I was eight when my parents divorced. I remember the day like it was yesterday. My father took me out of school early. I knew something was wrong immediately; daddy never took me out of school early. I was expected to go to school, get straight A’s, and get the perfect attendance award at the end of the semester along with other awards. He wanted me to go to Yale or Harvard, or another Ivy League school. He wanted me to have the best; he thought I deserved the best of everything. So, when daddy broke the news that he and my mother were getting a divorce he took me out for ice cream. I ordered a scoop of chocolate chip and a scoop of strawberry. He sat me down and as I dug into what I thought was the highlight of my life, he broke the news.

No matter what your age, the news of your family falling apart is a devastating feeling. At first, I didn’t understand what was happening and then the tears came. I cried and cried and cried. When I asked my dad if I was the reason for the divorce, like any other child would, I cried and cried and cried some more.

My parents both wanted custody of me and my brother. My father wanted to stay in Kansas while my mother wanted to move to California. In the end, mom moved to California with my older brother and I stayed behind with dad.

Growing up without my mother had an impact on me, but not as bad as our strained relationship did. At first, mom would call every day, which turned to every other day, once a week, once every two weeks and so on and so forth until eventually, we would only talk on major holidays.
Years passed, emotions bloomed and then burst, things happened and all of a sudden I wasn’t daddy’s little girl anymore. Grades plummeted, parties were thrown, drinking, drugs, dating, sex, emotions ran high, fights with dad increased. I was no longer his perfect daughter. I was no longer the person he thought deserved the best.

The self-harm started when I was fourteen after mom was supposed to visit and didn’t. Okay, it wasn’t entirely because of that – there were more reasons, it was an emotional week and her not showing was just the icing on the cake. I can still remember the burn of the first cut. I found the razor blade in dad’s tool pack. I remembered sitting on the cold bathroom floor, my sleeve raised up. I allowed the blade to linger on my skin for many minutes before I finally gathered the courage to run it across my arm. The first cut was tiny, it barely bled. With the second cut, I dug deeper into my skin. It hurt. Fuck, it hurt and the blood scared me. What if I had gone too deep? What if I bled to death on the bathroom floor? What if…

I felt better. The pain from the cut numbed the pain in my heart, my head. Cutting became addicting, it became an escape. I needed it, anytime I had the slightest bad day I could hear the razor blade calling my name. It gave me relief.

I was messy with the cutting. As the months passed, I stopped hiding it. I didn’t care. Dad was too busy worrying about my grades to worry about the lines on my arms. Once he realized the grades weren’t changing, we fought some more. That’s when he noticed the cuts. He had grabbed my arm to get my attention and his thumb, which was the size of a saucer, landed right on a fresh wound. I winced out of instinct and dad insisted on rolling up my sleeve.

He took away the razor blade. He told me to stop mutilating myself. He insisted that I talk to him, or to someone. He told me he loved me. None of it mattered. Razor blades were easy to find, knives were easy to find. As I found them, though, so did daddy. He took them from me and eventually I felt like a toddler. There wasn’t as much as a thumbtack found in the house after a while. So, then, I moved to the pills. And after a particularly rough day, I swallowed a bottle of leftover Percocet.

I woke in a hospital some time later. Man, nothing makes you feel worse than failing at a suicide attempt. Except, oh wait, mom never called or stopped by the hospital. Yep, that made me feel even more pathetic.

Dad revealed the news that I was going to be admitted to a treatment center for six weeks before I was even released from the hospital. He said he wasn’t sure how to help me, and that the doctors suggested this as a recovery option. I didn’t want to go. I cried and screamed and fought him. I told him I would be better, I would do better. I would go back to being that perfect daughter he once had but none of it was good enough.

The next day, on my seventeenth birthday, I was admitted to the treatment center. The treatment center was everything you would have imagined it to be – lots and lots of therapy. There was individual therapy, group therapy, family therapy (and surprise, mom didn’t show to that either), cognitive behavioral therapy, and experimental therapy. Experimental therapy wasn’t what it sounded like. There was no shock therapy or anything of the sort. It was more finding a different way to cope instead of resulting to self-harm. There were many different techniques they offered to try: art, yoga, meditation, breathwork. I tried out journaling and was surprised when it helped.

When week six arrived, I was assessed by the team consisting of psychologists, social workers, physicians, nurses, counselors, and psychiatrists and was discharged. I waited for my father to arrive, to come pick me up so we could start over. I was excited to start my life over; to get school back on track. I was nervous too. I was nervous to fall back into old habits, back into the wrong crowd but I knew I was strong enough to, well, stay strong.

I waited for dad for hours. I was beginning to get nervous when he didn’t show, and after a while, the staff of the treatment center started to get nervous too. Eventually, we got the phone call that would throw everything I had worked so hard for in reverse.

My father was dead. He stopped to get gas and walked in on an armed robbery. The robber was surprised by someone entering the store and out of impulse, shot my father in the chest. By the time the robber ran away and the clerk called the cops, my father had already bled to death on the tile of the convenience store.

If you asked me today, I wouldn’t be able to tell you what happened for a week after my father’s death. I know there was a funeral and I know I attended it but that’s all I remember. I mourned for him. I missed him. He was on his way to pick me up, we were going to get ice cream – one scoop of chocolate chip and one scoop of strawberry – and we were going to continue our lives. I was going to be the perfect daughter, the daughter he thought deserved the world. I was going to make him proud. Life was going to be what it was supposed to be but now, instead, it’s flipped upside down.

I was shipped off to California a few days after the funeral. I was moving in with my mother and brother. Some people would be thrilled but I wasn’t. I hadn’t seen my mother or brother in at least five years. It was going to be weird, awkward. I knew the social worker had spoken to my mother about my past, about the treatment center and how fragile I was. I was embarrassed. I didn’t want my mother to know that stuff about me, I wanted it to be a secret. I wanted my dad.

My mother picked me up from the airport. She acted like she was happy to see me, thrilled that she had her daughter back in her arms but her body language told me otherwise. Her body was stiff when she hugged me and her smile was forced. She rambled on about her job as she drove me back to her house. I’m sorry, our house. Seeing my brother for the first time in five years was even more awkward. He looked at me in a way a brother is not supposed to look at his little sister. I ignored it, figured I was imagining it. I wasn’t.

The first time it happened, I was still mourning the death of my father. A dark bedroom with unwanted hands touching my body and whispers of how everything was going to be okay and that this was right. Pushing, and pleading and crying but he said it was going to be okay. He told me how much of a pain in the ass I was and how grateful I should be that someone like him wanted me. I didn’t want him to want me. I knew it was wrong.

I couldn’t tell my mother. She chose Eli in the divorce, she wanted him and she let my father have me so why would she believe a word I said against her son, my brother? Eli made sure I knew she wouldn’t believe me too. He raped me, threatened me, laughed at me. Mom was oblivious. She was constantly working or out with her friends or boyfriend. I was stuck. I was stuck with my rapist brother and party-animal mother.

I counted down the days until I turned eighteen; until I was able to get out of here. I wish the days were shorter, time went by faster. My strength diminished more and more every single day. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to continue this.

Three hundred days to go.

Notes

A new story idea that has been wanting to come out for weeks now! This will be updated slowly until I finish a couple of other stories. I originally didn't want to start writing this until early next year, but it just wanted to come out, so here it is.

Let me know how you guys like it, if you like it! I'm hoping now that I've got the first chapter out I can focus better on My Sweet Medusa and Regrets and Romance (which might be off hiatus sooner than expected for those who read that).

Thank you for reading!