Uriah Malbeck District Three

The most annoying thing about my appearance would have to be my height. I'm six foot six and if I forget to duck, my head hits every door frame in my house. My dad used to joke about how I must have been someone else’s son because I am so much taller than either of my parents. Looking back, that’s probably a possibility, but I’d rather not think about it. So I don’t. I wouldn’t say I'm chiseled. I don’t have a six pack or anything like that, but I'm definitely not weak. I can carry whatever I need to and even though I'm a lover and not a fighter, I would be a decent asset in a brawl. Another thing I would rather not think about is my slowly developing beer gut. Or rather wine/liquor gut. Beer is nasty. These days, I've been drinking most of my calories and unfortunately, it’s beginning to show a little bit. I’ll have to work out sometime soon I guess, but I really don’t have that kind of time to just run or lift weights.

My body is anchored down with two size fourteen feet. Sometimes, they get in the way and make me trip over things, but on the bright side, when I threaten to put my foot up someone’s ass, they typically shut up. You can tell I'm a musician by looking at my hands. My fingers are thin but strong and they are constantly in motion. Each one has thick callouses from my guitar strings and it isn't uncommon for them to crack and bleed.

My voice is low and crackly. But when I want to, I can make it quite seductive. I don’t mean to brag, but its worked plenty of times in the past. I'm not picky about clothing really. I typically stick with neutral colors like brown and black. my scars have started to fade, so I’ll be able to go out in public without a shirt on in a couple weeks, which is very exciting. I might even make time to hit the weights soon so that I’ll have a better body to show off.

I know I'm probably sounding really arrogant right now, but I really like my face. I have thin lips and a small nose. Most people describe my dark brown eyes as friendly. Even when I am sad, they have a happy little twinkle in them which makes lying so much easier. I've tried to negotiate with my dark rats nest of hair, but it is simply too thick. No matter what I do to it, it sticks out at odd angles and still looks messy. I have straight teeth that fortunately haven't started to yellow from smoking. My breath is always minty fresh because I keep a flask of peppermint schnapps in my jacket just in case I need it. The one thing that I really don’t like about my face is that my bushy eyebrows meet in the middle. When I remember, I shave it with the rest of my face, but it isn't uncommon for my eyebrows to get as unruly as my hair.

I think I've already mentioned that I'm more of a lover than a fighter. This is definitely true as I am a lover of many things. First and foremost, I love my twelve year old brother, Anthony. Now that our dad is gone, we are all each other has. I would do anything for him and I try to teach him as much as I can to help make his life more bearable. Hopefully, when everything is said and done, Anthony will come out of all of this less emotionally damaged than I will.

Second, I love women. I guess I always have. It seems like I’m never really happy unless I have someone to share everything with, so for the last few years, I have always had at least one girlfriend and I'm ashamed to say sometimes two at a time. Now with the exception of occasionally cheating, I treat my girlfriends really well. After growing up with such a monster as my mother, I wouldn’t dream of hurting anyone else, especially someone I love.

Finally, I love alcohol. Now you're probably thinking “but Uriah, you're much too young to even try alcohol. There's no way you could love it.” And to that, I chuckle to myself. I find that wine or when I have the money to buy it , hard liquor, is the easiest and most enjoyable way to get my mind off of the things that have happened to me. I discovered wine at the ripe old age of thirteen (and for the sake of his liver I pray Anthony doesn’t do the same). Ever since, I've drank in what some would say excess but what I would call a healthy amount on an almost daily basis. Now before you get you're panties in a wad, I think that it is important that you know I am a nice drunk. When I am under the influence of the divine liquid, I am just sleepy and giggly and cuddly and most importantly calm. Lately, it has felt like the only way for me to calm down is to have a drink or two.

Now for someone like me, it becomes a priority not to become a Debbie Downer. It is absolutely impossible to have fun with someone who is sad all the time. So I have perfected the art of acting happy. I can paint a smile on my face and laugh and tell jokes like everyone else even when my insides feel like they are going to explode. This way, I can always be the pleasant sort of company that makes people happy to be around me.

You know, it’s really hard to write this much about myself without sounding arrogant, but I guess it’s not really arrogance if it’s true so here goes another paragraph about how awesome I am. I am an amazing musician. I've played classical guitar since I was seven years old and since I don’t have a job yet, I have time to practice over five hours a day every day of the year. Playing the guitar makes me feel closer to my late father who played the violin. We used to play together and I fear that my musical ability is the only thing about me he’d be proud of if he could see me now.

I know that it's probably pretty annoying for you that I've mentioned snippets from my past in the other parts of this description of myself, but I figure I'm telling you this story so if you could kindly shove it, that would be very much appreciated.

My story starts a year before I was born. When two young people from district three fell in lovelust and decided to get married. Those two people were my dad, Hunter Malbeck, and my mother SatanJessica. From what I've heard, mom was a bad egg from the get go. She had multiple affairs in the first year of marriage, so even though dad raised me, I can never be sure if he was really my biological father. that didn’t stop him from being the best dad a kid could ask for. When I was a baby, my mom would have nothing to do with me, so it was dad who fed me, changed my diapers, talked to me, and cleaned me up.

When I got a little older, I discovered Jessica Malbeck’s nasty temper. Her first response to anything I did that she thought I shouldn’t was to hit me or worse. When I was three years old, she made me put my arm into a door frame as she slammed the door on me for breaking a plate. As a kid, I was never without bruises all over my body and now that I'm a teenager, I still have a multitude of scars. What my mother did to me was deplorable, but it will never compare to what she did to Anthony. When he was in second grade, his teacher asked to speak with mom about how he wasn’t reading at his grade level. Jessica took this as poor Anthony’s failure and punished him by bopping him over the head with a cookie sheet. Ever since, Anthony’s never been the same. He talks slower than the other kids and gets made fun of. I think mom hit something loose with that pan. All I can say is if she tries anything like that again, I’ll be there to stop her.

Which reminds me. Dad. I often get asked, “if your dad loved you as much as you say, why didn’t he protect you and your brother?” that is a fair point, but only if you’ve never met my parents. It is important to understand that Jessica has always been a paragon of physical ability. The lady still runs marathons thirteen years after having her second kid. Dad on the other hand was always a little bit shrimpy. She told him that’s why she slept around with other men. Physically, there was little dad could have done to protect us. Besides, he had to leave us with our mother while he went to work so that he could financially provide for his family. The last thing that you need to consider with my dad is the fact that he had debilitating major depression. For my father every day was a battle just to keep from killing himself.

After fourteen years of marriage to that happiness leech of a wife, my father finally lost that battle. I was the one who found him on the bathroom floor after he cut open his wrists with a kitchen knife. Mom refused to clean up the blood and was so angry when I called her out on being why my dad killed himself, she threw almost an entire set of drinking glasses at me. I had to clean up not only dad’s blood in the bathroom, but mine too and I still have the marks on my shoulder and back from where those cups cut me.

That was the first night I drank alcohol. That was also about the beginning of my colossal growth spurt. In the next few months, I pretty much developed a severe dependence on alcohol and I grew to be too big for my mom to hurt me anymore. For the first time in my life I was actually able to help my little brother and I defended him whenever he needed my help.

Now I spend my nights partying with beautiful girls and drinking until my heart is content and my days stooped over a toilet regretting my nights. Everyone knows me as a fun loving crazy guy who is always cheerful and can make other people laugh. But I'm as fake as can be. Everything I do now is a desperate attempt to cope with my mother’s abuse, my brother’s brain injury, and my father’s suicide. My coping strategies have worked in the past, but as time moves on, I've found myself feeling sadder more often and I wonder what’s happening to me.