, trying to figure out how to make them worse. I fought back, but Braden didn't, he couldn't. He wasn't really able to comprehend the problem we were so deep in. Hell, I'm pretty sure he still doesn't to this day. Back then, Mom kept him in a mental state similar to a four-year old. He still needed to take supervised baths. He still had to be washed by hand. The only thing he would eat was chicken nuggets and crackers. Mom would never try to get him to eat anything else, at least not really.

I felt so bad for my brother. I was his big brother. It was my job to protect him, my responsibility. And everyday it felt like I was failing him. The kid was only ten at the time. He didn't deserve any of it.

I kept crying into my pillow, thinking about how awful the very act of existing had become. I'd moved away from all my friends, which I never even gave much attention to in the first place. I moved away from my nice school, nice neighborhood, nice town. I guess you never know how important the little things are until you lose them all. I had to come to this dump, Franklin, Indiana. The town was awful. The people were jerks. The school was absolutely atrocious in every aspect from the busses to the educational system itself. Education seemed to be more of a minor priority at that school.

I had no friends. Honestly, I don't think anyone at that school had friends. Everyone was so focused on themselves and only themselves. They all did everything they possibly could to get ahead of the rest. There weren't any ‘friends’ there, only competition.

I cried a bit more. I heard the cops leave. I heard the back door open downstairs. I heard my three dogs rushing in from the backyard. My girls. Sally, Samantha, and Sadie. God bless those dogs. In my darkest moments, those dogs were my only light. They were the only things that I felt loved me that were always at my side. I knew they were suffering, too. They were there for me, and I was there for them.

I saw Sally, my golden lab/golden retriever mix, come rushing up the stairs. She ran into my room. She stopped when she saw me in pain. She knew I was hurting. She came up to my bed, hopped up, and laid down with me. She was a big dog, but she was a gentle giant. I hugged her warm fur like there was no tomorrow. She licked my face a few times. “I love you, too, girl,” I mumbled through my crying.

I kept on hugging her tight. I closed my tear-filled eyes. It took what seemed like hours for me to get to sleep. Nonetheless, I managed to cry myself to sleep eventually. I dreaded waking up. I knew I'd wake up crying, too. I hated that.

Other people probably would've started hurting themselves or thinking suicidal thoughts at that point. Not me, though. It never even crossed my mind. I stayed strong through my torture. There was no way in hell I was going to take the fool's way out of this war.

I still had scars, though. From Mom. But she never laid a finger on me or Braden. My scars went way deeper. My mom is a tyrant, but she's a smart tyrant, the worst kind. She was smart enough to know to only inflict the worst kind of scars, the mental ones, the ones that no one can see, the ones that no one can use as physical proof to use against her. So no, I don't have any scars on my skin, but I did in my head. And let me tell you, they hurt just as much as any blade ever could.

Still, I carried on. I had faith in the few people that supported me at the time. My dad and stepmom were fighting tooth-and-nail to get custody of me and Braden. I had faith in them. It was the only thing I could've had faith in back then. Thank God that faith paid off.

Description
"It is easy to forget how full the world is of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined."
-John Green, ‘Paper Towns’

------------

September 13, 2013

I wiped one last tear out of my eye and turned my gaze to the sky. The streetlights had gone out by now, and the stars were starting to shine their lights past the light cloak of clouds. The ducks had already gone back to their pond, realizing I didn't have any bread on this visit to give them. Normally they'd flock around me, even letting me pet them lightly on rare occasions. But not tonight. I had nothing, nothing but my own personal demons, which were ripping me apart from the inside out.

I looked back at the neighborhood. The cold, uninviting neighborhood. I stood, deciding I should probably get back to the house. Though, to be fair, that was the last thing I wanted to do. I could've ran away, I suppose, but where would I have gone? Who would I have turned to? My dad? Chelsea maybe? But they lived so far away. Even if I could've made it on foot, I didn't know the way. I'd be lost after just going a mile. It really felt like I was stuck in my own personal hell.

