I once slept for 36 straight hours. I wasn’t sick or anything. I just felt like sleeping.

• Tall or short?
• Crazy or calm?
• Brunette or blonde?
• Over 20 years old or under? Neither, I am 20.
• Single or in relationship?
• Straight, gay or bi?
• Lazy or bouncy?
• Big dreamer or take things as they come?
• Try three different outfits at morning or just wear anything?
• Prefer flats or high heels? Both, this depends on my mood or what I am going to be doing.
• Curly or straight hair? Both, this also depends on my mood and how lazy I am feeling.
• Sleep with light on or off?

When anyone gets too close to my face (normally like 5 or 6 inches away or closer) I just stop breathing. I won’t take another breath until they back up.

I think it depends on how close I feel to the person. Like if it’s my mom or Katrina I don’t have a tendency to do it as much. But when I’m at the doctor or something I can’t help it.

I always watch movies like it’s the first time I’m seeing them. I don’t know if that’s a flaw or not.

This is a paper I wrote my senior year of high school. It’s about my childhood, but it’s mostly about my dad. I believe it should help you all understand me a little more.

When I was a child, my dad was my hero. As I grew older, something began to happen that I never thought could, I began to hate him.

I never thought anything could make me hate my father. I thought I would always be “daddy’s little girl,” or at least that’s what I believed, until I learned the true reason my parents had separated.

It was 2002, when I learned that my father was addicted to cocaine. I was only 12 when I developed a strong passionate hatred for my father. It was only recently that I learned that my father used (and still uses) the premature birth and death of my sister, Gabrielle, as an excuse for his cocaine use.

It’s difficult to explain the type of man my father was. I do know that before things got bad he was extremely charismatic. My mom has always said “He could sell tickets for a NAACP meeting to a KKK member.”

Before his addiction, my dad was the type of person that everyone loved. In fact, my mother’s parents, having one son of their own, joked that my father was their favorite son. But most of all he made me feel safe. That all disappeared when he started using cocaine.

Things began to change when I was about five years old. I can remember it because that’s when my dad started to sleep more. That was when he began to yell more often than he laughed and my parents started to fight about everything.

My father became the type of person who would do anything to support his habit. He stole money from my mother as well as toys, games and CD’s from my sister and me. He may have reached a new level of stupidity, but he knew that he could sell our toys to buy his drugs.

When I was about six years old my father was injured and lost his job. Even though he was home, he wasn’t necessarily taking care of me or my sister, Cheyenne.  

I can remember when my dad became so fixated with getting high that he didn’t care about anything else. No matter how young my sister and I were or what time of day it was, he would leave us home alone so that could get a quick fix.

After what a child would feel was forever, I would call my mom. Because I was unable to tell time, she would determine how long my dad had been gone by the television shows I had watched since he’d left. Usually, she would decide that he’d left us for about an hour; sometimes longer. Angry with my dad and scared for my sister and me, my mom would come home.

I would turn on the TV and remind my frightened sister that out mom would be home soon. It was all I could do to comfort her, but it was always enough.

My mom would always get home about five minutes after I called her and my dad would always arrive about 30 seconds later. The inevitable argument ensued.

I always hid during my parents arguments; if not physically than mentally. I’d lock myself in my room or I would hide under the stairs of our apartment complex. But if I was too scared to leave I’d try to find a dark spot in my mind to cram myself into. I’d tune out their yelling and close my eyes.

Soon, I had listened to so many of their fights that the sounds of my parents screaming at each other didn’t faze me. When they argued I was able to easily tune them out and continue to watch TV or play video games. I had officially become desensitized to their screaming, but the mental scars I had earned cut deeper every day.

As my father grew more desperate, he spent more money that wasn’t his and pushed our family farther into debt. My mother paid the bills she could and kept my sister and me oblivious to our money problems.

As she slowly became more aware that my father’s problem was unfixable, she began to fear for our safety. She did the only thing she could think of; my mother quietly began to pack. Eventually, she cancelled our lease without my father’s knowledge. She made a plan to move our family to her parents’ house and leave my father behind. It was a last resort, but she knew it was what she has to do to protect us.

All was well until my father learned of my mother’s plans. We had no choice but to bring him with us.

Persistent as my father was, he continued to ignore my mother’s pleas and refused to quit using cocaine. After several months at my grandparent’s house my mother rediscovered the courage she had found to relocate our family. She kicked my father out.

