Life Sucks. No, Really...

I.Hate.My.Life.

No, really. I mean it. I really do hate my life. You would too, if you were me, if you were living my life. I know life doesn’t have to be like this, but for me it is. I get really fed up, tired of it all. I know I haven’t lived much of my life yet, but what I’ve seen of it so far hasn’t been much to be happy about. And I don’t know why you think that’s so funny. It isn’t funny to me.

You’re just like my Dad. He laughs at me all the time too. Says I should grow up, learn to be a man and just deal with it. He should talk. He's always yakking about sports, and the FIFA Cup, as if it's the best thing going. Mom can't pry him off the TV. Or he uses that little lap-top, or his cell to get the latest scores, soon as he's home from work.

That's another thing Dad has against me, I think organized sports sucks. I only go because I have to. You can bet I wouldn't, if I had the choice. And Dad thinks my efforts are half-assed, that's why I dislike soccer, that's why I don't do well at it; so he says. Anyway, I don’t see what being a man has to do with this at all. And I’m trying to grow up. It’s just kind of hard. Deal with it? I’d like to see you deal with it.

It must be so cool not to have any brothers or sisters. Kids who don’t have a kid brother or sister don’t know how lucky they are. I kind of imagine sometimes what it must be like. It must be kind of wonderful. My Mom tells me I should be more patient with her. I’m twice her age, she says, as though I don’t know that. I do know, though, that when I was five I wasn’t like her. She’ll change, Mom says, we’ve just got to give it time. Anyway, she tells me, I’m lucky I’ve got a sister. It would be an awfully lonely experience, she says to me, to be an only child. She should know, she says, she was an only child.

I’ve asked the kids at school, the guys I kind of hang out with what it’s like for them, at home, the guys who have brothers and sisters. They just kind of shrug. Bruce says it’s okay, they get along all right. He’s the youngest in his family so I don’t know what that counts for. Eric says his little brother is a pest, but an all-right kid. Mark told me when no one else was around that his brother and sister are really only half-related to him, but they’re okay, he just kind of doesn’t hang around with them, they’re older than him, by a lot. So it looks like no one else I know has anything like my problem.

I know what you’re thinking. You think I’m complaining for no good reason at all. Not. Meredith is an incredibly spoiled brat. Well, it’s not even that. She’s not a spoiled brat in the sense that she gets everything she wants, and gets to think she can have anything she wants. She’s just a nasty kid, that’s what she is. I overheard a neighbour say that about her, actually. I felt kind of offended too, to hear someone talk about my sister like that, but then I realized that’s just what she is. She’s selfish and miserable, she doesn’t care about anything or anyone else than what she wants and she wants it right away. And if she doesn’t get what she wants she screams. These awful high-pitched screeches. They’d give a saint a headache, my grandma once said.

If I ever make any kind of sarcastic comment about Melanie, my parents jump all over me. They accuse me of hating my sister. I don’t hate her, I just don’t like her. You can’t hate a relative, they’re your relative. But you don’t have to like them, and I don’t like Melanie. Everyone loses their cool around her. No one knows what to do about her. I’ve seen my grandma plunk herself down on a chair and just cry her head off. I’d never seen my grandma do anything like that before, her shoulders all hunched up, her head down and in her hands, heaving these great big horrible sighs. I didn’t know what to do. I stood beside her, tapped her on the shoulder, then put my arm around her and hugged her. She’s kind of too big and round to hug, but I tried. After awhile she put her head up and looked at me. She looked awful.

“It’s all right, Stevie, I’m all right. I don’t know what got into me. I’m all right now. You’re a dear”, she said, pulling me around in front of her and hugging me. No problem her hugging me. I could hardly breathe. There isn’t as much of me as there is of her.

“Don’t tell Mother”, she said to me. “Don’t bother mentioning it. I don’t want your mother worried about me, asking me questions. I’m just fine.”

“Sure, Grandma”, I said. But I knew what was wrong with her. Melanie was what was wrong with Grandma. That was last summer, once school was out and Mom wanted to keep her job, and asked Grandma if she would sit us. Not ‘us’, so much as Melanie, because even though I’m twice her age, Mom and Dad don’t think I’m old enough to supervise her. That’s something to be grateful for.

