It wasn't until three months in did I see what was in store for me. My mother and father were fighting. Everybody's parents fought, I tried to reason with myself. However, my father was being...mean. I didn't think adults would ever act like that. Of course I had my fair share of mean teachers, but my father was making fun of my mother. Mocking her, calling her stupid, repeating things she had said in a taunting fashion. It struck me that he was acting more like a child than a grown ass man.

To make everything ten times worse, I was the cause of the fight.

After school that day I decided to play with some friends, but ended up falling off my bike. I was pretty banged up. My mother, in a panic, called my dad and made him come home from work incase I needed to go to the ER. Once it was established I was fine, the fun began.

"Of course I coddle him!" my mother was arguing. "He's my son!"

"He's our son," my father had retorted, "and we're not raising a pansy!"

"He was saying his arm hurt!"

"So then give the boy some aspirin and get over it! Unless it swells up or something, he's fine!"

The longer the argument went on, the worse I felt. Finally my dad got so upset he went into the basement and slammed the door behind himself. I waited on my bed. Through the silence, I realized that I was barely breathing.

Sucking in a deep breath, I made my was downstairs as quietly as I could. I found my mom in the kitchen, crying. As soon as she saw me she smiled, quickly wiping her face. She came to me and hugged me.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly against her.

She had smiled at me, still crying, and fussed over my hair. Once done, she rubbed my arms up and down. "Orion, no. You have nothing to be sorry about."

Then why do I feel awful? I wanted to ask, but didn't.

"I'll be more careful," I said.

She laughed, wiping away the last few tears. "You're a ten year old boy. You were made to be rough and tumble. You just enjoy your childhood."

Dinner that night was the first of many that would be held in complete silence.

It was another few months before they had another blow out. I once again was at fault-the water bill had been higher than expected. When my mother had gently reminded my father that, of course it would be higher, there was another person in the house now, my father started going on about how I took showers that were too long.

Just like last time I slinked through the house once their voices died down, looking for my mom to apologize. Also just like last time, I found her crying. She assured me at once it wasn't my fault.

There was a nice, long pause after that incident. My birthday came and went. Before we knew it, Valentine's Day was afoot. Thinking nothing of it, I had bought my mother a bouquet of flowers. It was an innocent gesture. I appreciated the fuck out of her back then, and I wanted to show her that.

Later that night, my father had backed me into a corner, looming over me.

"Trying to show me up?" he had snarled at me.

I was, understandably, confused. "What?"

"I didn't get her flowers."

"O-oh. Sorry?"

Instead of replying, he had growled and stalked away. Later that night, I was awoken to them fighting. As much as I tried to block it out, I couldn't. I had put my pillow over my head when it happened; there was a loud crash, and my mother had yelped.

Panicked, I was in their bedroom before I was even thinking. Bursting in, my mother had her back against the dresser, sort of hunched over. My father stood by the bed, looking livid.

"I'm just clumsy," my mother placated, picking up her jewelry box that had fallen off the dresser. She let out a strangled laugh. "I'm sorry if I woke you up Orion. I was on my way to the bathroom. Go back to sleep, it's nothing."

Even though I was only freshly eleven, as I climbed back into bed, I couldn't help but wonder how many times she had been "clumsy" in their marriage.

My father dropped all pretenses by the summer. Every excuse under the book was made for my father's behavior by my mom. "He's stressed at work." "He's had a rough childhood." "He's new to being a father." "He never had a good relationship with his own father."

The entire time all I wondered what any of that had to do with me.

Occasionally things would become violent. While he never left a mark on her, I could hear her being shoved around from time to time. In the back of my head was the nagging wonder of what he did to her when I wasn't around. My brain also wouldn't drop the question, was it like this before I came along, or did I cause this? It became almost an obsession, a pulsating scar on my psyche that grew bigger with each passing day.

As things grew worse and worse over time, I started to become convinced that I was the problem. I thought about running away from home if it was meant he wouldn't bully her. Maybe if I left, I would save their marriage. He wouldn't shove her into furniture if I was gone.

I was twelve when things really started to deteriorate. It started with my grades. I was largely distracted when, to my horror and bewilderment, I began to develop a crush on my best friend Daryl. Plus, as an adolescent going through puberty while attending a Catholic school who was too embarrassed to talk about such things with his adoptive parents, well... There was a lot I had to figure out by myself.

Between my crushing religious guilt surrounding impure and immoral thoughts, and worrying about when the next time my father was going to flip shits, I had a C in science and was outright failing history. I felt almost dirty attending Catholic school. The crucifixes that hung over every doorway seemed to watch me. It was like Jesus was peering straight into my thoughts, my soul. God knew that I was sinning by having feelings for other guys. I wanted to be fixed, but was too petrified to admit to anyone how I felt.

I kept my scholastic problems to myself as much as I could. There were common themes to my schooling now, certain things all teachers seemed to say some variation of. "If you applied yourself as much as you did in music, you wouldn't be failing." "You need to pay attention more." "Are you even studying?" "You're not going to get far in life if you don't take your classes seriously."

My cover was blown when report cards came out. That day was the first time I had been actively scared of my father. He had taken several things as he stomped around, hollering, and thrown them clear across the room. All the while he argued with his wife as though I wasn't standing right there.

"This wouldn't have happened if we had our own child!" he had ranted.

My mother started crying at those words. As my own eyes stung, I retreated up the stairs swiftly. They fought for a bit longer. Eventually there was a soft raping on my door.

"Orion?"

My mother came in and sat beside me. It seemed like she didn't really know what to say, because we sat there for a while not speaking.

"I'm sorry," I had whispered.

She didn't reply.

"What did he mean?" I finally asked when she never spoke. "About how this wouldn't have happened if I was your own child?"

She patted my knee, and when she spoke, she never looked at me. "I'm infertile. It means I can't get pregnant."

I literally didn't know what to do or say. So she filled the void by getting to her feet, planted a lingering kiss on the top of my head, and then left. Afterwards, I laid down and cried myself to sleep, although I didn't even fully understand why.

But I did understand. I had been adopted out of necessity, not because they actually wanted me.