In My First Life, Everything Went Wrong

If I could describe my life in a few words, I’d say it’s difficult to be me. When I was born, I was left inside a dumpster outside a high school; one of those prom night dumpster babies. I was found by a teacher at the school and handed over to the authorities, who took me to a hospital because of the rat and bug bites and feces I was covered in. They said it was a miracle I was alive, but I wish I died right then and there, so I didn’t have to suffer what would be my life.

I was adopted twice, the first time it was a sweet elderly couple who were lonely because their children didn’t visit them, my adoptive father died from a heart attack a week after the adoption, and my adoptive mother was so saddened by his departure ate a cocktail of pills and passed away. I was only 5 years old. A year later I was adopted for the second time, it was a seemingly happy couple, both in their late twenties, so I thought it would finally have a normal life. As the days went by, I noticed bruises on my new mother’s arms and legs. I never said anything because she never seemed to address them. After a year of living with them, my new mother started day drinking. She lost her job and our entire household relied on my new father’s paycheck. Every day was a routine, my father would yell complaints about my mother not being a good woman and storm off to work. My mother would pick up a bottle of wine and tell me to get ready for school. After I got myself ready, I made breakfast for both of us. I would go into my mother’s room and get makeup wipes to clean her tear-stained face. In the process, she would wake up and ask if I was her mother. I always responded with breakfast was ready, and I had to go to school. She drove me to school with a cigarette in her mouth and would complain about my father and how she had a child, but it was a stale birth because she was a “useless woman”. She always tried to convince me that she was thankful to have me in her life because I saved her marriage.

I took the bus home and when I arrived home, I would check each room in the house to see if any appliances were on. I turned off the stove or the bathtub before it flooded the bathroom and find my mother sleeping on her bed or the couch. Waking her up in the afternoons was always the highlight of my day because as she woke up she would smile at me and tell me she loved me more than anyone in the world. She then got up and acted like her regular self, bubbly and charismatic. She cleaned the house up and started on dinner, all the while singing her favorite tunes. I sat at the table doing homework at peace with my surroundings, and sometimes I asked my mother for help with my homework. After we ate, she helped me get ready for bed, and we would read stories about fantasy worlds. Her favorite stories would be about strong female protagonists, who fought for what they believed in and found true love. She told me that she wanted to be a writer and that someday she would create a world just for the two of us.

After that, I went to bed, but sometimes I would wake up to my father arriving home. He slammed the door and yell for my mother, who always greeted him with a joyous tone and tell him his dinner was ready. My father proceeded to hurl insults about my mother being a leach and led her into their bedroom, I would always go to sleep out of fear of hearing my mother beg for her life. This went on until my 13th birthday.

My father had been on a business trip for a few months, and my mother had been happier than I had seen her in a while. She was waking me up, making me breakfast, and driving me to school, all without drinking or smoking. She took me and some friends to dinner to celebrate my birthday. When we got home, she had a surprise for me, it was a book. The violet cover had a beautiful queen who had honey brown hair like my mother's and shining green eyes. The title in gold letters, The Queens of the Empire. When I opened it, the dedication read, “To my daughter, the reason I live and breath, I love you with all my heart, and I’m proud of the strong woman you’ve become.”

Tears streamed down my eyes for the first time, in a long time. My mother hugged me, told me she had been working on it for the past five years and that it had finally been published. Her dream of becoming a writer came true, that night we fell asleep crying tears of happiness. The next day she had taken me to meet her best friend who was a lawyer, I considered her my aunt because my mother and her were sorority sisters. They sat me down and told me my mother was going to divorce my father, but if things didn’t go well, my mother and I were going to run away. My mother was setting things in motion, she was picking herself back up slowly, and I was proud of her. This happiness didn’t last long.

Two days later, my mother and I packed up everything we needed, and we waited at home for my father to return. In the same routine, he slammed the door open, yelling for my mother. My mother didn’t respond, after making his way to the dining room, he yelled again, “What the hell is your problem? When I call for you, you better answer.”

My mother looked up at him and in a stern voice, she states, “I want a divorce, I’m tired of living this way. Just sign the papers, and I’ll be on my way with MY daughter.”

My father laughed, with a smirk he said, “You can’t leave me where would you go? You don’t have a job nor a place to live, so why don’t you shut up and make me my dinner.”

“If that’s how you feel, I’m leaving, I’ll see you in court.” My mother said, getting up from the table, and I followed. While my father grabbed my mother’s hair and pulled her back.

“It looks like your not being grateful for everything I’ve given you, you parasitic wench.”

He throws her on the floor, proceeds to throw a chair at her.

“Mom! Please stop, just let us leave, we won't bother you. Please leave us alone.” I begged, running to my mother to make sure she wasn’t hurt badly. A smile crept into my father's eyes when I pleaded with him as if he found a new toy to play with. “I’ll let your mother leave if I have full custody of you.”

The deal that man offered scared my mother, who realized what he wanted to do to me, and it scared me because it was the first time this man had ever paid attention to me in the many years I’ve lived in this house. He grabbed my arm and dragged me kicking and screaming to my mother's room. My mother pulling on my limbs couldn’t overpower him, so she jumped on top of him and yelled to call the police as she bit him, and he loosened his grip on my arm. I ran and made a beeline for the phone. Dialing 911 and hearing the ring felt like the longest few seconds of my life, as soon as I heard an operator, I yelled my address and left the phone on the counter to go help my mother who was already being beaten by that man. I jumped on top of him and tried to strangle him, but it didn’t work as he rammed his back into a wall, forcing me to fall and pass out. As I closed my eyes, I could hear my mother grabbing his attention with a picture frame she threw at him.

