Thread: Just a few thoughts.

I come from a pretty unremarkable household, in a pretty unremarkable town. I live in a small trailer that people would normally just gloss over, but there is more to that trailer than what's on the surface. I was that weird kid in the classroom who would do whatever it took to be noticed, but that craving for attention was just a need of validation. No mommy, or daddy, I was raised by my grandmother. I had wear hand me downs, and I had to make the best toys I could out of sticks and imagination. No kids noticed me; mom and dad sure as hell didn't; I was completely alone.

My uncle was an alcoholic, but between the bouts of anger and depression, he was a pretty nice guy. I never had any issues with him, even if he did scare me from time to time. Come Christmas 2010, a night of drinking goes wrong. He stabs his cousin, his best friend, right through the chest. Turns out that all the neglect, the abusive father, the bullying, the alcohol, all of it just came in and caused him to snap. "Fly" goes bye, another body in the ground, and a fourteen year old Jaquan, covered in blood.

My grandmother did the best she could. She was born in poverty to a working father, and a drinking mother. Thirteen brothers and sisters, she had grow up at the age of eight, just to give them a chance. She sacrificed her youth, and her education in order to carve out a chance for them. She got married at nineteen, to a physically abusive alcoholic, and gave birth to my uncle, the alcoholic, my father, the jailbird, my aunt, the basket case; and she did the damn best that she could to raise not only them, but their mistakes. My cousins, my sister, and myself.

Out of the entire family, I can't help but feel that I was the biggest mistake. No mommy, no daddy, no notice of my peers. Embarrassment of my hand-me-downs, and bullied for my eccentricities. Hungry not just for food, but for hope. I wanted some purpose, some reason to live, something that wasn't just handed off to me in a prescription bottle after a two week stay in the psychiatric institution. I wanted some validation beyond superficial friends who were only there for the laughs, but never for the hard times. I wanted some possibility that I could take my family's wasted wishes, and shattered dreams, and turn them into some kind of reality that we could finally be proud of. I'm sick of trying to survive at the age of twenty one, where you're too young to be on your own feet, but too old for anyone to care. I'm sick of crying because of the lonely nights at home, knowing that my grandmother who did her damn best for me is dying, without any kind of fanfare due to degeneration of the bones, muscle, and mind. I'm sick of coming home to a place where I can't be sure of my safety, due to an unstable father who's mental health saw no help throughout the entirety of his stay in prison. I'm sick of walking through life a somnambulant zombie going through the motions, but hoping that death takes away the strain. I'm sick of this cynical world.

Twenty-one years of nothing but write offs. Twenty-one years of dysfunctional families. Twenty-one years of poverty. Twenty-one years of pain.

An unremarkable nobody, from an unremarkable town.

I'm still standing.

Why can't you?