I loved Fridays as a kid, just as most did. The shared feeling of excitement as the weekend approaches and we’d get to sleep in and not worry about homework or assignments, seemed like a dream. One Friday changed everything, though. I recall being excited as we had presentations, I had worked so hard with the help of my dad, as tired as he was. It started off normally, I went into school with my huge poster board attached to the back of my huge bag as a 5th grader and went to my classroom. It was about halfway through the day when the call happened.

“Marisa, you’re going home” my teacher had said. A bit confused, but almost excited as I assumed there was something exciting at home, but boy was I wrong.

My cousin picked me up, we lived just three blocks from the school, so walking distance. The walk was calm, we made small talk and even joked, but I still hadn’t found out why I was going home so early.

Entering my darkened house, I see my dad distantly washing his face near the bathroom mirror. He walked toward me and asked me to sit on the couch. As he got closer, my nervousness increased as I saw the red, teary eyes.

“Mom” and “Heaven” were the only words I could make out.

The cold memory stuck with me as I was reminded of it every time the classroom phone rang, signaling a kid was being picked up. Surely it is usually the most innocent reasons; a doctor’s appointment or even just to spend the day with a parent, but for the life of me I can’t get that association out of my head, I can’t see someone leave class early without automatically assuming there is a family emergency. A death. It always takes a minute or so to calm my beating heart.

Every step I took, every move I made, I felt like my lungs could’ve collapsed at any moment. I paced around the kitchen area, forgetting even how many circles I did around the kitchen island.

The boom of every footstep was loud enough to quite possibly break the hard lock I had on my anxiety. My breathing quickened, tears threatened to fall at any moment, and my chest began to cave in.

“If I stay here, they’ll all hear me.”

The monotonous circling around the kitchen island wasn’t going to cut it anymore. The mundane distractions I had sought after to try and forget about the boulder of fear hanging over my head had long stopped working. With a hand over my mouth and tears staining my cheeks, I took the urgency to climb the stairs faster than I ever had before.

I slammed the door shut behind me and cried.

A cry so powerful the next day my eyes were swollen and, I couldn’t breathe out of my nose.

A cry so forceful that I had to hum to myself in bed to try and calm down.

A cry so god damn awful that my brother heard from the room over.

I tried my best not to sob or whimper, but the pain was too much. The anguish of self-hate was overbearing. It had a tight grip on my heart. The purgatory that is to not loving yourself, not believing in yourself, and regretting your existence. It was a true hell to be stuck inside a mind with all those thoughts and to never have the courage to seek solace in a single person.

The worst part was not the crying. It was the silence.

I felt like if I spoke about it, there would be weight to my words and, all my worst fears would come true. All the terrifying truths I fought to push down would escape through my mouth freely.

I laid my head on my pillow and kept crying, hoping the tears would run dry eventually.

“Am I crazy?”

I was sitting on my bed, balled up with my knees to my chest, and humming to myself. Although it was calming, it isn’t the actions of someone doing too well.

Between sharp intakes of air and my throat threatening to close, I just couldn’t help but laugh.

Just like I always did, I needed to calm down and breathe, or at least something close to the semblance of a breath.

I removed my body from a protective position and just fell limp back into my mattress.

I started at the ceiling and just started to breathe.

Everything will be just fine if you take a second and breathe.

We are the broken and longing.

The beaten and deserted.

We are the stray you left behind. 

Wanting more, needing more. Damaged. Hurt.

We are the two Spanish to be black into white to be Spanish.

We are the “please and thank you”. 

We are the apologizing for something that isn’t your fault.

We are the “take your elbows off the table at dinner time”.

We are the “say ten Hail Mary’s and our father’s” every night.

I am the christian from a catholic family or the catholic from a christian family.

We are the kitchen is always hot, but the heart is too cold.

The whatever in forever in the loyal and disloyalty. I am the beaten and tired. I am the working hard, never hardly working. I am the “Never Depend On Nobody.” I am the “figure it out.” I am the everlasting. 

As a child, I was taught boundaries and principles. Always stand up for yourself, but never speak unless spoken to; mind your business and keep your mouth shut when it comes to other’s problems. If I was lost, I was taught to figure it out and not depend on anyone. I am the unwanted, but loved. I am a christian, that is what I was told. But, I am the one who does not believe in all of the bible. I am the one with torment from not having a communion, with pain from not knowing of Ash wednesday. I am the stray that was estranged from society. I was the not allowed outside with the children from my neighborhood or the going to school far from home. I am not normal.

One night, I had a nightmare I can never forget. 

It was the middle of the night when I awoke to a wretched stench oozing out of my closet. The most vile smell was undecipherable, like an unknown substance even the top scientists couldn’t identify. All I knew was, something was dead. Ah, I remember: that stupid raccoon that made its way through our roof vents. He must’ve gotten stuck!

