Reflective Essay: True Story

This is a reflective essay I wrote for Honors English 2. It is true though, and I chose the topic. I don't share much of this stuff, but whatever. Since it's school, it's more neat with less emotions.

Reflective Essay

We’ve all felt horrible pain. We’ve all just shut it out because the pain’s too much. We

all have our sad stories. Everyone’s been hurt. It’s hard to learn anything from those

experiences, and if you do, it’s usually painful lessons. From a horrible experience, my parents breaking up, I learned something that I have made the most important thing in my life, “Family is important. You don’t turn your back on family even when they do.”

It was a late July day and I was at my Uncle Scott’s. My Grandpa had gone home to his house earlier after dropping me off there. Later he came back, telling me we were going to my house. When I asked what was going on he told me he got a call from my Father, and that my Father was very angry. Grandfather said that he wasn’t sure what was going on but something was going on between my Father and Stepmother, whom I considered Mother.

I remember being shocked, very confused, and extremely worried. When we arrived at my house my parents were arguing. I remember my Father telling me to run to the office of the apartment complex we lived in to call the police, telling me to tell them my Mother wouldn’t

peacefully leave the house. I knew my Father though, and his anger problems got quite violent. He also felt entitled. I used to think everyone has their flaws. As much as he made me angry, my Father was my Father and he was human.

I keep thinking I should have seen it coming, with the arguments, the yelling, the doors

slamming, the walking out and going to different places. Yet I didn’t. I also didn’t see my Father’s flaws making something go that far. I went and called the police. By the time I got back, my parent’s had stopped arguing and my Mother was gone. I remember later thinking, where were my younger half-brother and younger stepsister?

Mother had taken them with her, in fact, they had left earlier. I’m still to this day not sure if it had anything to do with them not being my Father’s full children. I did know how however that my Father would never let go of me, not after how hard he had fought to get me from my real Mom. Later, the cops showed up and my Father talked to them, leading to an argument, until they left, saying they would come back and check with him, trying to get more facts on the situation and to make sure he was ok.

The next two days were a blur. In fact I don’t remember much from the whole breakup

aside from what I’m writing here. I’m not even sure if it was two days or not. I do remember my Father treating me extra special, letting me play on the Playstation with him and being quite outwardly caring, which was unusual for him. The next event I remember is crucial to the important moral I learned, “Don’t turn your back on family even when they do.”

My Father left for work after blocking the back door with the refrigerator and lifting bench, and the front door was also blocked with something and locked. I don’t remember what. Before he left, Father told me to not open the door for anyone, not even the police. He gave me the video camera and told me that if my Mother showed up at the house to record her with it from my upstairs bedroom window and we would use it against her by showing it to the police as evidence.

It was ironic, considering what happened next. Later that day, my Mother tried to open the backdoor. She succeeded in opening it, but only a crack, for she had pushed the refrigerator back but it had hit the bench and the bench had stopped against the wall. I jumped up from my spot on the couch in the living room but tried to stay out of sight as I entered the kitchen, my heart racing. I succeeded, but my Mother knew I was there.

She called out to me, pleadingly, asking me to open the door. You have no idea how that felt. It was beyond painful. Finally, after about five minutes, and I towards the end of those five minutes venturing a few, “I can’t”s, she asked me to just let her see my face. It took my worser judgment and her asking about two more times, but I relented. I shouldn’t have. If I hadn’t chosen that choice, I could’ve saved myself much pain and the risk of my Father’s anger, something beyond terrifying.

Yet I did. When I saw her, my heart broke. I listened to her. She asked me to let her in, that she had to grab a few things. I told her I can’t, she said I could. She asked me to let her in through the front door, at least two times. Against my better judgment, I agreed. I realized then that I’d do anything for family and that as bad as it might be, you don’t turn your back on them, even when they do. I walked over to the front door and unlocked it for her.

I let her in and felt like I had committed the worst betrayal possible. I felt terrified. I walked upstairs with her and couldn’t help it, I started crying. I begged her, begged her to not touch anything, not take something with her. That he’d notice.He had been packing up. I think we were moving. I’m not sure. She said she had to take some things, she just wouldn’t take a lot, although to me it seemed like she took half the house.