Another tear rolled out of my eye. That happened a lot. Every other thought that raced through my head seemed to induce a new spark of pain, a new layer to add to my depression. The world seemed to hate me. And, to be honest, I kinda hated it back.

I stood there in silence, still debating whether to go back to the house or not. I actually considered just laying by the duck pond all night, despite how wet and disgusting the ground was around it.

That idea was kinda kicked to the curb, however, when I saw a police car turn the corner a few blocks down. It's siren was silent, but its lights were flashing. It was driving slowly, the cops inside scanning the streets. My shoulders drooped. I felt a mix of worry and annoyance. “Oh God,” I whispered to myself. “Tell me she didn't actually…” I sighed. Of course she called them. I knew that she knew I wouldn't come back at the time she told me to. I didn't think she'd call the cops though, because it was only a mere ten minutes later than what she said. Than again, she always had a tendency to blow things out of proportion when she didn't get her way.

The car was starting to drive in my direction. I started getting nervous that they'd spot me. I quickly ducked behind a bunch of bushes, hidden from sight… hopefully.

Thankfully, they eventually passed by, not seeming to notice me at all. I waited until they were out of sight before making a move. I looked down the other street. Another cop car turned another corner, but it went the opposite direction. I looked around, and found another group of bushes. Thank God people in that neighborhood liked to garden so much, even if they sucked at it. All the plants were half dead. Maybe it gave them the illusion that the place was better than it actually was.

I didn't have much time to think about it, though. I had to sneak back to the house. I made the decision, albeit unwillingly, to go back. There was absolutely no way I was gonna let the cops drag me back, scolding me, thinking they had every right to tell me what I was feeling was ridiculous or just a phase or something like that. They had no idea. They didn't care.

I bolted for the bushes across the street, hiding as well as I could. Just in time, too. Another car had just turned the corner. It passed by me without noticing anything. I took a deep breath. “You can do this, Carter,” I told myself. I started making my way through the bushes, freezing whenever a cop car came around. I managed to get passed them whenever they came, and I continued on. I had to cross the street a few times, and I had to round a few corners. I stayed in the bushes, hidden by the darkness of the night.

Eventually, I wound up on the street that the house was on. I could see it in the distance. It disgusted me. The outside wasn't as bad as the inside, but that's not saying much. It still looked beaten up and dirty. I hated that place so much. I refused to call it a home. At the time, it seemed to represent everything bad in my life. It was the crap place I had to move to after moving out of such a nice place in a nice town. It was a filthy, uncomfortable, cramped place that was ready to fall apart. But above everything else, above everything else I hated about that place, there was one, single reason the sight of it filled me with such spite: my mother lived there.

My mother, my own worst enemy, the person that tried every single day to make my life as miserable as it could possibly be. I really, really, did not want to go into that house and confront her. Almost every time we talked, it became an argument. Nonetheless, I kept stealthing my way in that direction. I had nowhere else to go… But God knows I wished I did.

I was only a few yards away from the door, still hiding in the bushes. I waited until I couldn't see any cop cars around, and then I stepped into view. I walked up to the house and stepped onto the front patio. The wires that made up the screen windows that lined the walls of the patio were torn and rusted. I stood in front of the door, took a deep breath, and walked in.

And sure enough, there was my mother. She was talking with two police officers when I walked in. She spun around to look at me, her face furious. You may think it was because of a mother's natural worry for her child, that she was mad because she cared, but that wasn't the case. It was never the case. She was just mad. Mad because I didn't do exactly what she wanted at the exact time she wanted. She was mad because she couldn't stand any resistance to her grab for power. Mom loved power, still does, but back then, she really loved power. That was what she cared about, not me.

“Where were you?” she shouted. “I told you to be back before the streetlights went out!”

I rolled my eyes. After months and months of hearing her spout her bullcrap, I was getting sick of it. “They went out like ten minutes ago,” I spat, not bothering to hide my irritation. “I'm back, aren't I?”

