Reality of Children

*This is a very rough draft of my personal essay for hnrs english class....like it or hate it, all comments and criticism welcome....*



I’m against the wall, my hairs all over and I’m holding myself, as if in defense of an unseen enemy. Despite my involuntary shivering and the thermostat reading 60 degrees, I feel like I’m in the middle of a volcano shortly after eruption. I’m sweating all over. The back of my head is throbbing from hitting the wall. My eye sight is still unfocused from being pulled so unexpectedly from my safe, warm, bed. My haven invaded…I wake up; it’s 3:30 am, another happy memory of my childhood that I have not yet managed to forget. My heart is beating like a race horses’ and I’m sweating like in my dream, but this time it’s only my memory…I can sink back into yet another night of interrupted sleep.
A few hours later I’m awoken by the cock-a-doodle-doo of my alarm clock and try to put my mind in a happy place. Last night’s memories are still haunting me in the back of my mind. My day has been ruined, the rest of the day I’ll feel like a mouse being watched by a longing snake. I’ll sit in class scheming up ways to save my youngest brother and sister from living with the memories we older children share. I’ll fantasize for hours about how my older sisters, two brothers, and I will rescue my younger sister and brother from the terror we witnessed and the unfortunate circumstances that shaped our lives. Looking back I see my life has made me stronger and molded me to who I am, but Josh at seven and Ellyssa at five shouldn’t need to learn that way. They should be given the chance to flourish painlessly.
When I’m asked what I will do with my life, I think about what I am. I’m like a simple pebble smoothed by the ocean’s relentless currents thrown into a collection of larger, rougher, and sharper stones. They’re all skilled in lessons about life and opportunities I seem to have missed out on. Now I’m slowly making up for it. Even though I no longer live with this snake disguised as my mother, I still will forever experience her undying, insatiable need to hurt and cause pain.
I feel as though I’m looking into a TV, I see what’s hidden in my darkest, deepest, depths, but this TV seems to have a broken remote. The channels only change after the passing of each night. Sometimes it’s as though the cable has been turned off, connection lost and I have peaceful sleep. But more commonly then not the uncontrollable channels haunt my dreams, sleepless nights; interrupted by consciousness every hour making sure my past hasn’t once again become my reality. Instead I find my past has become some one else’s reality. The reality of two beautiful children who are defenseless and one of them disabled by Down Syndrome, which puts her feelings in the open, unable to be protected from anyone.

My little sister Ellyssa with Down Syndrome can’t realize it’s not her fault; her emotions are looked inside her because she is cut off from the world by her limited vocabulary. A wall has been inserted into her life that she can’t take down. But she seems to wait on the other side for a hero. She waits patiently, seeming only frustrated by her fruitless attempts to overcome the wall she hasn’t chosen. She seems to wonder why I can’t help her, why we can’t help her. She seems so frustrated and even worse; let down. She seems to feel let down because we can’t understand her. The loneliness she feels is more powerful then any pain or blow we have yet received. We were physically harmed, wrestled to the floor, thrown against walls and bounced off like stuffed animals. We were my mothers’ physical outlets. We confided only in each other throughout the storms. Ellyssa is not so lucky. She can’t confide in us or even tell us what she wants; all she has to protect her is our hugs, love, and tears. These things have become her life lines, her shelter, and her will to keep going. Her reasons to flash that smile once again. I fear my thoughts about what she goes through when we can’t be with her, when she’s left alone with the snake she becomes the mouse--the prey. The damage being done to her isn’t visible to the untrained eye, those who don’t know and those who won’t see. She’s become a flower scorched by the sun, denied rain, and unable to plant strong roots. Her one possible companion has been handed a better scenario, and her denied it, due to her disability.

Her brother has been offered a chance to excel, to leave his past early and avoid seeing into the TV I see every night. But I can only hope he’s changed his roots early enough and his growth won’t be stunted by his hard start. We can only hope he’s been protected from the snake.

But my biggest struggle yet, aside from the physical pain, verbal abuse, and mind games, is yet to come. It’s accepting that I can’t protect Josh and Ellyssa from my mother’s wrath and unexplainably neurotic actions that often sting. She’s a seemingly cute snake that suddenly realized she has teeth. She’s become addicted to that feeling of unsuspecting flesh of a child’s future, dreams, and mind caught between her gleaming white teeth. Attacking with potent venom that doesn’t kill, but worse; leaves the young victim scarred for always. Unable to grasp a normal life, instead it feathers by and leaves the child in its crowded solitude, and thunderously silent wake.