I was born on June 23, 2006. I was 6 lbs and 6 oz. I was a beautiful baby; deep green eyes and silky brown hair. Everyone said I look just like my mother. One year later, I said my first word. It happened when a bunch of my family came over for my first birthday. They all kept pointing to my mother and calling her “Momma”. My little child's mind thought that was an important thing for me to know, so I decided to inform them that I knew what they had just told me. “Mom-ma.” I said. All the people there started freaking out and some even started crying. I knew that crying was a bad thing, so I wondered if maybe I wasn’t supposed to do that. But even though that made them cry, they still kept telling me that I was right and tried to get me to say it again. But why would I if it had made them upset? I saw people pull out these little things from their pockets. Oh! I’ve seen Momma use that thing before. She always holds it in my face and tries to get me to do things. Most of the time I don’t do it though. What’s the point of doing something that’s I just did? Momma seemed to get very happy when I do, though. Happy is good. I like happy. So I decided to do it again. Maybe the people crying got an ouchie or something. “Mom-ma.” Everyone seemed so happy. If this is all it took to make them happy, I could’ve done that awhile ago. I was 3 years old whenever my family figured out that my mind works at a much higher level than they had ever thought. At the time, I was enrolled in preschool. My vocabulary was much more advanced than the rest of the students. I also knew some basic math and all the colors of the rainbow. I wonder why they were so surprised. I mean, did they think I wasn’t paying attention to those educational cartoons? It’s kinda hard to ignore Elmo and his friends rambling on about how to count to 4. It drove me nuts! But they always got mad when I turned the TV off. I know that mad is a bad thing, so I stopped doing it. I actually learned a few things from those singing monsters. At age 5 I started kindergarten. At that point I already knew how to multiply 1-digit numbers. My classmates always looked up to me, calling me “Magical” and “Smarty-Harley.” I was always confused on why they called me that last one, because Harley isn’t my name. My name is Athena McBansin. I always wondered why it was so difficult for them to pronounce my name. It’s Uh-thee-nah Mick-bayn-sin. Despite the fact that my classmates could never figure out how to say my name correctly, I always enjoyed being looked up to. It made me feel special. Like I mattered in the world. But that happiness would soon fade away. When I was 11 years old I was diagnosed with depression. It was a shocker for everyone in my family to find this out, including me. I always just assumed that everyone my age also wanted to die. Apparently not. I wonder if any of my depressive symptoms had to do with my father. He abandoned our family on the day I was born. Momma told me his last words before he left were “I don’t deserve to have such a beautiful wife and child.” Ever since then, he won’t answer any of momma’s calls. I heard that a lot of depression is genetic, and momma told me that my father had it as well. Some of my depression might also have to do with bullying. I always thought of smart comebacks to what my bullies said to me, but I had no defense against physical attacks. Kids would always kick and punch me and knock me down and call me “Momma’s girl.” How dare they insult my mother like that? I knew exactly why they called me that though. They thought it was weird of me to still call my mom “momma”. But to me, that had always been her name, almost as if she had been born with it. I’d come home to Momma every day with bruises and scrapes all over my tender body. My body slowly became weaker and weaker because it never got time to heal. Momma was always very worried about me, but I told her that I just fell off my bike or tripped during a game of tag. I never liked lying to Momma. But if she wasted her time worrying about me and my stupid little scrapes, I’d feel even worse. I always felt like it was my fault that people bullied me. I’d tell myself “Just deal with it!” I felt like such a baby for letting myself be bullied. But whenever I hurt them back, they didn’t seem to care! They laughed at me, calling me worthless and weak. So now, getting beat up became part of my daily routine. Plus, the scars from bullying helped hide my other scars. If Momma knew about the other scars, I don’t know what I would do.
Chapter 1 Part 1 https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/343532299/
