Inscriere 2023 - Popa Daniela Petruța

It was an old blue house on Simon Street. A rundown bi-level with rotting shutters and green moldy windows. It had a cracked driveway with dry yellow grass and a deceiving white picket fence. The moss that crept up the bark of a growing cherry blossom, and a rusty red well pump garnished the lawn. My mother stumbled down three broken concrete steps with me in her bloody dotted pricked arms. An unfamiliar car pulled up to the curb, and a stranger ripped me from the hold of this addict, strapping me into a small beige car seat. My brothers had left before me and I was the last to go. I was the last to leave behind the sticks of butter and microwaved bacon we ate for dinner, still raw as we struggled to swallow. I was the last to leave behind holes in the walls made by a broken father and angrier sons. I was the last to leave behind the locked doors to rooms in which I had no escape. I was saying goodbye to something that I never deserved, something that was holding me back from a picture- perfect family. The thing I had always wanted. Yet, I hated it. I kept my gaze down, tracing the fissures in the driveway cement. Struggling underneath the grip of my social worker, I walked through an intimidating blue door. Its color in slight contrast with the shutters, which were dulled from the sun’s bright exposure. My eyes darted skeptically, searching for reasons to judge. Dusty molding, dog hair on the floor, crumbs on the counter from a toasty loaf of Italian bread. Fall decorations , yet still cozy outside. Did they have fingerprints on their windows too? I couldn’t tell if this house was a home. Food to eat and a mattress bigger than I could ever imagine. My brothers were there already too. They placed us with each other, pulling that picture togheter. Just like moments, this didn’t last. Each of them were taken, one by one, stealing a piece of me with them each time. Five years later, these people who were once strangers became my parents. Something that, I, perhaps ungrateful in the eyes of others, resented. They adopted me; the sweetest most compassionate people in the world opened their home and their hearts. My heart stayed shut, hidden as it always had been behind the protection of that deceiving white picket fence. I never hated my biological parents; my mother fought demons, and my father ran from them. My brothers; a product of their upbringing and my mother a product of hers. And as much as I wanted to follow in their footsteps and succumb to the life they had lived before me, I knew I had to break the cycle. I fought to be more because I wanted to smile to be as genuine as I am. To live life with no regrets, and do what I can to catch every train before it leaves the station. To be free from the bond of the white picket fence. I wanted to be the first generation to attend college rather than to find comfort in a bottle or a needle. The first to make a family that sticks together, one that is loving and caring and present. I wanted to have that white picket fence family. However, as much as I yearned for the “Brady Bunch” upbringing, my experiences molded me into who I am: the girl with hope who appreciates the little things, the class clown who knows how much a laugh may mean, the student who waves hello to everyone who she may pass in the hallway, knowing how it feels to go unnoticed, and the selfless daughter who puts everyone before herself. This life, as sorrowful and bitter as it has the tendency to be, has its snippets of sweetness in very breath.