Their stories stay in my mind and bleed for attention. I think of all the experiences, thoughts, and memories everyone has to offer; the things their faces, scars, and bruises can tell us. These factors scream things untold out loud and I search thoughtfully trying to understand how they must have felt in that moment.

My story seemed normal to me, the thing that I was used to and I understand it now as a big difference. A difference only you would be able to completely engulf yourself in if you had experienced it; a difference that can make you swim in your own tears and emotions, the ones that drip angrily from my weary hazel eyes. These eyes see through the lies that have been told to me for as long as I can remember, and this is how my story is seen, through my veins full of blue blood searching for oxygen to turn the color of beets that leak out of my pale skin.
The hard pavement beneath my small feet and clenched hands gave support to my body that was starving for food and that seemed a small percentage of my hunger, the hunger I had for love, acceptance, and the hope for the loving touch of someone that cared. The sun blaring angrily on my feet and my toes curling in my too tight shoes forming my feet to look like drooping dead flowers. I had one dollar in my hand, gripping it and hoping it wouldn’t fly away, the hope that the ice cream truck would hurry its slow steady pace just for a taste of sweetness. My twin sister sitting next to me and playing with the gravel beneath her feet. My mother came running outside yelling for us. I jumped up and grabbed hold of my sister’s hand. Walking past the houses of my neighbors who threw vengeful rocks at us, the street that I had fallen on and came out with seven stiches. I climbed the step to our house, the red little one at the end of the cul-de-sac. The smell made my nostrils flare in disagreement, and my feet found the ground of the only place that I thought was safe.

My mother’s voice, “What do you think about leaving your brothers?”

Oh yes, this question haunted me for a few minutes the words seeping acid into my ears and making my heart ache for a change. There were nine of us living there, the family that seemed so dysfunctional and crazy. I never even knew where my brothers’ curious minds and wandering feet took them. Looking through our house, you would see garbage that acted like closed doors when the police visited, empty cupboards that never felt the weight of food in them, laundry everywhere. Then there was the garage, the room that had most foot traffic; in and out. The room that I had never been into but thought it was the greatest place in the world, holding tons of strangers and the place my mom and her boyfriends stayed all day.

I didn’t have a dad, he left before I had even stood up straight on my two feet. If I had been older, maybe my feet could have been strong enough, my voice interesting enough, to convince him to stay and not run. My voice was raspy and tired from crying and screaming too much. Although I was five, I sounded like I took a razorblade and scratched my pain into my lungs.

The next moment, we were packing our little backpacks. I had a tiny sundress on, one that represented my life; tired, hopeless, and broken. My mother’s hands were rough and medium sized, yet nimble enough to roll her own cigarettes. I left with one tube of lipstick and a Hotwheels car. It’s funny that I would remember my mom and her boyfriend; hardly making a difference in my life, any more than those two objects did. We left the room my sister and I shared; a room small enough that a tiny car couldn’t even fit in it, the size of the relationship I had with my own parents. Our few shirts and jeans were left in the closet on hangers; the hangers that held up the only items that truly belonged to us. I looked at the sad room with the rough sketch of crayon on the lumpy wall, no pillows or sheets on the bed to comfort me when I was lonely or cold and knowing no better, I cried for the loss.

Outside of this room, there were radiating memories of sadness and defeat. My mother who wasn’t around to be my hero. She acted as if she could put me on a scale from one to ten of what was most important to her and I was a zero. The boyfriend who I never called Dad but was always there was no help when I was hurt and criticizing when I was not doing what he expected of my tiny hands and little five year old undeveloped mind. I once cut my foot on the ragged edge of a tiny can of smashed fruit that meant dinner to us all. My eyes were deep enough to stand in, wanting to fill with knowledge, wanting to travel through different time periods and experience a different life then what I was going through then.

