Everything Has Changed: Book Two

Chapter Ten: Breakdown

Chapter Ten: Breakdown

My dull brown eyes stare blankly into the mirror. I watch the water from my shower roll down my bare body. I feel the familiar feeling of dread pool in my stomach, and I feel worthless.

I grew up an average girl with an average family and a dog and a best friend and I spent my childhood playing in the backyard while my Mom made sandwiches or chicken nuggets or pizza rolls in the house. I sat at the table on the back deck as my Dad urged me to dip the pizza rolls in ranch dressing. My best friends Mom would drive us to the rec center with the big water slide once a week. In the fall, I would sit at a campfire in my back yard and roast marshmallows.

Back then, the biggest pain I had in my heart was when my Mom told me I wasn't allowed to get a lunchable at the grocery store.

Back then, my Dad would take me and Danny to the park with my dog Jackson, and I would throw a tennis ball to her or play on the playground.

Now, at twenty one years old, I stand in the mirror, wondering where the hell I went wrong.

What changed in me that made my parents hate me? What did I do? I thought I was a good kid. I've never done drugs. I never smoked a cigarette and I've had like...a sip of alcohol my whole life. I maintained A's and B's all through middle school and high school.

Was I annoying? Ugly?

What's wrong with me?

My Mom tried to kill me and my Dad? He lied to me. He never cared about me. He punished me for letting my GPA drop one point.

One fucking point.

He tried to take away my car, which I paid for in full. He didn't offer a dime, even though he originally told me he would go in half.

He listened to me tell him I was cutting him out of my life. He listened to me tell him that he's not allowed to be my father anymore.

He never once tried to stop me. He didn't call.

And now? He knocked up my abusive mother and they're going to have another child.

And the next child is going to get beat. My mother is going to hurt that poor baby.

I'm so sick of feeling this pain. I'm sick of not having any family. I want, I just want one fucking parent to please pick me for once.

I want them to care if I'm not okay. I want a Mom to hold me and brush my hair and tell me everything is going to be fine.

The mirror starts to get blurry, and all I want to do is curl into a ball and cry.

My life is like a rollercoaster. One second everything is calm and the next I feel like my life is being hurled down a hill at two hundred miles per hour.

I want to feel wanted.

I force myself to start moving, using the towels to dry myself off. I wipe up the puddle on the floor from the water that hit the floor when I was looking in the mirror, and I pull on a t-shirt, a pair of panties, and a pair of sweatpants.

It hurts to breathe. I just...I don't want to be here anymore. Everything hurts, and if it doesn't hurt, I know it will.

It will always hurt.

I shake my head and open the bathroom door, dragging my body into the bedroom.

I once saw a quote that said, 'You don't know pain until you're staring at yourself in the mirror with tears in your eyes, begging yourself to just hold on and be strong. THAT is pain.'