So when Mom asked Grandma close to the end of the school year this time around if she might consider looking after us while she worked, Grandma said she wasn’t sure. Then she said, maybe two days a week. She needed some summer-time to herself, she said, with that kind of apologetic sound in her voice that people use when they’re uncomfortable about something.

“Sure”, Mom said. “I understand. I’ll look for someone to come around, someone in the community, maybe some high school girl, who wouldn’t mind sitting for the other two days of the week.” Grandma nodded, said that would work out just fine.

Mom works four days a week, Monday to Thursday. She’s home on Fridays, and then there’s the week-end.

Mom says she’s got to get out of the house. Actually, before Mom started her job she used to argue a whole lot with Dad, and that’s kind of stopped, now. They’d discuss Melanie, see, and that would escalate, as they say, into a shouting match. They’d try to tamp it down when we were around. Hard to do in a house where we’re all together. Sometimes when we’re supposed to be outside, playing or whatever, they don’t keep track and when I come in I can hear them. Mom says she’s frustrated, doesn’t know what to do, how to handle Melanie. I know just what she means. I could give her a few hints. I’m not supposed to do anything to Melanie, like slap her or anything, even though she’s always slamming away at me. But Mom could do it, turn that kid over and whack her backside, as the saying goes.

She won’t, though. She tells me I’m never to do anything in retaliation for what Melanie does to me. She says it’s normal for a little girl to be like that, ready to pop off her cork at any time when she insists she wants something and she can’t have it. I’ve never seen Mom do that, she just shrugs her shoulder and gets on with things. Dad and Mom never argue about anything like one wants something the other doesn’t or anything like that. It’s only about Melanie, far as I can see.

Hey, I’ve even heard Grandma tell Mom she should use physical discipline if nothing else works. And believe me, nothing else works. Whenever anyone tries to talk to Melanie, tell her she’s not behaving, and she’s old enough to know better, her face gets all scrunched up and hard and her eyes get into these little nasty slits and her mouth turns down at the corners and she looks like a crazy bat, honestly. That’s some kid sister.

Well, I’m like Mom that way anyway, I don’t go around thinking it’s okay to hit anyone. I just wouldn’t do it. And that’s something, matter of fact, that Melanie is always doing. Always smashing things around, banging things, and hitting. When she’s mad, and that’s half the time, she just begins smacking everyone. Even Dad’s been whacked by her. For a little kid, her fist can really hurt. But she doesn’t only rely on slapping and fisting, she throws things. If she’s mad enough, and you never know - she’ll pick up anything that isn’t too heavy for her to lift and toss it. At me, or whoever happens to be around, ‘bothering’ her. She doesn’t let being ‘bothered’. I’ve tried to explain to her that she bothers me constantly, like all the time. She thinks I’m dumb. She calls me dumb ass. Mom lectures her about that too, but it doesn’t help. Nothing seems to.

So here I am, stuck with a kid sister who just happens to be a menace. It all seems so hopeless, sometimes. Grandma tells me, quietly, so no one else can hear, to ignore her.

“Just pay her no mind”, Grandma says.
“I’d like to” I tell her. “But it doesn’t work. If I step around her and pretend she isn’t there, then that gets her mad too. And she gets right in my face about it.”
“Take it from me, darlin’”, Grandma insists, “if you ignore her baby tantrums she’ll find she has no audience and she’ll cool off.”

Like that would help, like that would work. Listen, I’ve tried everything. Nothing works.

I knew Mom was looking for someone who lives in the area to come in to just kind of be around, while she was at work. Not that I need anyone looking after me, but Melanie sure does. And I’m not about to offer myself as her personal punching bag, someone else can have the pleasure of telling that brat what she can and shouldn’t be doing, and watch her reaction as she goes into one of her berserk moods. I’ll be around, but I won’t be doing anything to look after that kid.

Anyway, I heard Mom on the telephone speaking with someone, asking if she would ask her daughter if she would be interested in coming over to our place two days a week. There was a lot of stuff back and forth, and when I asked Mom later, she said she wasn’t certain, but she thought she had someone who could spell Grandma who would take the other two days of the week.

A week later, just before the end of school, I found out who our - or Melanie’s - sitter was going to be. I just couldn’t believe it. I kind of yelled, YES!

That was embarrassing, I couldn’t believe I did that. We were sitting at the table after dinner when that happened. Dad looked at me, Mom looked at me, little brat-sister looked at me, and I felt like screwing myself deep into the chair I was sitting on, becoming invisible. How would I explain that to them? I mumbled about how I just remembered something about Mikey, that he had told me his mother was going to pick me up for the game practise later in the week and I’d forgotten to say anything about it.

