Potential

TW: Domestic Violence, Alusion to mental health crisis.

I watch my reflection in the glass carefully. For I am not sure who exactly I am looking at. Am I looking at a second grader ripe with potential, a math grade ahead already? Or maybe a sixth grader trapped in expectation of a life they have grown to hate. Hate is a word I’ve been raised to avoid. Even now it feels too heavy. To important. But I hate what I am looking at now. I am looking at a freshman born with too much love. 

“You treat strangers better than me. People off the street are better than your mother. You have no love.” 

The memory haunts me, I have love, I love so much it hurts. I love with all my body, but I also know that love is hurt. The more you love the more it pains you. Love is short-lived, love is fleeting. 

It's the night before the first day of school now. This entire summer I have been asked if I was excited or nervous. My actual answer always seemed to have been met with laughter or confusion. Because I am neither. High school was never exciting or scary, it was just another thing. But that’s not true, under all the nothing I feel hate. I’ve grown to be a hateful person and I have no desire to change. I hate the way teachers look at me like they are waiting for me to break, or maybe they’re waiting for me to show what I always have. A smart kid with a future.

Except I have no future now. Once you're the Bipolar kid that's all you are. They are all just waiting for the next episode, the next explosion. I laugh now when I list my disorders to my counselors, secretly hoping they hear the pain behind the humor. Hoping that they don’t think I’m lying as so many have. 

“So how do you feel about your first day?” “Scared.” A belly laugh follows my answer. Why would I be scared? It’s not like everything can go downhill in the second grade. 

I don’t remember many first days. Only two clearly, and they all have one thing in common. I was still reeling from a fight in each one. The words that are shouted at me cling to my body and stay until the next day. My first day. This time it was second grade, and I’d lost my backpack the night before. 

“How could you be so careless? How could you be so stupid?” She shouts these words, I’m barely 7. 

It confused me then. I had never been called stupid. It was more of a swear word around my house. I had been called smart, gifted, and excelled. But never stupid. These words probably wouldn't affect me now. I’ve been called worse. But they sure as hell affected me then. When you don’t know what trauma is when you're already traumatized you don’t know how to feel. You don’t know how to feel anything except what you shouldn’t. You feel hate and anger so internally that it feels like a personality trait. That's the first thing people think of when they talk about you. Your anger, your hate. They don’t talk about your love, how you feel it so patiently, that it’s with you at all times. 

Now you are 12 and it's your first day of 6th grade and you’re still reeling from a fight between your parents a week ago. It's a more regular occurrence the fighting and how long it affects you. This time it was physical, only a kick though. Even in the future, you’ll try to minimize it. But you’ll never forget the small beads of blood that broke out along your father's knee. 

I go to bed tonight, haunted. 

***

I’m walking into high school now. Fresh off the bus and my head already hurt from trying not to cry. I loved like the sun, whole and bright and with no end. Only at night when the sun went away did I question that love. 

I passed through 1st hour like a ghost, The syllabus revealed that it would be an easy class, another one I excelled at. I wasn’t sure whether to be excited or not. If I was betraying my problems by being good at something. The second hour was roughly the same, a little struggle. Nothing I couldn’t handle. And It’s like I forget, that a little struggle isn’t just little anymore. It's so large that my breathing is rapid and my hands clench together. Because I’m not smart anymore, I lost that skill oh so long ago. My problems were back and seemingly mad I had betrayed them. 

“You’re not crazy.” Her voice yells at me. This time it's my Aunt saying this. “I never said I was.” My voice is quiet, as controlled as possible “Well you act like it when you say all these things.” I had only asked for her help securing accommodations at school. Later I learned that she calls me crazy to my cousins.

3rd, 4th, 5th and finally 6th hour comes and go’s. Sitting on the bus I contemplate my choices for when I get home. Will I tell the truth about how my day went, or will I sit and stare, letting my emotions dwell? 

I’ve made my decision by the time I hear the hissing doors open at my stop. 

“You’re fine. Just dramatic.” It's said with a scoff to her voice. My mother's signature move. I was 13 now and crying, coming home from a therapy session in which I had finally shared all that had ailed me. I should have remembered he was a mandated reporter. All this could have been avoided if I was just smart again. Instead, I was dramatic. And that's all I’ll ever be.

“So how was school?” An overall cheerful version of my mother asks as I walk through the door. 

Second-grade me screams for the truth, her heart had not been broken yet.

Sixth-grade me whispers for help, their heart has been damaged.

Mine now was beyond repair. 

“Fine.”