I guess I don’t really know if I’ll ever reconcile with my dad. Right now, I panic when I hear his voice and I cry when I think about what he’s done. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive him and I don’t think know if I want to. The memories of his high stupors are burned into my head and they aren’t going anywhere.

Sometimes, I want to call him just so I can yell at him. Sometimes, I want him to feel the same pain I’ve felt. Then, I think of what would happen if I ever was to pick up the phone. Every imagined possibility turns out that same: my throat closes, my heart races, and when I try to speak no sound comes out. Not wanting to experience the all too familiar panic attack, I never call. He still calls my grandparents though, searching for us.

Lately, I’ve wondered if my dad ever really thinks about me. I wonder if he cares that he caused so much pain. I wonder if he cares that I struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder. I wonder if the fact that I began treatment for depression and anger management disorders when I was barely 12 hurts him. I wonder if he cares that our family struggles every day. I’ll always wonder, because I’ll never know.

I never really went into full detail with this story. But it’s a high school paper, and my composition teacher always made me read my papers out fucking loud bc he thought I was a literary genius or something. I didn’t want my senior class talking about all of the gory details of my fucking life. If you really want to know what happened then you can ask me. Depending on how I’m feeling when you ask, maybe I’ll tell you the full story.

(Source: sanchezcommapaco)

I’ve been thinking about how in elementary school we’d be weighed like once a year in gym. My gym teacher was this overweight, mean man. He would make us line up and step onto the scale one at a time. If we were what he considered to be, “overweight” he would give us a judgmental look and send us on our way. He would always say our weight out loud as if we couldn’t read the scale. The thing about me was he knew that every kid in the school bullied me. Whether it was about my weight, my hair or my looks in general. He would weigh me, look at me like I weighed 500 pounds and say it loud enough so that the entire school could hear him. It was humiliating. The thing is, this man was 300 pounds and slightly perverted. I wish I had the courage that I have now. I would have been able to stand up a little straighter and say that I am healthy. I may weigh a little more than some people, but I am also tall. I also have very large bones. I have never been told that I am overweight. I am weighed every time I go to the doctor just like every other person and not once has my doctor told me that I need to lose weight. So suck my dick.

I went through an, “I hate you, the world, myself, and pretty much everything. My favorite color is black. My favorite pair of pants is covered in chains and rips. Every t-shirt I own is black and has some sort of sarcastic phrase on it that is supposed to represent how much I hate you,” phase from 5th-8th grade. My freshman year of high school I did a complete 180. On the first day of school I wore a skirt and a flowery blouse. When my grandpa picked me up from school he cried.

In high school when my teachers would have everyone introduce themselves and say something about themselves I would text Katrina for ideas.

Mr. Thomas: I want to get to know all of you so we’re gonna go around the room and I would like you to tell me your name, age, favorite food, and what you would like to do after you graduate.
Me: Shit. *texting Katrina* “HURRY, what’s my favorite food?” 

When I was a kid there was the neighborhood bully who would push us around and call us names. He ran over my Tamagotchi with his bike, and then he ran over me. (I don’t remember everything that happened but my mom tells me that that day when I complained to her about being hurt she brushed it off as nothing because I whine a lot. She assumed I had fallen and I was being over dramatic. Hell I would’ve done the same. A day or so later she saw my stomach when I was changing my clothes. The bruises were massive. She freaked out and rushed me to the hospital. She was scared that I could’ve died from the bleeding.) We called the police. He moved.

In elementary school I was Jalane the Jet Plane. I was fat, ugly and weird. It wasn’t “cool” to be my friend. Most people stopped hanging out with me in 5th grade when it got out that my monthly doctors appointments were psychiatrist’s visits. Then I was fat, ugly, weird and crazy.

In middle school and high school I was JaLame. In middle school I was still fat, ugly and weird. I dressed differently then the other kids at my school and I hung out with a different crowd. I was also picked on for things like, doing my homework. It wasn’t cool to be smart. It wasn’t cool to want to succeed.
In high school I learned to brush off their jokes. I learned to laugh at myself before they could. I just didn’t want to let them see how badly they were hurting me.

My sister, however, is the biggest bully of them all. She knows exactly how to hurt me. But I can’t help but love her. 

People just don’t like me I suppose. I’m too much to deal with. I’m annoying and bitchy and people don’t want to have to put up with me.

I can go to the funeral of someone I barely knew and end up torn apart. At the graveside service of my great grandmothers funeral I ended up sitting in the car because I was bawling. My mom always holds my hand and helps me through it. But when someone dies, I cry for days.