I'm Doing It

Sometimes people get things they don't deserve.

Actually, people get things they don't deserve all the time.

My mom is a good example.

When she was younger, she ran from home with a man who promised her the world.

She got pregnant with me at 21.

When the dad found out he got really mad. He's the reason I'm so messed up.

When my mom found out something was wrong with me, she told my dad. He ran a week later. Never came back.

I wonder what he looked like. I wonder if he regretted running away. I wonder what his laugh sounded like, what his smile looked like, if the letters we got every month that Mom cried over while burning them in the fire were him.

When I was 13 Mom started losing her hair. She bought cigarettes and stopped talking to me. Just sat at the same chair, looking at the rain. She used to bake me cookies and we'd do the frosting together.

One day I woke up early to make her waffles. Her favorite. I thought for sure if I made her smile, made her show any emotion at all, she'd go back to normal.

As usual she just sat at her spot on the sofa. When I wheel myself in the room, she doesn't move. Smiling, I put the waffles on the spot next to her and give her a kiss on the cheek.

I wheel myself to my room, happy with myself. I smile at myself in the mirror.

Five hours later. I check on my mom, smiling.

And the waffles sit there. Untouched.

I miss my real Mom.

It's like they replaced my Mom with a statue.

She doesn't cry. She doesn't laugh.

She's just numb.

And she sits there.

All morning. All afternoon.

Listening to me cry in my room through the night.

I wake up coughing and gagging, as I do every morning, to smoke.

Life's not good when all your mom does is smoke and you live in a one-story house.

Especially not if you have asthma and a lung disease.

Lucky me.

I open my window in my tiny room that a bed barely fits into. Waving the smoke out of my face, I drag myself into the clothes I set next to my bed last night and onto my wheelchair. The same clothes I wear every day. Blue jeans, and a white shirt. Both? My mom probably got for a dollar at some garage sale.

When's the last time I've gotten anything?

"Mom?" I manage to squeeze out of my dry throat before going into another coughing fit.

I know she heard me, but there's no response.

Knowing that she won't respond even if I call her name again, gagging and coughing I wheel myself out of my room. I would brush my teeth, but Mom spent the $10 I gave her on cigarettes instead of the toothpaste I asked her for.

"Good morning." I say flatly, wheeling myself out the front door.

Mom doesn't say anything. Sat on our 15-year-old sofa that looks like something you would find at some old lady's house. She merely waves her hand, dismissing me from the house.

That was expected.

Would she cry if I never came back?

I don't know if I want to know the answer.

Lucky for me school is right across the street, so I can just wheel myself over there. On the bright side, it's good exercise. But it does get pretty agitating when the roads are covered in ice, it's snowing, freezing cold, and it takes me five minutes to wheel myself over to school.

One day I asked my mom to drive me over so I wouldn't have to wheel myself to school like I do every day.

"Mom, can you please drive me to school? It's snowing like a blizzard out there and it's -3 degrees fahrenheit. Just this once and I'll never ask again. Please, Mom."

"Oh, John you're such a burden on my life! Do you realize what I've sacrificed for you? You're so ungrateful! The least you can do is go to school without help!"

I cried more than I ever thought possible that day.

School is almost over for today. I look out my classroom window at my house.

My house looks better on the outside than how it really is on the inside. On the outside the imperfections are only there if you look for them. If you take a glance you see nothing wrong. You don't see the cracks in the bricks. The duct taped roof. The little things keeping it from falling apart.

It reminds me a lot of people.

It reminds me a bit of myself.

That poor house has been through a lot.

Do I really have to go back?

I've had this thought before. Everyone has had thoughts like this.

What if I asked her out right now?

What if I stood up in class and screamed right now?

What if I punched them right now?

That's what separates the insane from the sane. Knowing insanity is an option, but not acting on it.

But today my stomach curls more than usual on the thought of going home.

I've wanted to tell someone about my living situation forever now. But I never have.

And can you blame me? Living like this is all I've known. When you grow up with something, that's your normal. You don't question it because it's been there your entire life. It's your normal.

An example? Me.

If I had said something to someone earlier, do you think I'd be struggling as much as I am now?

Today I feel brave.

I know I won't last much longer in that house, physically or mentally.

I look back and forth from my teacher, who is busy teaching the people who are actually paying attention, to my house, to my teacher, to my house...

Today?

Today I save myself.

I've read enough to know what happens to kids like me who are struggling and stay quiet.

Shaking, I raise my hand.