Dad and Mom kept looking at me. Guess they wanted to hear more. I didn’t say anything else. What could I say? Tell them that our neighbour two houses down the way who is going to be coming over to sit Melanie is someone I really, really, really like? I get all funny even looking at her. Funny feeling, not funny ha-ha, you know? We take the same school bus, she gets off just before we do. She’s really good-looking and a whole lot even nicer than she looks, if that’s possible. She’s not snotty like most of the other older girls, the girls in grade 8. She’s friendly, always says hi!

And this is the last year I’ll be seeing her on the school bus, because she’s graduating, and going to high school next school year. I’ve felt really miserable about that. I know I’ll just never get to see her. But that was before I learned she’d be coming over here two days a week. I can’t believe it! I better be careful too, about how I am, around her. I don’t want anyone to get any ideas about that. If my bratty kid sister ever heard anything about it, that I’m stuck on Dakota she’d scream it all over the place and make everyone laugh at me. That would absolutely kill me, absolutely.

And then, a couple days later, Grandma told Mom that she changed her mind. I got really quiet when I heard her say that. I felt Grandma was going to say she would come over four days, not two, and Dakota wouldn’t be needed, to be coming over. But it wasn’t that at all. Grandma said she changed her mind, she decided she just couldn’t manage to come over here two days a week, even though her house is only a ten-minute drive from ours. Mom looked really upset, so did Grandma. Grandma said she was sorry, she just couldn’t stand the thought of having to … discipline Melanie continually.

So then Mom called over to Dakota’s mother again, asked if she thought Dakota would be all right with coming over four days a week, not two, and how much did her mother think my mother should pay her? She was thinking, she said, between $40 and $60 a day. Wow, I thought that was a lot of money. Seems Dakota’s mother thought that way too, and said she thought $40 sounded reasonable. She’d be coming over here at 8:30, just when Mom would be leaving, and Mom would be back from work around half-past three.

Dakota is fourteen. How do I know? Because a few weeks back one of the older girls shouted out to her on the bus, happy birthday, and what did she think about being fourteen? Dakota laughed, shrugged, said thanks. Said she feels the same old her. That’s only four years older than me. And I’m going to be eleven in another month. So she’s not even four years older than me, that’s nothing. Lots of people… Well, I’ll catch up, you’ll see. I know that guys take longer than girls to get going, growing up, but by the time I’m her age, I’ll be as big as her, probably bigger, and then maybe she’d look at me kind of differently.

The first day Dakota stayed with us while Mom was away working was really neat. Melanie was her usual bratty self, and threw something really hard at Dakota. It hit her on the leg, and she was really calm about it, although I knew it must’ve hurt. A couple days later I saw she had a bruise out of it, so it must’ve hurt. What she did was she talked to Melanie, as if that would make any difference. She was trying to reason with her, and you can’t reason with someone as self-centred and unreasonable as my bratty sister. I thought that was really nice of her, instead of hauling off and smacking the kid, like she deserved.

What was really neat about that first day was that Dakota treated me like I was her friend, and that I was there along with her, looking after Melanie. I liked that a lot. We played games in the backyard; we’ve got a basketball hoop set up there, and a badminton court kind of, and stuff like that. She’s a good sport, and she didn’t care who won, and I’m not sure but she may have let me win one time, although if that’s true I’d feel bad about it, because I want to win because I’m good at something not because someone wants me to feel good about something. All the other times, no matter what we were playing, the games were ‘won’ by Melanie.

And Dakota baked chocolate chip cookies. I’ve always loved helping Mom bake cookies, that’s the one thing brat-sister and me agree on, helping with the baking, and Mom lets us have some of the cookie dough before it’s baked. So did Dakota. Actually Dakota ate lots of the cookie dough too. We did a lot of laughing and it was really tons of fun. Would’ve been a whole lot better if brat-kid wasn’t around.

And then, on Thursday, the absolute worst happened. Just a whole lot of absolute crap that I couldn’t do anything to help avoid, even though I tried, and Dakota knows I tried. I wanted to impress her, make her believe that I was more than a little kid … a little kid a bit older than the brat-sister she was baby-sitting. But then I lost it. And I don’t know what I can do to turn things back to where they were before it all happened.

