A work in progress 2nd set

I see hell in your eyes                                    1/16/2005  1

I met a girl named Ashley at my new school. She was quiet and small for her age and the girls made fun of her almost the same way the guys made fun of me. We started hanging out together and everyone teamed up to pick on us when we did that but it was easier to ignore when I had a friend. 2

Ashley's parents were going through a divorce when I met her and her parents used her as a weapon to hurt each other. Her dad was a boozehound like mine and had hit her mom sometimes but still thought he should have custudy of Ashley. She understood where I was coming from and she was the first person who had besides my brother. 3

Lane got kicked out of school a couple months after we moved. I don't know if he got caught dealing or if he just got caught with a lot of weed and a scale on him but either way they expelled him. 4

My dad was still mad at him for trying to kill himself and overreacted. When I came home from school that day Lane was on his knees in his room with his hands tied to the bedpost and my dad was standing over him with a leather horsewhip in his hand. Lane wasn't wearing a shirt and there was blood running down his back and I stayed in the kitchen until my dad left the apartment but I could still hear the whip every time and my dad's yelling and cursing. 5

I went back to our room after we left. Lane was unconsious and there was blood running down his back, all over the floor, and on his face from having his head slamed into the bedpost. I untied him but he was too big for me to move on my own so I tried wiping some of the blood away until he woke up and pushed me away from him. I got expelled, was the first thing he said but I already knew this by now from what our dad had been yelling. I keep fucking up, he told me and blacked out again. 6

Our dad kept him at home until the bruise that covered half his face had gone away and then he got inrolled with the catholic school board (where he stayed a few more months before getting kicked out of that school too) 7

At Elmdale - the school I still went to - the kids got meaner and meaner throughout the year. After my brother left and they knew I had no one to defend me, some of the boys started waiting for me off of school property after school to jump me. They made fun of me for having Ashley as a girlfriend and the girls made Ashley cry almost every day. The teachers never did anything, just like at the other schools, unless I tried to defend myself or Ashley during class and then I was the one who got in trouble. 8

My brother was never very simpathetic when I came home all bruised up. He told me that if I wasn't going to fight back then I had better just suck it up and deal with it cause people would walk all over me forever. When I did fight back and just ended up hurt worse than before he told me it could be much worse, I could be dead, and told me again to suck it up. I think he was really starting to resent me for being dad's favourite. 9

He got kicked out of the catholic board in June for getting into too many fights and in July that year we moved to Toronto. 10

Clawing up the walls                                      1/16/2005  11

A month into the new school year, Lane was arrested with three others. They'd all been stoned, one of them was driving a car without a license, and the police took a pipe, scale, weed, hash and e off of my brother alone. The other three were carrying similar things and were sentenced to community service. 12

Whether it was intensional or not my brother skipped out on his community service and got send to juvey for up to 8 months instead. 13

At school I kept my head down and was mostly ignored by everyone. There had been a few people that had been friendly at the beginning of the year but I wasn't interested in friends since I figured we'd just be moving in another few months anyways and eventully everyone left me alone. At home it wasn't so easy. Now that Lane wasn't around for my dad to blame for everything and rage on he didn't really have an outlet. At first he just satisfied himself by yelling at me at everypossible oportunity or hitting his girlfriend. 14

The months passed and he started hitting me more and more. Once or twice he even pulled off his belt and started beating me with it. 15

I didn't see my brother while he was in juvey. My dad obviosly didn't go out to visit him and he wouldn't take me either. He wrote me once or twice just to tell me it was better I didn't come anyways and that he liked being just another fuck up in a building full of fuck ups. He liked being faceless. 16

On my 9th birthday at the end of March, my dad came home sometime very early in the morning and into my room to drag me out of bed. He threw me onto the ground and started kicking me ranting in between kicks about the many things he could be doing with his life if he wasn't stuck with two worthless sons. Every time he landed a kick my ribs felt like they were shattering and I didn't think I'd be able to handle another one. I whimpered and he told me to shut up and take it like a man. 17

After he left it was a long time before I could even sit up. It hurt to breath, it hurt to move. When I finally pulled myself back into bed I lay awake for most of the rest of the night. 18

Apart from that my birthday passed unnoticed. Lane came home two weeks later with blue dreadlocks and a scar on his neck from being threatened with a knife and our dad forgot about me again. 19

He was different after he came home. He stopped arguing with my dad and took the daily beatings wordlessly. He went to school and didn't get high there or deal drugs and he didn't have any friends to go out with after. He'd come home and do his homework and then he'd pop some e or some acid or some percodin and be out of his head for the rest of the night. We didn't talk much anymore unless he was on e and then he got chatty but most of what he said didn't make sense anyways. He was hard to talk to especially when he was sober because he just didn't seem to care about anything anymore. 20

I had no one to talk to either so I just stopped talking. It seemed so pointless anyways since there was nothing to be said. My teacher was getting worried about me and near the end of third grade I got called down the office to talk to a strange woman in a suit. The principal sat with her and listened but didn't say anything. She talked to me about home and school and especially my dad. I had done this before and knew the answers I was suposed to give her. When the interview was over the principal told me to wait outside his office and I heard the woman tell him that I probably just had social anxiety and there was nothing wrong with my home life. 21