It's funny what images pop into your head when you think of child abuse. What do you picture? A beaten down, filthy apartment in the middle of nowhere. A drunken father with tattoos and a stained wife-beater that hasn't showered for weeks. A no good whore mother who ignored all the signs. And a shy, introverted kid who keeps to himself to avoid other people hurting him like his father.

Only one of those things is true for me, which is probably why no one knows my secret.

My name is Alec Lightwood, and I am physically, mentally, and utterly abused by my father.

Now, let me clue you into my life. I have two brothers and one sister. Jace is adopted, Max is the youngest, and Isabelle is the middle child, I am the oldest. My parents are successful businessmen, and are rarely home. We have an extravagant house, white picket fence and all, with fresh green grass, a double garage, a gorgeous porch, expensive cars, an inground pool, anything you could want.

Pictures of us hang in the hallways, well pictures of them. Pictures of Jace winning all his soccer games and throwing the winning 50 yard pass at the homecoming game. Pictures of Izzy crossing the finish line at a track meet, others of her at the top of the pyramid at a football game. Pictures of Max at his first baseball game, another of him and Jace at the beach playing volleyball.

I am in not one of these pictures.

It has always been, and always will be my job to take care of my young brothers and sister. It has been my job since I was seven, and according to my parents, old enough to take care of their children.

Although my parents were never really loving, things were okay, but that was only until one day things took a turn for the worst.

At the ripe age of ten, I was sure I was gay. Having never looked at a girl in a romantic way and never seeming to take my eyes off jace, I was sure pretty quick. As it turns out, my father was pretty sure too.

Between work being stressful, me being gay, and my mother having an affair; my dad snapped. You see, my father wasn't mad about my mother's lovers, for her had them too. He was just jealous that he wasn't good enough. But he never left her, and she never left him, strictly to save face. But still, it ate away at him.

Work was 24/7 for him, he liked it that way, but one day his strongest investors pulled out of his company, he lost millions, not that it really affected our lavish life style, but once again, he was angered that they left him for another company, because he wasn't good enough.

And finally, one day, he came early to pick me up from the park and saw me kiss another boy, an innocent 10 year old kiss. But that was it, I was no longer Alexander Lightwood his son, I was Alec lightwood, a faggot.

At first he didn't say anything, he pulled me by my arm into the car with a red and angry face, and drove until we reached a hotel just down the road from our house. I was scared and he knew it, he fed off of it, he got pleasure from it. It was silent all the way up into the room, and I was shaking. I remember getting to the room and waiting what seemed years before he slid the room key into the door.

I don't remember much after that.

All I really remember from that night was him pushing me into the room and beating me til was completely black and blue. Oh and don't forget red, there was a lot of red, a lot of blood. And then I blacked out after some point.

I remember waking up from a bucket of cold water being splashed on my face. Everywhere hurt. He spit in my face, and told me no son of his would be a stupid faggot. And in a moment of stupid boldness, I told him that if that was the case, he would have no son.

Needless to say, I didn't leave that hotel room for a while.

After a week of intense pain, he finally told me to get my gay ass back to the house and act like this never happened. And that I did. I walked home in the rain, finally coming through the door black and blue and in so much pain. Isabelle looked up worry in her eyes, and as she asked me how my friend's house had been (the story my father told my family). Suddenly she stopped halfway through, she ran to my side to ask me what happened, and I passed out.

I woke up later in the hospital with a bad case of pneumonia and police surrounding me asking questions, I told them I got jumped and didn't know what they looked like, and luckily when my father dragged me away at the park I had left my wallet there, so I just said it was stolen. I was easily believed, and that was the end of it.

Except not exactly the end of it.

After that my father grew to deal with the fact that I was gay, but his anger never faded, and it never would. He only makes it home about once or twice a month, but everytime he comes home I make sure no one else is in the house, cause sometimes I can't muffle my screams well enough.

He takes out whatever frustrations he has on me, sometimes he screams and calls me Maryse after my mother, calling her an ungrateful bitch and asks why he's not good enough while he chokes the breath out of me.

Sometimes he screams and calls me Morgenstern and swears he's going to kill me and beat his company while he repeatedly punches my face at full force.

Sometimes he just yells about how everyone in this family is a no good piece of shit except him while he decorates my back with horrible raised lashes from his belt, he favors when he manages to hit me with the metal clip at the end.

But the problem is never me. It's never because I'm gay. I'm just the one who fucked up first, and there for his punching bag, his puppet, his ragdoll. And somehow for the past eight years I've managed to keep this a secret.

I would leave, I really would, except he tells me everytime he's through with me that if I ever tell a soul what he did, he would beat Izzy, Jace, and Max so hard they would never see again. So I continue to lie to my family and tell them that all my bruises and broken ribs are from my karate and kick boxing class, they believe me, because who would ever think perfect daddy could do such a thing.

And I guess that's my fault. My fault for sending them fake postcards from my father so they think he cares. And making sure that on every birthday I have a gift to put in my mother's hand for Isabelle, Jace, and Max so they won't know she forgot, and its my fault for hiding my disgust when her face looks just as surprised as their's when they open the gift and shower her in thank yous because she didn't know what the gift was in the first place.

And its my fault for scheduling every doctors appointment as Robert, for signing every card as mom and dad, for signing every school permission slip as Maryse, for taking every family video, for food shopping, for making sure homework gets done, for putting Christmas presents under the tree from mom and dad, for secretly going to every parent teacher conference saying they were at work, for making it so they don't know the truth.

The truth that out father is an abusive fuck who doesn't know shit about his family. The truth that our mother doesn't love us, never wanted any of us, and just wants to look good in front of her snobby coworkers. The truth that I have been screwed out my own happiness over, and over, and over again.

The truth that I'm 18 and have never gotten a birthday present from my parents. The truth that I have to constantly sacrifice for them because for some dumb fucking reason I want to do it. Because if I don't they will have to live my life. And my life sucks, and I want my life to be over.

And if it's not an even bigger punch in the face that my parents don't love, my siblings that I try so damn hard to protect don't even really like me. At school I'm that weird kid with long hair covering his eyes in a black turtle neck and black hoodie with black pants to hide all his black bruises (not that they know that). I'm the kid with the headphones sitting alone in a cafeteria with hundreds of kids because he's not cool enough to sit with his quarterback brother and cheerleader captain sister, not cool enough to sit with anyone.

I'm the kid that either goes unnoticed, or is pushed into lockers. And quite frankly, I'm tired. I'm tired of being no one, I'm tired of the bullshit, I just wanna fit in, but it's hard to fit in when you flinch when someone tries to touch you or cringe when a girl flirts with you. I just wanna be a normal kid, I wanna go to school and talk to my friends and not be the secret parent of my siblings. I just wanna be me, whoever that is. I'm done being Alec Lightwood, i'm done with this sad existence, i'm just...done.