Prisoner Within My Own Walls, Part 1

Author's note: Some of the language in this post is vulgar and is not something I would ever say, whether in public or private. I only include these phrases because they were, at one point in time, direct quotes spoken about me. My apologies to young readers and/or those sensitive to such foul language. Please continue at your own discretion.


I am both free and captive. I'm allowed to speak up but I can't speak out. And every injustice thrown my way happens to be my own fault, as well.

Yep, this is what happens when a family member gets treated like nothing more than a stranger for a roommate who's worn out his welcome.

Now, some context for you to understand my plight, dear reader. As of this initial post, I live my father, sister, and another woman who acts as my father's caretaker. Long story short, my father divorced my mother, left her out to dry in California, and shacked up with the aforementioned woman a few years his senior. The main reason I'm with my father now is because I moved from West to East to attend a big-name university, and living with him is much cheaper than paying for room and board. My sister joined the fray within the past year and is attending a separate, nearby college.

So what's the big deal, you may ask. Everything would be normal, or at least moderately tolerable, except the only person in my current household not named Morea is a bad influence. Especially around me.

I guess you can say it all started shortly after I got off a cross-country flight from California to Florida three summers ago. Without any warning, my father tells me out of the blue he's been living with this woman and I've got to treat her like family, more or less. Naturally, I'm stunned. I mean, how else is a child to react upon hearing one of their divorced parents has had a domestic partner all these years and was never made aware of their existence until that moment? So right off the bat, I've got a bad feeling about this woman. But as my father told me shortly before meeting her, all he wanted me to do was be nice to her.

I did, and I have, for more than two and a half years. How have I been treated in return? Being called a "fucking asshole," a "low-life piece of shit," and a "god-damned son of a bitch," among other colorful terms.

Of course, having a sailor mouth is but one of her traits that only seems to rear it's ugly head around me. Occasionally when she walks past my room and I'm in it, she'll say aloud to no one in particular, "It stinks!" If I touch something and pass it to her, say a side dish during dinner, she hesitantly accepts as if I have AIDS, extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis, or some other kind of deadly disease. Sometimes, I can be doing something as simple as boiling water for a Maruchan cup of noodles and if I'm in the kitchen for more than a minute, she'll come walking in, get within a few feet of me, and just stand there, ostensibly glaring at me as if to say, "How dare you boil water in my kitchen." This never happens around my father, and it certainly never happens around my sister, who's only a few years younger than me. In fact, the difference is like night and day.

To Be Continued...


Photo of prisoner's hands courtesy of SFBayView.com