A Walk in my Shoes

BY ALYSSA EDWARDS

It makes my body feel like bugs are crawling in it and my head like there’s a fire cracker going to explode.

The bug feeling makes my body tingle from head to toe, and the fire cracker explosion feeling in my head makes my head pound and pound and POUND. My feet start tapping the ground and my hands do the same, except on the table. My legs start shaking to where I can’t get them to stop. They shake so fast and I swear I don’t make them shake, they just do. They shake uncontrollably. I put my hands on them and force my feet flat on ground but it doesn’t work, my feet just come right back up and my legs shake even faster. Faster and faster they go.

It’s embarrassing. Happens in public all the time when I get to thinking, or when I get nervous, or even scared. I’ll start biting my lip or the inside of my cheeks. I bite the inside of my cheeks so much that the next morning they are swollen and white. It’s hard to explain, but it’s like bumpy lines of white where my skin got peeled off from me chewing for who knows what reason? Maybe nervous, maybe scared, maybe thinking too much as I said up^there.

You know, sometimes I cry even. Yes, I know everyone cries but I mean I’ll cry randomly and not even know why I’m crying. Does that make sense to you? No, of course it doesn’t. You, the person reading this has no clue why I shake uncontrollably or why I cry for no reason randomly at times. You can’t know because I don’t even know myself!

Sometimes I think maybe it’s because all that I’ve been through, you know? Just life. Maybe I was thinking about life but just didn’t realize I was thinking about life. If that makes sense to you? Life is hard, you know?

I’m sitting here writing this to ease my mind. Sometimes putting things on paper and just writing helps. I thought it was stupid at first but after awhile I realized, it does help. Helps to put your feelings down on paper.

It can be private or you can make it public. Right now what I’m writing here is private, but it wont be forever. I don’t want it to be private forever. Just private until I finish writing all I want to on this note pad and maybe look over it a couple times. Then I don’t want it to be private anymore. I want it to go public.

I want everyone who’s had a rough life with a drug parent, maybe no parent at all, everyone who maybe hurts from their parents divorcing. Maybe you kids out there who got abused by someone, or molested. Could be from a stranger, or could be from someone you accepted into your life and trusted and got close to.

To me it does not matter if it was a stranger or someone you were close to, it shouldn’t have happened.

For me, most bad things in my life happen from/with people I was close to and trusted. I’m someone who gets attached easily. Maybe a little too easy. But that’s just because after all I’ve been through I crave that one person. The one person who gives me all their attention, loves me, plays with me, makes me smile, you know? I crave that. Specially with guys.

Let me tell you why. Maybe you can relate to me. I guess we will find out, right? Anyways, when I was born on August 14th my mother and my father were happily married. I was their first creation, the first grandbaby, I was a living, breathing baby that both my mom AND dad created together. I had both my mom and dad’s blood in me.

But to this day, I don’t like to think of having my father’s blood in me.

I hate the fact I’m a part of him. I hate knowing that half of him is in me just as half my mom is in me. It takes two, a male and a female to create and bring another human being into this world. Not always do both cherish, love, protect, and treat the human being THEY helped bring into this world how they should though.

Most children in this world have one parent who is actually there for them and does what they should be doing for their child while the other is not. Most of the others are addicted to things like drugs, prostitution, gangs, partying, anything besides their kid/kids. You would think that you meant too much to them for them to do those things.

You ever get down and hurt and just want to break down and cry because you get to thinking, like how could they? How? How is all that they are doing more important then you? Why don’t you mean enough? Are you not good enough? Are you too ugly? Do you not smell the best? Are you maybe annoying to them? But you’re their kid… You shouldn’t be anything but a wonderful blessing to them, right?

Not a day or night goes by that those questions don’t run through my mind. It repeats in my head, “Daddy why, why, why?” Looking my dad in the eyes and him calling me a slut, a prostitute, nasty whore, worthless, you name it, he called me it.

But that’s not even the worst.

How about when Daddy’s getting high in the room off crystal and you’re just trying to get your brother and sisters down the road to a friend’s house where they aren’t going to get hurt until Mommy gets home from work and we can all pack our bags and leave again?

I rush them out the door, down the road, telling them, “Just go play with your friends, I love you!” before he comes out of the bedroom.

The moment I hear the bedroom door start to open I fake asleep or something. He starts bossing me around, telling me how I need to clean the house before my mom gets home, to pick up his mess. That if I tell my mom anything he is going to beat me. I’m scared to death so I get on my knees and start to clean the things he told me to.

I feel him starting to walk toward me from behind. I hear his heavy breathing getting closer and closer. As it gets closer I just close my eyes and pray he isn’t going to hurt me.

But before I can even turn around, his hands are ringed in my hair as he is dragging me out the back door onto the porch. As I scream for help hoping that maybe a neighbor will hear and come to see what is happening or call the police, he is screaming at me, “SHUT THE FUCK UP BEFORE THE POLICE COME!”

I can’t stop screaming and crying though because he is dragging me by my hair on concrete. My shirt is pulling up to my face and my sides, back, and stomach are getting scratched up and bloody. I get louder with my screaming, but still nobody hears.

He drags me back into the house and throws me on the couch by my hair. I try grabbing all the pillows on the couch that I can to cover my body and face as I see his hands rising to hit me. He jerks them all off of me and throws them onto the floor as he swings at me.

I dodge as many as I can and run into my mom’s bedroom, I try shutting the door once I get in but he beats me to it and comes barging in, breathing heavy. I jump on my mom’s bed as he is taking his belt out of his jeans belt loops to swing at me. He swings the belt across where I was and I back up to the wall on the bed as far as I can but I’m cornered and stuck.

He keeps swinging with the belt and hitting me everywhere on my body.

My sister Ashlyn comes running in begging, “DADDY STOP, PLEASE STOP!”

I shout, “ASHLYN GO! GET OUT AND CALL MOM ASHLYN! NOW!”

She stands behind the bedroom door bawling as my dad screams in her face, “YOU’RE NOT GUNNA TELL MOMMY ANYTHING!”

She looks at him and at me as tears run down her face. You can see the fear in her teary dark eyes.

My dad says to her then, “IF MOMMY ASKS YOU WHAT HAPPENED YOU SAY NOTHING!! YOU DON’T TELL MOMMY OR I’LL WHOOP YOU!”

I look at her with tears pouring out of my eyes like the rain does from the sky on a stormy stormy day. I repeat and repeat to her, “GO! PLEASE TELL MOMMY, ASHLYN, PLEASE…”

My dad gives her the look. You know that “I’m gonna murder you” look? Yeah, that’s the look he gives her and she then says, “I wont tell Mommy anything, Daddy, I promise.”

And he keeps hitting me.

He finally stopped when it was almost time for my mother to be home. I tried telling my mom what happened but she didn’t believe me. She thought I was just saying that because he made me mad, but I wasn’t! Why would I lie about that?! Lie about something like that, about my own dad?!

One thing I am not is a liar.

I would tell you what my mother said to me and what happen next, but you’ll have to wait for the next chapter of my life story…

About the Author

Alyssa Edwards is a junior at Archer Learning Center in Springdale, Arkansas. She writes, as she stated in this piece, to ease her mind.