My mother once told me that "When you meet the love of your life, you just know. You know in your heart, in your mind, in your soul… It's a love so big, so strong, it consumes you."
I remembered that always.
At the age of 17, I found myself captivated by a man. He was a beautiful man and this was an understatement. I met him through my friend Laila, who told me time and time again that it was time for me to start putting myself out there and experience all of the wonders of teenage love. She was wrong.
I was too young for this man. It may have been the first experiment of teenage love for me, but for him, I wasn't just an experiment. I was his world.
All of this would make more sense if I just start from the beginning...
I used to live in New Jersey. I was born in Neptune, and from years of ridicule, I've learned to say
"No, not the planet." Then I follow that with rolling my eyes.
For 13 years, the 7 of us lived in the same house. My oldest brother's name was Anthony, and my sister who is 2 years younger than him is called Charlotte. They are much older than me and my other two siblings. From my oldest sister, to my next sister, there is a 5 years difference. Her name is Aleena, then there's me (Olivia), followed by my youngest sister Jordan. It was an average sized house that we lived in, and I had a really good childhood. Or so what I thought was a good childhood. What I came to realize was all of the things that parents and older siblings seem to hide from us, the younger ones. My oldest sister had gone through a traumatic experience that I vividly remembered… when she was just a teenager, her life had shifted & it went like this…
It was a Sunday afternoon, and my family wasn't one that visited church often, so on Sunday's we would stay home and clean. One of the perks of living close to family was the occasional visits from uncles and family friends. There was one family friend in particular that we had all grown very fond of. He was 45, married and had two daughters, Anna & Maribel. Anna was around my age, so we got along fairly well and would play with dolls together. I was always jealous of her long silky hair and the symmetry of her perfect face. They had come over one day and me and Anna went up to my room to open up the new barbie dreamhouse that I had recently gotten that previous Christmas. All of a sudden, my great day had crashed down in front of me when my sister Charlotte runs into the room and is holding back tears. She looks in my direction and locks eyes with me for just a moment. When I looked at her with my young eyes I didn't see much, but looking back, I wish I would have noticed the hurt in her expression.
"Olivia, will you and Anna please go downstairs and grab mom." She says as a tear falls from her left eye.
I had read somewhere that if a tear falls from your left eye, it is due to pain. I wish I had known that back then, so maybe, just maybe, my 10-year-old self would have been able to put the pieces together. Maybe I could have been more of a help. Maybe I could have kicked him just hard enough to scare him away so he would never come back. But I knew deep down inside, that something was wrong that day, I could never quite wrap my head around what it could have been. A few moments after running down the stairs to fulfill my sisters request, my mother walks up the stairs and I follow. Anna takes a seat on her mother's lap. My innocent lens from which I viewed the world fell off that day. My sister, my perfect sister, the one that never does wrong, the one that is intelligent and strong breaks down in front of my mother and falls to her knees. My mother rushed to close the door behind her and I heard the lock click. I just stood outside of the door with my head pressed closely to the wood and tried to listen as well as I could.
"He was touching me, and I felt uncomfortable so I told him to stop and he wouldn't. he lifted up my shirt and I tried to yell for you but he put his hand over my mouth and I kicked him. I kicked him hard mommy I promise." Charlotte lets out deep sobs and you could tell they came from the root of her pain.
I haven't heard Charlotte call our mom "mommy" in years. The door begins to open and I run as far away from the door as I possibly could and I'm not sure if my mother sees me because she's in a blind rage as she bolts past me and flies down the stairs toward him.
"RUBEN! YOU SON OF A B*TCH!" I have never heard my mother curse before so this was shocking to me.
From the bits and pieces, I had gathered in my 10-year-old mind, I see that she has every right to force harsh words onto him. I look at Charlotte from a distance and I could see her flinching at every word that comes from my mother's mouth, so I run to her. I hugged her tightly and I could feel her squeeze back. I heard my father run into the kitchen and within a few seconds it sounds like a brothel of drunken men. Glass shatters and yelling pours into the air piercing our ears, and I start to shake. I hadn't noticed before but tears start to pool at my eyes. I hug my sister a little tighter and the night folds into one big blur.
I hear my father yell "GET OUT BEFORE I KILL YOU!"
The front door opens, then slams shortly after and everything is silent.
I grew up too fast that day. I realized that the world isn't kind and you always have to be careful who you trust, and for a long time after that day, I lived by that.
A year had passed since that day. Nobody talks about it. I brought it up ONCE,
a week after it happened and just as fast as I brought it up, my mother dismissed it. It was her way of saying that it was too soon, that she was still angry. I understood that, so I backed off and never had the name of that man been mentioned from the mouths of anyone in our home... at least not around me.
I'm older now. 11 years old. For my birthday, my mother baked me a cake and cooked a delicious meal. I spent the day laughing and stuffing my face with all kinds of warm foods: Mashed potatoes, chicken wings, asparagus, steak, rice, beans, freshly baked cheese Danish.
It was the first normal day we had had, where smiling and laughter filled our home again. I remember making my way up the stairs to use the restroom, and my sister's door was slightly cracked, and I peeked in. it was my mother and her sitting on the bed conversating lightly and I did what I had done a year before and I pressed my face to the wood, and listened closely.
"In two weeks, we're going to have to go to court. You're going to stand in front of the judge and you're going to tell them everything, okay sweetie?" My mother says as she brushes a tear off of my sister's cheek.
"Court?" I whisper to myself.
My mother looked towards the door and I ran away fast so she wouldn't see me. I'm pretty sure she did.
When they both joined us back downstairs, I couldn't seem to look either of them in the eye. I felt horrible for eavesdropping in on their conversation, but the reason I couldn't face them was because I knew that what this lame excuse for a man did was still plaguing their minds. My mother stared at me and I could see her from the corner of my eye, but our eyes never met. It's crazy to me how one moment in time, one action from another person could cause such a huge ripple in our lives. Being forced to grow up at 10 years old, I learned a lot about adults and the things they hide from us. I pretend to be naïve and clueless when I'm around them, but for the most part I pay attention and I observe.
2 weeks go by since I heard my mother and sister talking in that room. Today was the court date, and my mother used the excuse that her, my father and Charlotte were going to the mall. I knew they were lying. I knew they just wanted to spare me from all of these details so that I could enjoy my childhood. What they hadn't noticed was that it had already been ripped away from me.