Wake up, it’s another day.
Another day that’s still the same, the same as the past few years. I wake up on the grotty floor in my flat, with the stench of the rubbish making me sick. Why did I get this life? Why was it me who dropped out of college, spent the last 6 months working in the fast food industry so I can stay alive, whilst my brother got all the money, all the girls, his life is perfect. I’ve always been the one who had to work hard to get good grades, then when I did, they didn’t care. He was always their pride and joy, staying out of trouble, top of the class in everything, good looking. What happened to me? Lanky, pale, ill, bottom of the class. I was the underdog. I am the underdog. I guess some things never change.
Even as a kid, I can remember being ill. Constantly ill, a fever or an infection. I think they gave up on me being hassle-free after a while. He was never ill. Shining complexion, always running around outside playing football or exploring. I envied him, wishing my matchstick legs would let me play football, explore without my muscles being given an extreme workout. The asthma didn’t help. I could barely run ten metres before I was wheezing away, needing my inhaler.
I’m dyslexic. The words always muddled themselves up on the page, numbers didn’t make much sense either. I used to spend hours trying to copy his neat cursive, my untidy scrawl barely legible and wavering up and down the page. They didn’t seem to realise it was hard for me, they just thought I was acting up so I could finally get some attention. They didn’t understand. They never understood. Even when I did fail a test because I’d been bunking off school they put it down to me being ‘thick’, they never even checked to see if I was dyslexic until one of the teachers noticed and thought they better do something so the teacher’s didn’t notice that the didn’t care.
I remember when going to school used to be the best part of my day, get away from the home I was growing to hate. Even though I got bullied at school, the bullying showed me I was a person, people took notice of me, even if it was for all the wrong reasons. When I came home with my glasses snapped, I’d have to tape them back up and wear them like that until the once yearly chance I got to get a new pair, because they were free. Of course, I got beaten up more for the tape, and when my books were chucked in the puddles, it smudged the ink in my books so my scruffy handwriting looked even worse.
The clothes, they were the worst. I would wear his hand me downs, too big for me and all torn. I got called stupid names, they were boys clothes, and with my short haircut it only proved to me more that I was on this planet to be bullied. I remember wearing his jeans, always wearing a piece of his clothing. I can’t remember ever having my dad buy me a nice new dress or anything, I would get what he didn’t want anymore, or what didn’t fit him anymore.
When I left school, I left with below average grades. The highest I got was a C, which meant I didn’t have much choice for what I was going to do with my life. There was one college that offered to take me on, as long as I worked as hard as I could. I was slightly more happy there, I got out of the house for longer, and they noticed I was dyslexic so I had longer time for assignments and essays, they let me use computers instead of labour over writing things out. I wasn’t bullied as much, people had grown up by then, I was just isolated from most people, from not having much social interaction as a kid I didn’t know how to keep conversations going, that was one of the skills I never had. I stutter when I talk as well, I’m not used to standing up in front of people and actually have them listen to me for once.
I guess all of that contributes to where I am now. A council flat, 13 storeys up. Drug addicts to my left and alcoholics to my right. I try to ignore the arguments with the couple that live upstairs, and when I hear the poor woman crying. At least with me looking like this, I haven’t attracted a boyfriend, another person who would eventually abandon me, or use me to have a home and abuse me. All the places I’ve worked have fired me for coming into work
looking dishevelled and not being able to do any job particularly well. I’ve been rejected from even the lowest form of employment, what choice do I have now? Do I spend what’s left of the money I have on drugs, live what’s left of my life snorting and injecting and becoming addicted? Or do I carry on as I am, keeping jobs for no longer than two weeks, eventually ending up on the streets and dying from pneumonia? It doesn’t matter anymore anyway, there’s no one here for me, my dad doesn’t even know where I live. Sometimes I wonder if I should even end it all now, with that butcher’s knife that’s lying temptingly on the side.
