Unwanted, but breathing. In the next room, sleeping. My mother, she’s crying and my father’s been drinking. In [bad word] down apartment, where the roof is still leaking.

He’s cursing and cussing, it’s just the whiskey talking. I’ve got lots of memories like this one. Of empty days and nights spent tired and lonesome. When I think back to all of it, it’s all too much when you’re just a little kid. My little brother, just a newborn baby. In the image of my mother, she says he’s a blessing. But not to my father, oh how he hates him. “An undeserving mistake.” He calls him a burden. I’ve got lots of memories like this one. Of picking fights and picking sides between them. When I think back to all of it, it’s all too much when you’re just a little kid. When I wake up in the morning it all feels like a bad dream, one that follows you and haunts you endlessly.

Broken and beaten from the abuse and the cheating, the addiction, the lying and the promise of leaving. While my old man was a [bad word]  I admired and loved him. Us two kids were born in to a family, not a fortune.