“You were supposed to be back when I told you!”

“Did you honestly think I'd be back exactly when you told me to?”

“I thought you'd be able to follow orders!”

“Yeah, well, your orders suck, Mom.”

I could see her face turning red, despite her efforts to remain as orderly as she could. One of the police officers behind her raised his hand a bit. “Ms. Spainhower?” he asked. Mom raised a hand to silence him. “I have this,” she said. The cop backed down.

“We have orders and rules for a reason, Carter,” she said loudly, firmly, as if that would've made me listen. Big surprise, it didn't. “If we don't follow set instructions, it leads to disorder!”

I rolled my eyes again. I raised my hands a bit and shook them mockingly. “Oh no,” I said sarcastically. “How horrible! Freewill! Gasp!” I put my hands down and scowled again. “My desk is in disorder,” I said firmly. “Does that make it ‘evil’ or whatever word you define liberty as?”

“You don't understand the big picture, Carter!”

“Clearly.”

The other policeman had just finished calling back his men when he took a step forward. “Respect your mother, kid,” he demanded. I glared at him. “Sure,” I said. “I will when she does something to actually earn my respect!”

“I'm your mother!” she yelled.

“Is that supposed to mean something?” I asked. She fixed me with a glare, eyes like daggers. I returned the glare.

“The freedom you want would lead to chaos!” she said. “If you don't obey the things I tell you, your world's going to burn! You're going to end up in a dirty hole somewhere with people just as ignorant as you. That's what freedom leads to! That's why we simply can't have it. That's why people like me need to run the lives of people like you!”

“Well, if that's the case,” I said sarcastically, “after all the crap you put me through, I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.”

“I am trying to protect you from the world”

“What you're doing is not protecting! You never let me experience any of the world that you don't like!”

“That's because anything I disapprove of cannot do any good for this world!”

“Even if what you're doing was protection, I don't need protecting!”

“You're fourteen! You're a stupid, delusional, arrogant little brat! You know what kind of people think they can do whatever they want? Toddlers!”

“No. Toddlers believe that actions shouldn't have consequences. Toddlers believe that they shouldn't take the necessary responsibility that freedom comes with. Toddlers think they're the top of the world and that everyone should do what they want, simply because they're arrogant enough to believe themselves better than everyone else! Sound like anyone familiar, Ma?”

“You know what? I'm done! Bed! Now!”

“Although come to think of it, Toddlers wouldn't stoop so low as to consistently drug the people they want to put down,” I retorted, ignoring her.

“Bed! Now!”

“You never could keep an argument going when you know you're losing, could you?”

“Now!”

At that point, I didn't have the energy or the mindset to argue anymore. I gave Mom and the police officers another dagger stare and stormed up the stairs. The stairs didn't even have a rail. There wasn't even paint on the walls, just mud and grime. It was a miracle the place hadn't collapsed on itself yet. I rushed into my room, which was equally wrecked and only about 10 square feet. With my bed and dressers, there was barely any walking space at all.

I would've slammed my door shut if the door had a frame, or was still in place. Mom had unscrewed my bedroom door off and stored it in the garage or somewhere after an argument. It was late when that specific fight took place, and eventually I decided to just drop the argument before it got really bad. I didn't want any more trouble, and so I walked away from the fight responsibly, and went up to my room and locked myself in for some alone time.

Well, mom decided it was a better idea to just keep fighting, so she came up and picked my lock and proceeded to take the knob off of my door. Then we kept fighting. I'd later found ways to keep the door shut without the lock, but she decided she didn't like that either. And anything she didn't like, she got rid of, so she took off the whole door one day when I was at school. She wouldn't even let me have my privacy.

