kagablog

Ever since I woke up I’ve had a splitting headache. I can’t say that until now I’ve ever really understood what a splitting headache is like. It really feels like someone hammered a nail into the centre of my head- I feel like any second my head might separate and bleed, ooze blood and puss and scabs all over my sheets. It’s only 5:30 am.

It’s dead quiet. The sun isn’t out yet. I look out the window and notice that even the homeless people aren’t even out yet. I wonder where they go.

I used to love being sick as a kid. When I was ten, I had my tonsils pulled out. The doctors were nice and friendly, let me ask them lots of annoying questions. I really wanted to know what was going to happen to me, and how much it would hurt. They were patient with me, even kind. I got to eat ice cream and jello for a week and a half, which I loved, and I got to be treated delicately, like I could break at any second if I was pushed too hard. I didn’t have to do my homework or think about going to school, and people brought me movies and puzzles and things to do while I was in there. My whole class came to visit me one day, and they all seemed so relieved and happy that I was okay.

Not everyone can say exactly what they miss the most about their childhoods, but for me that was it. For me, the thing I miss the most is the lack of expectation. The patience and the kindness. The thing I miss the most is people allowing you to take care of yourself or occasionally screw up.

When I was a kid my childhood was the kind you read about in magazines, or see on tv shows and if you’re cynical, or smart, some would argue, you don’t believe really exists.

The thing is, it did. It was pretty close to perfect. I had two parents, a younger sister and a dog. My dad was great, but my mom was my best friend. She talked to me everyday for hours about school and my day and she read to me every night, or made up stories about whatever I wanted her to. All I had to do was give her the topic. She could come up with anything, and I could really see it, the way she described it. My dad used to drive me across town if I needed anything, and talk to me like I was an adult even when I was a kid. He always took me seriously. My sister was younger than me by three years, so it took awhile until we were friends. She used to copy me, which annoyed me when I was six. She’d follow me around, mimicking my hand gestures, my expressions. She’d borrow my clothes without asking, even though they were too big for her and stare at herself in my mirror and smile. My mom said she wanted to be like me, that all younger sisters did, but I thought it was weird. She grew out of it, I guess, or I grew more tolerant and flattered, I guess. Anyway, she her own person, a soccer star on our school team, a better student than me, so she must have figured being like me wasn’t really worth all the trouble anyway. I mean, I could have told her that myself, but still. I guess she needed to grow up a little. I guess she needed to figure it out herself.

My dad was supposed to take me somewhere when I was sixteen, to a mall on the other side of town, so I could get the right shoes for gym class. I was superficial as hell back then, and my parents were happy to indulge me, to some degree. My dad was happy to buy Air Nikes, as long as he could get them at the discount outlet 45 minutes away.

My mom said she wanted to go too, she needed stuff for the house, and there was a bed and bathroom store just next door. The outlet was part of a strip plaza in a small town. It’s not that my parents were cheap, they just couldn’t understand spending more than $100 on a pair of shoes I’d probably only wear for a year. I think if I had been older, my dad would’ve started talking to me about sweatshops. As it was, he didn’t, and I didn’t know any better. I just wanted what my friends had. My sister, Emma, who never wanted to be left out, ever, decided to go with too. She was thirteen and bitched at me non stop about how I stole all of our mom’s attention, and how she was her mom too and how I was the crappiest sister alive, which may have been true. Everyday I got home from school, went straight to my room, put my headphones on and listened to music. I locked the door, and only emerged at exactly six, for dinner, or at 9:30 to say good night to, or talk to my mom. My mom said it was teenage angst, and it would pass, and my dad said that as long as my room was reasonably clean, and I got good grades, (at least the second of the two was kind of true) it was all ok. Emma felt otherwise, but I tried to ignore it.

She kind of talked me out of going with, but I let her. She’d been making me feel really guilty then, like I’d been monopolizing too much of their time. She was always trying to get better grades than me, or do super well in sports just to get their attention. I don’t know why I got more than she did, but I was never as impressive as her, that’s for sure.

Anyway, they took her to the outlet that weekend, and I went to my friend Amber’s house. They left Saturday morning and I slept over. I didn’t hear until Sunday, until my friend’s mom came into the den where we were sleeping, pancake foundation and eye shadow running all over the place, nightgown slipping open, to tell us.

They hadn’t made it there. The car had skidded on the ice and slipped, gone straight into a telephone poll. They were front page news on Monday. My sister would have loved all the attention. My mom was the only one who survived, but barely. She was in a coma for a long time, and now she’s a vegetable. She lives in a home and can barely function.

I visit her three times a week. Sometimes I have no idea if she hears or understands anything I’m saying to her. My dad died instantly, and my sister a few hours later. He wore a seatbelt, but she didn’t. It’s weird to think that it’s possible that she’d still be alive if she had been wearing one. I wonder how she would have felt about everything.

After it happened, I moved from one relative to another’s, and eventually to friend’s houses. I graduated high school, but just barely. I’m nineteen now, going on twenty.

I work as a customer service rep in an alarm company. It’s not fun or great, but it pays my bills. I have basic cable for my tv and my phone and electricity to pay for. Plus my rent. I live in a huge high rise downtown. My parents house is still standing where it was four years ago, and it legally belongs to me, and the bond is all paid off, but I can’t live there. It’s too hard. I haven’t even gone back to visit it. For all I know, it’s covered in graffiti and overgrown grass and vines. I have no idea. I can’t even bring myself to look.

Lately my uncle has been calling to bug me to sell the house. The market is good, he said. Interest rates are low, and people are looking to buy, because they’re idiots.

Think of what you could do with all that money, he says. You could buy your apartment, or go to college or both. You could travel. He doesn’t understand.

I’m doing nothing with my life and I’m comfortable with that. He doesn’t understand how much wanting to do things and then actually doing them terrifies me. I don’t have the nerves to buy a house, to go to school, to interact regularly with other people my age. I feel like a freak, like a forty year old trapped in the body of a person who really wants to be fourteen, who’d do anything to go back to a time when things were simple, when things were easier. I’d give anything to be ten again, to be in the hospital having my tonsils pulled, waiting to see my mom again, talking to me as I opened my eyes.

Every time my uncle calls I get a headache and feel like I’m going to die.

I know I can’t go on like this but I don’t know what to do.

I keep fantasizing that I’ll go to a hospital, or a doctor and meet some kindly nurse or female doctor who’ll hear my life story and adopt me. I wish someone could take care of me someday. I wish someday I wouldn’t feel so alone. I wish I had my old mom back, but more than anything, I wish the one who remained could show me once in a while that she was there for me. I wish she could talk, just to tell me once that she loved me.

I wish I could hear it just once. I’m starting to forget what her voice sounded like.