To this day, this memory often flashes through my mind. I can’t seem to let it go. I looked out of the corner of my door, and saw the boyfriend standing near the washer and dryer, piles of clothes around him. I hadn’t done the laundry that day because I was too busy playing with the one toy I owned. I gripped my dirty bear. If you looked at me in that moment you would see a little girl with empty eyes, shaking from overwhelming emotions swallowing her. I got up and stumbled to the closet, trying to run away from what was about to happen. The noises my ears were detecting gave me courage. With one blink of my hazel eyes, I was bent over and a searing pain spread over my body; he was spanking me hard. My bear on the ground and I screamed and cried trying to move out of the aim of his nasty, bitter hands. He let go of me and left.

Back on that day we were packing to leave, I walked past the washer and dryer, and followed the whispers and hurried ambiance of the frustrated voices of police, and the scared looks of my brothers who meant everything to me. When my mom wasn’t around, I gave life to their empty, soulless minds. My fingers brushed quickly to my twin sister’s hand eating up the feeling of a soft touch against my cold, confused fingers. A woman came up and grabbed hold of my slouched shoulders and carried my sister and I out of our nightmares, giving us sweet dreams and hope. Hope that this will be the change, the new life that I had always hoped for.

This woman that saved my sister and I cared for us and my heart felt like it never had before. The warm blood in my veins started to fill, making my lungs swell with the sweet smell of fresh air; the smell of freedom. The warm sticky-sweet iron that gave band aids to the wounds of my heart.

Nine years from that day, I am now adopted and in a house that bulges with love and compassion. Parents that feed me daily and give me thoughts of a new life that I had wanted ever since that one day when I knew I was going to be beat for not doing what I was told. From a quick glance and a closed mind, most can’t tell that my heart has been shattered before by the people that were supposed to be my role models, parents that were supposed to kiss me, the people that gave my body life. But really, those two people are my role models; role models of what I will never be. Role models that gave me a kick in my gut every time I cried, hoping they would take back our “little sleepover” that has been going on for years.

I don’t get to see any of my brothers or watch as their hands take on what life has given to them. I will never be able to see what kind of family-making men they will become or watch them throw their graduation caps in the air when they graduate. Most of them to this day live with that horrible excuse of a mom. I can only hope that she has changed her ways and is teaching them how to be great people and giving them everything they deserve; love, compassion, kindness, and a family.

Although most of my brothers live with my birth mom, one does not. He lives in a world of delicacy and cruise trips to Mexico. An immense life of inquisitiveness, benevolence, and an academic life in a private school. He learns from the best and has altered his once before broken life to being the valedictorian of his grade. HE is my role model. This little twelve year old boy with no memory of me, or the ways I acted as a mother to him, and gave him the smallest things to look forward to when nothing in his life seemed to be going the way he had wanted it to. He has transformed into a clever and striking young man as he walks onto the grass field with the meticulously drawn white lines and the way his hands wrap around his wooden bat and hits the ball every time. I have not met him or the new person he has become since our last visit six years ago, but I have gotten an email with only a few paragraphs of written description that made me cry when reading them. He has touched my heart and made me so delighted in the way he turned his life completely around for the better.

I do not miss my birth mom or her boyfriend, who is now her husband. I do not miss the ugly red house, or the abuse. But I do miss my brothers, the ones that were my babies. And now, after rewriting my story over and over again to show in real detail what I felt, I think I have finally gotten it right. These hazel eyes are now filled with hope and courage. And maybe someday, a child, teen, or adult will read this and gain something from this story. Maybe something little like adopting children when they become adults, becoming a foster parent, or even gaining hope that someday, their life can change for the better too.

Don’t give up, because unless you try to reach out and try to touch the things you are afraid of, you will never be able to taste the sweetness that the little, slow and steady ice cream truck has to offer. And even if you don’t do anything that extravagant after reading this story, I hope that I touched your heart and gave you the knowledge that even from looking at someone’s appearance, they may not have scars or bruises but their heart may be hardly beating inside of their broken body. Don’t give up, you are loved and deserve everything life has to offer you.