Advanced Essay #1: The Betrayer

My heart clogged my lungs as I let out an unpleasant scream. They were taking her away from me, again.

I lived with my mom, dad, and little sister at the time. Life wasn’t going so great for me. I had good grades, all the toys I could ever want and of course, both of my parents living with me, but, they weren’t really there. My dad worked as a truck driver, so he had crazy, unpredictable work hours. My mom used to be a nurse, that is until she found a new hobby, a new friend, PCP. PCP became her new life, she got high no matter what time of day or night. The drug caused her to hallucinate frequently, wandering off into different galaxies. She would not usually get high in front of my sister and me, but when she did, my world would shatter into a billion pieces, as I watched her spineless body fall to the ground.

“You can’t blame her for becoming addicted, Doniesha” my dad always reminded me.

But I can blame her. I can blame her for betraying regularly. She would always express to me how bad she felt for disappointed me so many times. She told that I could trust her, that she wouldn’t hurt me anymore.

It felt very weird, yet, liberating in the beginning. My perception of trust for her went from subjective and attached to objective and detached. I received a lot of realizations after the many betrayals and I moved on more confident and stronger.

Over the weeks, she began getting slimmer and her neutral facial expression became very bland. She got into many car accidents and physical altercations while under the influence of this evil, corrupting drug. This caused her to become a frequent inmate, both in the county jail system and in her very own psychological prison. The worst part about the entire situation was that she betrayed me. My mother was supposed to be someone that I could look up to. I no longer had that uniform female in my life to talk to me about love and menstruation.

Being raised in an environment where my female role model, modeled nothing but bright orange jumpsuits and my father’s broken heart caused him to entirely box himself out from the real world, I began to become depressed. So to cope with my depression, I began to write all the time. Somehow, I managed to build a new life and start fresh, at least, that's what I thought.

One Saturday morning changed everything. I recall having the best dream of my life. That all was ruined when I was rudely awakened by a loud thudding sound coming from the front door. As I querulously crept downstairs to investigate, I heard an unfamiliar voice at the door. Whoever the mysterious voice was, it was asking for the whereabouts of my mother. My dad let out an angry sigh and opened the door completely to let this stranger inside of our safe home. When the man stepped through the door, I heard a raspy dispatcher’s voice on a small walky-talky and I realized that the stranger, in fact, was a police officer looking for my mother. I sat on the last step of the staircase and began to cry. I knew he was here to take her back to jail. It wasn’t anything new.

“Abbigail?” the officer projected “Where are you?”

My mother walked down the stairs with a large chef’s knife in her hand.

“Drop the weapon Abigail!” the officer demanded.

“They told me to come with them, it’s better in the underworld” my mom stated tediously.

I hopped up from the step and gazed at her black, soulless eyes with trepidation. I will never forget the sound of that stainless-steel hitting the steps, tip first. The officer handcuffed her, took her to his car and drove off. I still remember sobbing louder than the sirens as I heard them fade off into the distance. My dad slid his sore slender back against the wall and sighed again. But this time it was a good sigh. A sigh of relief.

I view the idea of betrayal as a learning experience, it has a positive connotation. I speak for myself when I say that being betrayed makes you more vigilant in how you manage relationships that you encounter. You no longer trust the betrayer the same you're always skeptical and on edge when you are dealing with the betrayer. I soon had to realize that trust wasn't supposed to be given but it needed to be earn. Even for the people who promised that would never betray you.

When I was in 8th grade, I had to take part in court-mandated therapy sessions.

"Go and share your thoughts, and maybe it will help you feel better" the judge expressed.

So I went and at first, I really enjoyed it. The therapist would get me to express my feelings by playing board games and coloring. I started to open up more, I started to trust her. That's when things changed. When I walked into her office on Thursday evening, there were no board games, there were no coloring books, but instead there sat my therapist behind a rusty brown desk. She instructed me to come in and sit down.

"W-where are the games?" I questioned bafflingly.

"There are no games today sweetheart, we need to talk."

She told me that everything that I told her was confidential, but at that age, I didn't understand what that word meant.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means that I can't tell the judge, mommy or daddy what you tell me tonight, it's a secret, just between you and I."

I didn't really have any reason to not trust that she wasn't telling me the truth not to confide in her, so I began to talk. I talked and talked for an hour straight, expressing all of my thoughts and feelings without holding back. I began by telling her about this boy that I had a crush onto this very day,  and later on, I went into more serious topics.

"And sometimes my mommy hits me," I stated as I took a big gulp trying to hold back the vicious tears ready to stream down my cheeks.

After I said that the therapist stood up and gave me a big hug and told me that I did a wonderful job tonight.

The next morning, I get called into the office at school and there are two women standing there waiting for me. They restated word for word everything that I said to my therapist. I felt a big rush of dizziness as the upsetness took over my stomach.

"How could she tell them?" I thought to myself.

I trusted her and even though I didn't understand the severity of the things that I told her the night before, the simple fact was that she betrayed me.

As I grew older these betrayals changed my trustworthiness of others. I learned that trust is valuable. It affects everything. So to this very day, it is very hard for me to trust people, simply because I have been betrayed. Breaking someone's trust is like crumpling up a piece of perfect piece of paper. You can smooth it over but it's never going to be the same again.