When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed, “Mom?” I blinked and looked around to find nobody. I had a blaring headache, but I got up and looked around the room. Remembering the last moments that transpired, I ran out of the room to the nurse’s station. “Excuse me, where’s my mother?”

The nurses concerned all try to surround me and calm me down, out of the corner of my eye I see my aunt. I run to her, “Auntie! Where’s my mom? What happened to that man?” She looks at me almost relieved and hugs me. “I’m so glad you’re safe. I’ll tell you everything that happened, but first I need you to stay calm.”

She sat me down and told me, the police arrived at the premises seven minutes after the call. When they arrived, that man had been hitting my mother since I passed out because she kept getting in the way of him grabbing my unconscious body. She put up a fight with that man, he was bleeding all over the place, but they were superficial wounds. My mother on the other hand was beaten so badly she almost died, with multiple ribs broken, dislocated limbs, and a broken skull. She was barely breathing, but she covered my body from getting hurt the entire fight.

I didn’t realize when I started crying, the tears couldn’t stop, she was the only woman who would risk her life for me in the whole world. I didn’t know that having a person that loved me so unconditionally was even possible. My aunt continued, the police took that man to get treated and after arrested him for attempted murder and child abuse. My mother was in an induced coma, but it seems she wouldn’t wake up soon.

After all of this, I was put into a home for problem children, because my aunt was not a legal family member and my mother still hadn’t woken up. I went to court-mandated therapy, and it helped sort out my thoughts about everything. My new routine started, I woke up early to get priority for the bathroom since the house had so many children, but not enough bathrooms. After getting ready, all the children would start getting ready, I cleaned my room and rushed downstairs to eat breakfast. When the kids all came to eat, I would leave for school. I walked to school in complete silence, I listened to the wind blowing, the birds chirping, and thought about my mother. After school, I take the trolley to the hospital and visit my mother. I change the flowers once a week and tell her about my day at school while laying next to her on the hospital bed holding her. My therapy session, held in the same hospital, would be scheduled once every two weeks after visiting my mother. At the end of the day, I would go back to that house do my homework, eat and get ready for bed after all the children have already gone to sleep. Before going to sleep every night, I would read a chapter of The Queens of the Empire.

This continued until my 18th birthday, I had finally left the home and was moving into university housing. College was a terrible experience for me because I couldn’t make friends, it would be more accurate to say, girls didn’t like me since most of their boyfriends would talk to me. They accused me of seducing men and being an attention whore, when in reality I was being continuously harassed and no one believed me. At this point, my therapist was my only friend, she even saw me outside her work hours. She was the only one who believed me, she even went to the university to file a Title IX lawsuit. My university didn’t do much besides changing my housing situation and gave me the Dean’s scholarship, so I wouldn’t expose the school.

After college, I went to work at a stock tradings company. At first, I worked hard to become friends with the few women in the office, I would help them with their clients and problems they had. When they would get promoted or give me extra work, I wouldn’t mind because I thought that’s what friends were for. It wasn’t until I overheard the girls in the office talking about how gullible and easy to manipulate I was in the bathroom. A part of me already knew I was being used, but I didn’t want to acknowledge it.

I played along with the girls at work, the happy and charismatic worker that the girls could manipulate showed she was none the wiser. I started taking on more work of my own and improving my own client relationships to get promoted twice in one year. My track record spoke for itself, but the girls were still giving me their work, I slowly started making mistakes in their work, they snowballed into the loss of millions for the clients and the company.

Our superior called those girls into his office, in a fit of rage he yelled, “What the fuck did you bitches do!”

“I don’t know how this happened, my numbers were double-checked,” one of the girls stated.

“Well, apparently you didn’t because we have lost millions in one of our biggest hedge funds, our clients are leaving left and right,” our superior said sarcastically.

“I know! It was Liz, she’s the one who made all the mistakes. It wasn’t us,” another girl protested. She blatantly accused me in front of our boss, just like I knew she would.

“Why would one of our best associates make that kind of mistake? Wait, why would she be doing your work in the first place?” with a questioning look, our superior decided to call me in. “Liz! I need to ask you a question, have you been doing these girls’ work on the hedge fund account?”

“I’m sorry sir, I’ve had my hands full of new clients investing large amounts since my promotions. I haven’t had time to help my coworkers, was I needed to take on their workload?” I said with a confused and concerned look on my face.

“No, they are just making up excuses,” my superior said with a calm look towards me and returns to look at the now shocked girls with a glare.

“She's lying, that bitch does all of our accounts! She’s the reason why our company lost the hedge fund clients, you need to fire her!” the last girl protests.

“No, you three are all fired and are crazy to try to pull down our associate out of jealousy.” My superior sends them away and begins to gather information on the hedge fund clients. The girls in a fit of rage dash out the door, staring daggers at me.

It was one of the best moments of revenge I had in this life. My bliss lasted for four years, I became the youngest senior vice president in the company's history. The day my promotion was official, all my coworkers congratulated me, and we all got ready to leave for the promotion party waiting in front of the elevators. I heard the doors opening and as I stepped inside, I heard a loud bang. I was confused for a second as a fell back watching my old coworker’s smiling face with a gun in her hand. The last words I heard were, “Paybacks a bitch, you should have just told the truth like a good little girl.”

I heard three gunshots and started feeling cold, in my own pool of blood I struggled to breathe. I realized, “so this is death.”

This was my first life, the depressing life of 27-year-old trading company worker, Liz Chinen.