2.2.1.4

The smoke is still stinging my throat slightly, dancing with the familiar taste of tobacco in my mouth. Perhaps I’ve developed a mild nicotine addiction… Lately I’ve felt as though I’ve had to have at least one every night. “It’s okay though, I can quit whenever I want.” Nights where I cannot find the time to smoke don’t seem like a burden to me, and often times are followed by a couple nights where I simply forget to greet this habit.

Poor me.

Got into a huge fight with my mother today… It all started when she asked my brother to start his car for her. My brother, jokingly, said that she should ask me to do it instead. He was finishing up his lunch or something… I was busy with Twilight Princess, a great game that I haven’t had the time to get into since its release. So, she asked me if I could do it for her. So I told her that it’s his car and that she asked him first, so naturally he should do it. These innocent words devolved into “Hey! I told YOU to do it, so go do it!” I resisted, and then she began making comments about how lazy I was and how it was just shameful that I was never willing to do any work around the house. She kept going about how ungrateful of a child I was, one bullshit remark after the next.

I wasn’t having any of that today. So, I lashed back out at her. This argument went all over, touching on subjects ranging from how I wasn’t able to find a job this semester, to her and my dad’s inability to find jobs this season either, to my brother’s greatly belated high school graduation (coming this December… he’s 20 now), to the sensitive (for her) issue of me having to take her car to college this semester instead of my own which had expensive transmission problems, to my parents playing favorites when we were children, to statements such as “Why don’t you just move out already? We should start charging you rent,” to “I’m the only one in this room who’s actually planning on doing something that matters with my life… you’re the one who’s a failure.”

It was fierce, abbreviated only when she realized she was running late for some errands she had to attend.

I’ve come to a realization today. When I was younger, when I needed friends and company and relationships the most, they were the ones who were never there for me. Due to some masterful work by my then-manipulative, brown-nosing brother, he had managed to convince my parents that I was the source of scorn in our family. I was labeled as the misfit, the mischievous, selfish child who twisted the opinions of my friends against my own family members.

It all began when they first held on to the notion that I was abusing my brother, trying to turning friends and family against him. In a heroic attempt to foil my evil plot, I became the evil one. They were the heroes who had stepped in just in time to save my brother from certain peril, sentenced to a life of depression and loneliness ushered in by me, who sought the approval of my peers more than the bonds of family. I was the problem child from then on, the one they had to unite against to undermine.

They needed someone to fill this role in their lives. I happened to be in the right place in the right time. Thus the evil one’s schemes would be forever put to rest, the villain locked up and bound. No more would these plans come to fruition, no longer would this terrible concoction of blood, tissue and bone which had gone awry continue to herd corruption between their precious family bonds.

What’s it like to have your family stand up for you, to protect you when people aim their fragile fingers your way undeservingly? What’s it like to be encouraged by a loving father when you’ve been paralyzed by the fears of a reality which seeks to destroy you? What’s it like to hold a deep, genuine conversation with a mother who’s interested in your thoughts and feelings, interested in the relationships you’ve managed to build in the mere 10-20 years of life you’ve been granted thus far?

Tell me… somebody please, tell me…

These days hurt so much. Each day I walked through this desert, chapped lips seeking water. It wasn’t long after stepping onto this baked earth that the wolves first spotted me… wasn’t long before I could hear them pacing around me as I slept, each night drawing closer, biding their time to strike. My father once told me I was the worst sibling he had ever known. “I would never want to be your brother,” he said to me. Even as my brother defended me, he held fast to this idea.

I wanted to die… I wanted to die…

When have I ever been the wanted one within this circle? I’ve always envied this love, the bond of which I apparently am undeserving of. Even now as they talk to him… my brother, the victim… Each time they laugh, each time they share something of themselves… Hell, each time they so much as genuinely listen to the words he speaks, I wonder if it ever could have been me.

…But sometimes I wonder if I truly wished it could’ve been.

I thought that these cuts would be for my friends, those who’ve fallen where I’d managed to stay strong. But now I believe that these cuts will be for me.

I wish I may, I wish I might
On crimson-coated steel tonight…

Oh God… I need to get out of here…