Invisible Prison

I don't want to sleep, but I don't want to be awake either, so I read. I don't even like the books I've been reading. I'm angry, I've been angry. I want my life back. It's mine, not hers. I feel helpless again. But much like my childhood, no one is going to rescue me.

That's what I always wanted. I used to wish that I'd wake up and have a good mom like in the books I'd read, or that someone would see our suffering and make it stop. No one even knew how we suffered, we weren't allowed to talk about it, it made mom look like a bad mom. We weren't allowed to ask for help, or money for the same reason. Eventually those rules permeated my whole life. I couldn't even ask anyone for homework help.

My sister and I were locked away in an invisible prison. Mom can't even remember doing so. And since it was invisible and we weren't allowed to ever mention it, no one came to the rescue. When I was with Gary, he was my rescue, he was my way away from my prison. I believed I could be free of it all, I was willing to risk everything for it. It all fell apart. I felt like I'd never escape again. I'd never have my own life or control again.

I can't tell you how wonderful it was when I was finally on my own last year. It was the beginning of everything I'd ever dared to dream of. Now that freedom feels like a distant dream. Once again I'm locked away in an invisible prison. I can talk about it but no one really understands. Most people think it's easy to escape. I understand. I used to wonder how and why Gramma wouldn't leave Grampa when he abuses her so much. I understand. It's not something that I can explain or make someone understand, you can read all you want about neglect and abuse, about the psychological problems that stem from them, but you can never really understand unless it happens to you.

It's 2am, and I want out of my cell. I want the life I had outside the prison again. I'm angry because I deserve better, I'm angry because she has forgotten what she did and can't even see the bars of my confinement. I'm angry because she did it to my little sister too.

I can't even say anything. She can't remember what she did, she either denies it or tries to make it seem like I'm exaggerating. Even if she did she'd just start making threats, probably about herself. Even though I hate her, I love her, because she raised me to. She raised me to love and protect her, even if it's from me.

I was raised to believe emotions were bad. I have very few memories of my mother laughing or smiling. The idea of her doing so always scares me. Having emotions upset mom. She'd often go cry and tell one of us about it, guilting us into apologizing and eventually not displaying much emotion. Upsetting mom made us bad. If we were bad we didn't deserve to be loved.

Mom never made any real attempt to hide our financial situation from us. Both of us stopped eating lunch by highschool because of the guilt we felt. Mom always remarked on how expensive it was to buy food for lunch for us. And I mean always. Just about every shopping trip, and also seemingly randomly that she "couldn't afford" it. Mom very rarely asked us for help or anything at all. Instead she'd talk out loud, to herself she always claims, about how she couldn't afford this or that, how she needed this or that, why couldn't someone help her with this or that or give her the money, so on and so forth. This still happens. I always knew she was asking without asking, she'd always act like that wasn't her intent.

Mom would always claim she did nothing for herself, it was all about us. Which of course isn't entirely true, it was only about us as much as she needed it to be. She needed to feel needed, she still does. We don't exist when she doesn't need us. She left us in a perpetual state of needing her. To this day I am still mildly scared of the oven and stove. She taught that it was dangerous and that I would burn and hurt myself. She taught us everything in the world was dangerous and cruel. That she was the only one able to protect and help us, not even ourselves.

There was never a whole lot of my dad in my life. Still isn't. Since I was 12 or so he'd been warning me that life sucks and is full of disappointment. That things in the real world weren't so happy and cheery. Dad didn't want to have anything to do with mom or her lies, but he was always there unknowingly backing them up.

One day I turned eighteen and suddenly I was legally an adult. And these were the skills and truths I was given to manage my way with. Now I'm twenty-two and battling the truths I was given so I can actually have a chance at something better, something mine. I can't survive on what I was given, so now I'm stuck trying to change. It's incredibly difficult to stop believing the lies that were presented as truth, especially when you learned to accept and live by them before you even had a chance. This is who I am, who I was raised to be, and what I'm fighting against.