So I turned off the dull lights upstairs and in my room. I turned on my fan, and flopped in bed, depressed, crying, and mad. I didn't take the medications she had me take before bed, but to be honest I rarely did. She had like seven different pills for me to take. The sad part is, I didn't even need most of them. I would later find out that only like two of them were actually prescribed by my counselor. The rest were Mom's own meds. She wanted the counselor to prescribe them to me, and when the counselor refused, she ordered extra prescriptions of her meds to sneak into my system. She was that desperate to stay in control, that desperate to seize every drop of power she could. I was actually scared to eat anything in that house, in fear of there being some malicious drug laced within.

Through my sobs, I could hear my little brother, Braden, snoring in the room next to mine. I felt so sorry for him. We're both autistic, but his condition affects him far more than mine. I have asperger's syndrome, and it barely affects anything of mine under normal circumstances. Really it just makes me a bit quirky, and that's it. Most people are never even able to tell that I have a condition at all. Braden's doing so much better now (thank God), but back then, his condition hit him hard.

Mom thrived on our conditions. She thrived on poking at them, trying to figure out how to make them worse. I fought back, but Braden didn't, he couldn't. He wasn't really able to comprehend the problem we were so deep in. Hell, I'm pretty sure he still doesn't to this day. Back then, Mom kept him in a mental state similar to a four-year old. He still needed to take supervised baths. He still had to be washed by hand. The only thing he would eat was chicken nuggets and crackers. Mom would never try to get him to eat anything else, at least not really.

I felt so bad for my brother. I was his big brother. It was my job to protect him, my responsibility. And everyday it felt like I was failing him. The kid was only ten at the time. He didn't deserve any of it.

I kept crying into my pillow, thinking about how awful the very act of existing had become. I'd moved away from all my friends, which I never even gave much attention to in the first place. I moved away from my nice school, nice neighborhood, nice town. I guess you never know how important the little things are until you lose them all. I had to come to this dump, Franklin, Indiana. The town was awful. The people were jerks. The school was absolutely atrocious in every aspect from the busses to the educational system itself. Education seemed to be more of a minor priority at that school.

I had no friends. Honestly, I don't think anyone at that school had friends. Everyone was so focused on themselves and only themselves. They all did everything they possibly could to get ahead of the rest. There weren't any ‘friends’ there, only competition.

I cried a bit more. I heard the cops leave. I heard the back door open downstairs. I heard my three dogs rushing in from the backyard. My girls. Sally, Samantha, and Sadie. God bless those dogs. In my darkest moments, those dogs were my only light. They were the only things that I felt loved me that were always at my side. I knew they were suffering, too. They were there for me, and I was there for them.

I saw Sally, my golden lab/golden retriever mix, come rushing up the stairs. She ran into my room. She stopped when she saw me in pain. She knew I was hurting. She came up to my bed, hopped up, and laid down with me. She was a big dog, but she was a gentle giant. I hugged her warm fur like there was no tomorrow. She licked my face a few times. “I love you, too, girl,” I mumbled through my crying.

I kept on hugging her tight. I closed my tear-filled eyes. It took what seemed like hours for me to get to sleep. Nonetheless, I managed to cry myself to sleep eventually. I dreaded waking up. I knew I'd wake up crying, too. I hated that.

Other people probably would've started hurting themselves or thinking suicidal thoughts at that point. Not me, though. It never even crossed my mind. I stayed strong through my torture. There was no way in hell I was going to take the fool's way out of this war.

I still had scars, though. From Mom. But she never laid a finger on me or Braden. My scars went way deeper. My mom is a tyrant, but she's a smart tyrant, the worst kind. She was smart enough to know to only inflict the worst kind of scars, the mental ones, the ones that no one can see, the ones that no one can use as physical proof to use against her. So no, I don't have any scars on my skin, but I did in my head. And let me tell you, they hurt just as much as any blade ever could.

Still, I carried on. I had faith in the few people that supported me at the time. My dad and stepmom were fighting tooth-and-nail to get custody of me and Braden. I had faith in them. It was the only thing I could've had faith in back then. Thank God that faith paid off.