Junior Moves Beyond His Rocky Past

I never thought I’d be here.
I never thought I’d have to use something like basketball to cope with something like suicide.

But I am here. No more than a month ago I was contemplating taking my own life. Now I’m standing in the rain holding a basketball.

I don’t think about anything. My mind is blank. No happy memories. No sad thoughts. Blank. I just shoot. All I do is shoot. I try to think about nothing, but words keep trying to break into my blank mind.
Mother.

Suicide.

I only remember so much when it comes to my mother Kelley. I mostly remember her eyes. When I was young, I was always told I had my mothers eyes.

I loved it. No one could take that away from me. I had
her eyes; they were mine. I still remember looking into her eyes when I was young, inspecting the light shade of blue,
with the minor clumps of mascara that clung to the tips of her long eyelashes.

I am able to recall positive memories from my mother. Like playing with Hot Wheels on our teal-green carpet to- gether or how she got cold when it was 63 degrees outside. But it’s the overwhelming negative memories that keep me from going back to her. The ones that make me jerk my head to the left violently, keeping the memory from developing in my head.

It all started when I was three. Most children would remember Christmas or a birthday present they got. I remember clenching my favorite light blue “blankie” harder than ever when my mom and dad first fought.

It was the same blankie that I used to tie around my neck like I was a superhero and run around the house, pretending to be invincible. But as I clenched my blankie in fear, there was nothing I could do. No three-year-old superhero could get away from his own mom and dad arguing, or even his mom walking out the door.

After the fight, Kelley moved out of the house on my sister’s 10th birthday. A U-Haul was packed up with her belongings while I was sleeping, and when I woke up she was gone. I remember being confused and missing her, but I was too young to comprehend what exactly had just taken place.

Over the next two years I saw her sparingly, occasionally seeing her at the bar she waitresses at that our babysitter would take us to. I would watch her work. Pick up plates. Pick up forks and knives. Escort people to their table. I was confused why I never saw her otherwise. She lived in town, so I never understood why she never visited me and my siblings.

To me, love is being there for someome. Through thick and thin no matter the situation. Never giving up on them. Knowing them better than they know themselves. Being supportive and taking genuine interest in everything the other person thinks, says or participates in.

It wasn’t until my dad and step-mom Cindy took Kelley to court when I was in third grade would she agree to see me, my brother and sister on a more regular and structured basis. She was entitled to dinners of two hours on Mondays and Wednesdays, and spending Friday through Sunday at her
place 45 minutes away in Lee’s Summit, MO.

It’s hard to swallow, but it’s obvious to me now. From her actions towards me, she doesn’t love me, according to what I perceive what love is. But I always wonder why. Was I not good enough? Will I ever be good enough?

The dinners lasted for seven years, and even though she was entitled to 90 minutes with me, it was rare if she used over 30 of it. Most of the time we spent together consisted of her talking on the phone for work, and talking down on my dad and his new wife.

“I’m your mother. Not her,” she’d say to me as I ate my three dollar meal from McDonald’s. Afterwords I would go home and be downright mean to Cindy and my Dad, think- ing they were the worst parents because they weren’t like Kelley. She bought me everything I wanted, and never asked about normal “annoying” parent things, like how I was doing in school was or if I brushed my teeth twice that day. What I would later realize was she had only bought my love and pulled me apart from my dad and Cindy. I was her puppet.

And I was trapped. Trapped in the middle between a mom and a dad. Trying to keep both sides happy without making it seem like I had an overwhelming favorite. It was like trying to keep a Scale of Justice perfectly still, except neither side was able to stay even.

At dinners and on weekends, she constantly talked about Kassi, her now-11-year-old child that she had with her new husband. During my stays at Kelley’s, she spent a very good portion of her time focused on Kassi, even though Kassi lived there, and Kelley only saw me three or four times a week. I felt like she always focused on her and Kassi’s life. I felt like it was always about the life she was living without me, never the life she had with me. Hardly was it ever about how I was. Or what girl I liked. Or how basketball was going. It always bothered me, but for some reason I was still determined to win over her love.

I always enjoyed art class in elementary school. Since my parents were divorced, I gave half of my art projects to Kelley, and half to my dad and Cindy. I always tried a little harder on Kelley’s projects, because I felt like I needed to earn her love. Kelley’s had to be perfect. Absolutely perfect.

I felt replaced by Kassi; she had taken my spot in Kelley’s heart. I felt like I didn’t really mean anything to the world, that I could be thrown out and a substitute could be easily found for me. I had to win her back, but one question always popped into my head.

If my own mother didn’t love me, then who would?

***
When I went over to Kelley’s house every other weekend I stepped into my own personal hell.

I hated that house, but I was too scared to tell Dad and Cindy what really went on there, so I kept returning.

I was put in front of a TV all day so Kelley wouldn’t have to deal with me, and at night I slept on a bean bag chair on the floor while my older brother and sister slept on cheap bunkbeds. Sometimes I would just sleep on the floor, with a blanket and beige carpet to keep me warm.

Kelley and her husband would argue at night, and their screaming kept me up until the late hours. I used to pick my fingers through the carpet to dig out the dirt and play with it when they fought. The dirt would get stuck in my fingernails and I would pry it out, trying to preoccupy myself from the F-words being belted at the top of their lungs in the kitchen, 20 feet away. I could never see what exactly was happening,but I could picture it. Chairs being moved aggressively and thrown across the kitchen. Doors slamming. Picking my nails was the only way to pretend like everything was OK. I could control how clean my nails were, but I couldn’t control what has happening in the kitchen.

The blow-ups continued throughout my stays at Kelley’s over the next few years, when finally I had had enough. Enough of being in the middle. Enough of the fighting. Enough of the 30-minute dinners. And thats when I found the cactus.

The cactus I had once made Kelley in third grade art class. The one I tried my absolute hardest to make border-line perfect. I painted every inch of the originally charcoal gray clay green, and I even roughed it up to make it seem realistic. It had to be perfect for Kelley, absolutely perfect. When I gave it to her I hoped she would adore it. Much like I hoped she would one day adore me. In my mind, I thought, that if she loved it, then she loved me.

But I never saw the cactus again. Six years later, when I was 13, I found the cactus in the pantry, in the back, covered
in dust. This was when I put the pieces together.

To me, it proved what I had always feared. She didn’t care. She didn’t care that I slaved over the cactus, trying to win her attention and compassion. She didn’t care. She just didn’t care about me.

The realization made me want to die.

There I was. 13. Confused. Unloved by my mother. Disturbed from all the lies she had spoon fed me and forced me to believe. In shock. Realizing that everything I had ever known to be true was false. Holding a clay cactus. Realizing that the mother I thought I had, thought I was nothing more to me than a grain of sand holding in the cactus upright.

I began to hate myself, because the same question started re-appearing in my mind.

If my own mother didn’t love me, then who would?

I called my girlfriend at the time and told her how I felt. How I wanted to take my own life. How I felt like I wanted to just disappear, or be someone else. Anyone but me. When I hung up the phone she called my dad and he quickly came and took me from Kelley’s house. That was the last time I was ever at Kelley’s house, and the last time I saw my mother. That was over two years ago.

***

Photo illustration by Grant Kendall.