By Kaliyah Witherspoon
As I finish this semester, I start to think about the struggles that I had in life that led me here, Including the struggles that I’m having now. It has been a long, dreadful path that I’ve had to walk on alone. Others might say I came out victorious, I’ll call it surviving. As I dropped the classes that I chose for next semester to spend more time with my grandmother who’s suffering from cancer, I got the sudden urge to share what I went through to get to this point.
When I was just 14 years old, I realized there was still so much in life that I had yet to understand. I learned that life was never filled with smiles and rainbows like how they show in movies and TV shows. My reality was filled with suffering and sorrow. I learned that superheroes didn’t exist in a world filled with villains and civilians. Once my parents finally split up, things went downhill fast. This resulted in my mother taking her anger out on me, and I was left feeling disoriented and solitary.
It ultimately left me with only two choices: choosing myself and running away and never looking back, or staying back and pushing through the pain for my siblings.
I chose the latter.
My three younger brothers mean so much to me that I couldn’t abandon them. It wouldn’t make me any better than the adults in our lives.
As the eldest child, not only did I have to navigate the complexities of growing up and figuring out my own life, but I also had to take on the responsibility of raising my younger siblings. Assuming the role of a parent can be an incredibly challenging and overwhelming experience, especially being a child yourself. But I somehow managed to make do with what I had.
This meant providing them with love, making sure they got the attention and care that they needed, supporting them to thrive in life, and even encouraging them to do things that they wanted to do but didn’t have that parental acknowledgment that they craved. While all of this is going on, I’m also trying to fill the void left by absent, neglectful adults who should have been there to protect and guide us all. I wouldn’t call it a heavy burden, but it is more of a life-changing lesson that left me feeling isolated, frustrated, and uncertain about the future.
It’s a common experience to receive a lecture from parents about not having a boyfriend or girlfriend. However, being informed that you and your brothers cannot visit nor live with your father due to a personal dispute solely between the parents is a depressing experience that I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy. Being in between two adults and having to choose a side is exhausting.
After my father left, my mother neglected the bills which resulted in us being evicted. Having nowhere to go, we turned toward our grandparents, who welcomed us with open arms. As we settled in our grandparent’s house, we started a new rhythm in our lives. My brothers and I naively thought we’d live there until our mother got back up on her feet.
We knew our mother was struggling with something, we just didn’t know how bad it was. It’s not my story to tell, but I will say that whatever she went through, she sure as hell dragged her kids through it.
The rhythm that we created at our grandparent’s house was eventually broken due to our mother fighting with our grandfather. We got kicked out which then put us in a never-ending loop, where we go back and forth between hotels, relatives’ houses, and even back to my grandparents’ house. All it did was leave me in a bitter mood which negatively affected me in school. I became more snappy and distant, and every time I left the classroom to go to the bathroom, I would just return with puffy red eyes.
It felt like I was drowning in a bottomless ocean with no lifeguards willing to save me as I sunk deeper and deeper. With no smiles and dead eyes, I felt like a zombie going to school every day. Yet, I treated the school day as an escape from my mother and what was going on at home, if we had a place to call home that day.
I hid my pain from everyone around me so I wouldn’t have to burden them with my problems. time went on and my dad finally had custody over my siblings and me. In my head, I thought that I was finally safe, that I’d escaped the clutches of my mother. But I didn’t escape the battle without any scars. I had many. Spiraling down in depression, I started to wonder what was the point.
Why be placed in this world if we’re meant to suffer? It was the main thought racing through my head. I lost the motivation to do anything. I lost many friends, and I even tried to commit suicide.
As I got worse, I started to try to seek comfort in the friends that I still had: family members who loved me dearly and were willing to do anything to bring the old me back. My grandmother was the person who always believed in me even after I told her I had to go to an alternative school to graduate with my class.
“Do what you have to do, baby. I’ll always love and support you no matter what,” said my grandmother to me during a phone call.
Hearing those words, ignited a fire in me. Every battle I was facing, I ended triumphantly. Beating depression, graduating high school, signing up for college, and even going to college, I did it all to make my grandmother proud and prove a point to others. Even when things seem hard like you can’t keep going, don’t stop. Never stop.