Before Thursday Dakota and me together looked after Melanie. We worked together on this project, know what I mean? I felt that Dakota respected me as if I was someone her own age, someone she got along with really well, and we had a kind of understanding, like as if I was her age and stuff like that. It’s hard to explain. She just made me feel good about everything. Made me feel as though she relied on me to help her. Like it was me and her and then there was Melanie. I know it doesn’t sound like much, sounds like I’m making things up or something, but honestly, I’m not. Now, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Is she going to think about me like I’m another little kid, like she’s looking after me, along with Melanie?

On Thursday the weather was awful. Non-stop, heavy rain, so we couldn’t get out much at all really, couldn’t use the trampoline, couldn’t use the badminton nets and run into the sprinkler, that kind of stuff. Melanie started out the day whining and complaining and being really miserable, heaving things around, demanding - actually just being her usual self - plus.

She kept eating freezies. And Dakota told her she’d had enough, no more until lunch. If she was hungry, Dakota said, have an apple. Then Melanie said Dakota had to make her lunch and then she could have more freezies. Dakota said it was only half-past ten, too early for lunch, have an apple. No! screamed Melanie - I WANT FREEZIES!

“Too bad” Dakota said. “You’re getting to the age where you have to start learning that you can’t have everything you want whenever you want it.”

See, that’s what Dakota is like. She thinks she can reasonably explain things to Melanie. She said to me once that she was a brat when she was young, and she knows what it’s like, and she also knows what it’s like to be refused things you want, and she thinks that if things are explained reasonably, kids will understand and be what she says is more compliant.

Melanie began throwing stuff all over the place, and Dakota told her calmly, to stop, that doing that kind of stuff won’t make any difference, she still won’t get what she wants, and will only work herself up into a frenzy. That only made Melanie worse, and she began screaming in that awful high-pitched sound that makes my ears hurt so I have to stick my fingers in them.

Dakota sat Melanie down, despite Melanie kicking her, and held her and tried to explain that Mom said Melanie wasn’t supposed to eat a lot of junk.

“Melanie, you want to grow up into a healthy girl, so you need healthy food. Those freezies are only junk food and if you keep having them you won’t have any appetite left for good, nutritious food. That’s what this is all about”, Dakota said quietly to her. And the minute she let Melanie go, the screeching started all over again.

And next thing you know, there’s Melanie with three more freezies in her hand, defying Dakota to get them off her. This time Dakota began to yell at Melanie and that ended in Melanie giving up two of the freezies and eating one of them, but still crying and screaming that she wanted more.

After lunch we went downstairs to play some hockey. There was me against Dakota and Melanie and it started out all right, but Melanie got bored and began bashing everything with her hockey stick. Dakota told Melanie to stop doing that before she broke something and then felt sorry about it, or even worse, hit someone with the stick and then she’d be sorry. Of course, Melanie just ignored her, so Dakota took away all the sticks, including mine but I couldn’t play against myself anyway.

Dakota asked if Melanie wanted to hear a story. She would read to us, and that would be fine, because we both like that. But Melanie wouldn’t agree to have a story read, and just glared at both of us. I told her she was a horrible brat and I was ashamed she was my sister. Next thing I knew, something hit me hard, on the side of my head and it felt like it was crushed.

I heard Dakota yell at Melanie that now she’d done it. I sat down on the floor, and began crying. I didn’t mean to do that. I don’t know why I let myself do that. It’s like I couldn’t help it, it hurt so bad. Next thing I know, Dakota is kneeling down beside me, asking me if I’m all right, and I’m blubbering. I tried to stop, but I just couldn’t, it really hurt. She pulled my hands away from my head to have a look, I guess, said it didn’t look bad, but I’d probably get a good bruise out of it, and picked up the croquet ball Melanie had lobbed at me.

I stuck my head back in my hands and began kind of swearing, mushing the words to kind of make it sound as if that’s what I was doing all along, just swearing, not blubbering all that time. And then I realized that it wasn’t fooling Dakota any, she could see all the slob and snot all over my hands and my nose and chin from my crying just like a girl, like a kid. And how could she respect me any more after this?

I hate my kid sister, I really do. You have no idea how much I hate her.

You have no idea how humiliated I am, how much I hate my life. It’s over.

I have nothing left to live for.