I opened my eyes, flinching from the bright yellow light spilling through the crack of my bedroom door. It was late. I looked towards the menacing closet door in apprehension. All of sudden it burst open, thunder striking through the ceiling, and all I saw was my father’s dark silhouette, a body bag in his bloody arms. I stared in horror, and for a second the lightning brightened his face, although I couldn’t make out his dark expression. He swung a pistol from his right hand, and I heard my mother’s screams die out in seconds as he shot the bullet, the next bullet splitting through my older brother, the last penetrating my sister’s skull. My whole world crashed down and I could no longer feel my own throat from the way I was screaming. 

I woke up with tears streaming down my face, and my heart beating out of my chest. I stayed there, lying down on my bed, my throat somehow parched, for almost ten minutes. 

I remember calling for them. it was 12:00 am and was really cold. I haven’t seen them all day, and my anxiety grows as seconds pass by. As soon as I was about to give up and go back home, I hear a faint scraggly “meow”. I turned around. and there he was.  One brown cat running out the bushes coming to greet me. Seconds later, another cat come out, an orange one, following the brown one. I smile and say “Hey bravery and Chaz”. I realized how weird it was talking to two cats, but I didn’t care. They went from running away from me just by the mere sight, to frantically chasing me by the sound of my voice. It was odd, but they were so important to me, even though they were two strays. They had their own little quirks and personality, especially when they know you have food. They were days where I felt so alone, and only they could truly cheer me up. Today was a really long day at work, and I felt like I didn’t really do a good job. Its weird, but that made me feel a bit insecure. Then when i see them, I feel like someone who is truly appreciated and loved.  I met so many wonderful people due to how loved they are in the neighborhood. They may just be two strays, but they have such a huge impact on my life. As well as sparking my interest to be a wildlife vet.

In psychology, they say that no human being can truly remember anything before the age of 4. If think you have a memory before that, then they say that memory is just a reflection of stories other people have told you about your childhood; they are not coming from your own memory but instead, from other people recounting their own memories of you. If that’s true then the following events will shock you.

Since she was a little girl, Emelia could vaguely remember a very specific memory. Whenever she thought back to it, she couldn’t remember it completely, but she could visualize it in flashes. In one flash, her mother was dressing her in a pink dress with white shoes. In the next flash, she was in a van with some of her family members and she had a toy baby doll on her lap. In the next flash, she was in a shopping mall with her family, pushing a toy stroller with her baby doll in it. The last flash she remembers is one where she stops in front of a store, and gets her picture taken. As the years went by and Emelia grew into an adult, she began to think that memory was probably a dream. Her mother didn’t remember it, and she couldn’t ask the family members she remembered being around because they permanently moved out of the country. She decided that it was just something she imagined.

A few years later, Emelia and her mother went to visit their grandmothers home in Jamaica after 15 years of being away. The  house is full of memories and images. Emelia and her mother decided to go through old photo albums that were stored in the house. Their eyes filled up with tears as they say their great grandparents wedding photos, pregnancy pictures, and baby pictures of everyone in the family. At the end of the last photo album, there was a picture of a brown little girl in a shopping mall. She was wearing a pink dress and white shoes and was pushing around a stroller with a small plastic baby sitting in it. On the bottom right corner of the image was a date: 05/26/2002. The little girl would’ve been two years old when that photo was taken. That little girl was Emelia, and Emelia is me. Maybe psychologists don’t know everything.

End of the Beginning

10 PM. January 26th, 2011. Winter season. Leftover sloshy snow covered the borders of the sidewalks and the streets. One of the darkest days that I’ll never forget.

Bouncing on a bare mattress that wasn’t even mine right beside my bed. It was somehow more comfortable though, despite my brother and I both having the same kind of mattress, but in my seven-year-old mind, it was an excuse to jump on it like any child would. My cousin Ashly was over for a sleepover, which meant one of us, my brother Michael or myself, had to give up our bed for her to sleep in, and the other would have to share the other available bed.

10:13 PM. The phone rings.

My mother answers. My pediatrician on the other line. Unintelligible conversation, she comes to my room. “Get dressed,” she said. “We’re going to see the doctor.”

I can still remember what I wore that day; the white with multicolored spots pajamas that I never changed out of but put pants and a sweater over them. A cyan blue hoodie with a rainbow on it that would instantly make you think of Rainbow Dash from My Little Pony but was in fact no way related to the children’s television show. A multi-colored pom-pom scarf and a matching pom-pom hat from Children’s Place. If you were a child in Bushwick or Ridgewood once, most of your childhood wardrobe was made up of Children’s Place clothes, from your winter hat down to your shoes or boots. A purple coat that was darker than my walls. My mother in her soon-to-be iconic updo bun and the nostalgic hot pink North Face jacket.

10:27 PM. We were out the door. I remember being blinded by the streetlights that prevented car accidents to a degree, the smells of the cold water as if it was going to snow again, damp and chilling to the nostrils. But for some reason-and maybe it’s thanks to the gloves-I can’t remember feeling cold despite the winter season. Nor do I remember feeling tired.

We walked up through Halsey Street and took the L train two stops on the Manhattan bound track to Dekalb avenue, where my pediatrician was waiting for us at Wyckoff Hospital.