Nothing could’ve prepared for what came next though. She came over to me and said she had to come back to get the rest of her stuff. I wasn’t even really listening to what she said next I was so mortified, but I remember it now. I remember it now quite clearly. She said my brother and sister were at her mother’s house, in West Jefferson. She was coming back to get her stuff with the police in a week’s time when my Father would be at work.

Through all of what she was saying, I kept telling her I can’t, she can’t, don’t come back, he’ll find out. I was hysterical, and quite emotional. She said she had to. Then I told her how worried I was be about being with him afterwards, with him knowing I betrayed him. She told me he won’t be there when it happens, and neither would I. She told me she knew that I knew that if my Father came home to that, he would go down fighting. And she didn’t want me to see him fight cops.

I asked how will I get away then and she told me my Grandfather would be picking me up when she came over. You have no idea how that felt. It was like taking a shotgun slug to the chest. I stopped crying and talking and froze. Then quietly, feeling like if I was right, I would fall to pieces, I asked her, doesn’t that mean I’ll never see him again? Quietly also, she said yes. I fell apart then. Fell to pieces.

Fell of the emotional cliff preciperate I was standing on. Inconceivable pain. A void opened up in my soul and heart, white noise and black space filling my mind, stifling thought. My animal instinct took over and I sobbed, saying over and over again, no, no, no, Daddy, no. I think I said I can’t, I can’t. She told me I could, and she was so, so very sorry. I didn’t believe her.

Then she went downstairs and I being worried still about her taking stuff and Father finding out, I followed her. She started grabbing stuff, and I begged her in a blind panic not to take it, he would notice, especially since it was downstairs where he usually was. She told me she had to and he wouldn’t notice. I became even through the sobbing quite numb then, and I felt like I was spiraling down, down, down, into an ever widening black hole of nothingness.

She hugged me then and told me she’d be back in a week, at noon. I don’t remember much after that. I do remember counting the days down, getting more anxious and terrified every day. Mother even stuck around, hanging with Father’s friends, which made him seriously ticked off at them and at her. I do also remember, even as scared as I got, I never  deviated away from the plan.

I was seriously hoping something would happen to stop it, good or bad, but it didn’t. I stuck to it though. I realized then, more than ever, I’d do anything for family, and even if it meant hurting me beyond measure, you don’t turn your back on family even when they do. Besides, what did I have to lose? I had already lost everything. My Brother, my Sister, my Mother, my Father, my life, my school, my friends, everything.

So I continued, the thoughts of just trying to get through every day, of that plan, and of helping family, helping Mother, keeping me going. They eventually got back together late in the evening the day before Mother was planned to come over, around 11:00 or so. I will never forget the pain of that situation though. Or my most important moral: “Family is important. You do anything for them good or bad. You never, ever turn your back on them, even when they do.”

Author's Note

I know its tightly locked up in professionalism, but tell me what you think of my true story.

Reviews

[iNSOMniAC]

YOU ARE POSITIVELY
S - Soulful
T - Trustworthy
R - Reliable
O - Open-hearted
N - Noble
G - Generous

[The StoryTeller]

Wow, I've never heard Strong as an acronym like that before, did you just come up with that? And I guess... I mean... Thank you. :)

[iNSOMniAC]

No need to thank me. Just speaking the truth. c:

[The StoryTeller]

I........... I'm going to say I am Soulful, Trustworthy, Reliable, Open-Hearted, Noble, Generous whether I believe it or not. And still thank you. :)

[Lizardo]

It is sad... You've left me without words...
the story how you wrote is good.

[The StoryTeller]

It's a true story. I didn't really write with as much emotion as I would my writing, a.) Because it's not poetry, b.) Because it's for school and Honors English 2, and c.) Because it's an essay.

[Lizardo]

I know that feeling

[The StoryTeller]

I'm sure if I wrote it without essay format, more poetry, and not professional it would do more than leave you without words. I only know that because I feel that whenever I read it like this, and know how much that would recreate the past if I wrote it like that instead of like this.