This is the end of the beginning.

The Big Bad Monster has come again.

He rages outside the door, stomping his big bad feet and pounding his big bad fists and unleashing his big bad shouts of fury that make the air shake and the floors vibrate. The two children in the house have barricaded themselves behind the door. They’ve shut the lights, hoping the monster will believe they’re not home. They’ve covered themselves with blankets and muffled their ears with pillows, hoping to drown out the monster’s roars, and hoping their own cries will go unnoticed. The sheets are soaked with tears they dare not wipe away, for any motion means the Big Bad Monster may hear it, sense it. He makes shadows in the sliver of light piercing through the gap in the door, stomping this way and that. The children have their eyes glued to to it, watching where he goes. If they sit and wait, the monster will go home. He will settle down again and sleep, and so can they. If they just sit and wait.

But the Big Bad Monster doesn’t forget them. Stomp stomp stomp! The light underneath the door is now black. His feet stand right behind the threshold, waiting. He raises a big bad fist that the children can’t see but can feel and hammers at the door.

BANG BANG BANG! “Is this door locked? IS THIS DOOR LOCKED? OPEN THE DAMN DOOR!”

One of the girls shrieks, the other shushes as soon as she does. The pillows come down harder over their heads, contorting themselves to cover every crevice where sound may permeate. But it can’t hide the shaking of the beds with every blow.

BANG BANG BANG! An intermission. Now there’s a violent jerking at the door, the handle spazzes in the dark. He’ll rip it right off, the little one thinks. He’ll rip it right off and there will be nowhere to go.

“Open the door,” the monster yells again. For a second there’s silence. The girl contemplates it. He knows she is contemplating it. Her sister’s eyes glow white in the dark. Don’t.

“I SAID OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!”

“No!”

The sister shrieks as the little one tears through the darkness. Her hands clasp the doorknob and fumble; they’re wet from tears. The monster pounds at the door and it makes her hands shake more than they already are. Just wait, she pleads. I’m opening it, just stop.

The flood of light reveals the Big Bad Monster in all his glory. He takes up the door frame, a thick shadow. Finally his commands were obeyed. He looms over the children who dared to think they could hide from him.

“Don’t ever lock me out again.”

The little one cries and nods her head. Her sister glares behind her back. One knows there’s no point in hiding, the other tries to think of how to hide for good. Somewhere he won’t ever find them. As they stare up at that raving man, both of them know one thing.

The Big Bad Monster will come again.

Remember that shy little girl that would sit in the middle of the classroom?

Yea me neither

She was a shy, quiet girl who could also be described as a pushover. I hated that little girl, but I understood her. Always wanting to avoid conflict I tried to live in that fantasy in my head of sunshine and rainbows knowing that if I stayed to myself everything would be fine. Oh, how I was wrong. When being blamed on by my sister and getting bullied by that girl in your class that would pick on you for no reason. I would be that little girl who would just sit there and take it.

Did I do something wrong?

Did I say or do something to provoke them?

What did I do?

Constantly asking myself the same question repeatedly but have yet to find and answer.

As I entered high school, I found myself speaking up more defending myself. I realized to survive in this cruel world, you need to fight back to defend yourself. People are not always going to be kind and will try to abuse your kindness. That was me once upon a time. Something changed about me that led me to become the person I am today. As time goes on, I realized my worth. I’ve found my courage, I learned to speak up for myself, defend myself and changed that little push over of a girl to a strong, independent, confident woman that’s you see today.

Ten minutes left in class, and it felt like the room was caving in, and every fiber of my body was disintegrating into thin air. I kept scratching my sweaty palms, hoping that the clock would move at a rapid pace and I can get out of this class without the professor knowing that I didn’t complete last night’s homework. She’s supposed to ask each person to recite one fact from the textbook we were supposed to read. I had every intention of reading it, but the Knicks-Lakers game last night was too riveting. Knowing this moment would come, my anxious self spent all morning figuring out ways I could finesse my way out of this situation. One option was to go to the nurse and fake a stomach ache. Another option was to go to the bathroom and poop, but each time my anxiety won out and the worst case scenario always came to mind. The professor was going to accompany me to the nurse’s office and ask me the question there, or even worse, stand outside the stool as I fake poop and ask me the question, and find out I’m a fraud and fail me from the class, thus ruining my life. Irrational and extreme, I know, but that’s what anxiety does to you. So as my knee continued to tap, and I took deep breaths, MS. Daniels finally called on me. “David, what did you learn from the “Great Depression in 1929” not knowing what to say? I gulped and was prepared to just say umm to maybe either one of my classmates helped me out or a meteor struck the classroom. I don’t remember saying my prayers the night before, but perhaps I did in my sleep because it was at that moment a loud ding went off, and the fire alarm rang to bless me. As the teacher encouraged everybody to leave their stuff and exit the classroom, I smiled, knowing that class would be over by the time we had to go back in, and I didn’t have to answer the question today. To say I was relieved or happy would be a significant understatement.