Two weeks later, we stayed up and waited till midnight. Though, nothing changed when the New Year began. I used to think that something would happen when I was a little girl. I wait on my birthday and thought I would get some magical power on my birthday. It’s stupid now that I think about it.
I keep thinking about my family and what they’re doing without me. I had wondered about my mom and dad. Rango, my dog, must be sad to have no one to sleep with at night. He always lay in bed with me.
I missed their wet nose that was always over me every morning, pressed against me till I opened my eyes.
What about Kevin? Surely he had missed me, right? And mom, who is she going to go shopping with? To give advice to about boys and fashion even when it was unwanted? She was my mom! She lived for that stuff.
And dad? Who’s he going to teach games and silly little random facts? Who was going to wear stupid sweaters and cheesy jokes being told at dinner? I missed it. I wanted someone to hear me, not slip away slowly into the hands of the devil.
I started to remember Christmas when I was five years old. Kevin was ten. We had Rango’s mom, Darley. She was a golden lab puppy at the time. She ate the bark off the tree so we had to get a new one three days before Christmas. Kevin had peed on the gifts. Stupidly it was his gifts. He was grounded for a month after that. He got better as he got older. I wasn’t sure why I started to remember that. That Christmas was nothing special. It was a terrible Christmas.
Every moment in my life was starting to fill special because I was alive, but in the house with the monster, I was dead. I missed my family. They were my family. I came home every day from school to my mother’s arms.
I would sit in my father’s lap and he would tell me funny stories. Even Kevin who played pranks on me every day. I got him back a few times. But in the end, we knew these silly pranks were nothing. We loved each other.
I cried again at the thought of never seeing my mother’s face when I got straight A’s or hearing my dad telling me a story.
Every time the monster had tried to hug me and relax me, I screamed and cursed and kicked and bite. I couldn’t give my trust to a man who had stolen me out of my life. It wasn’t the best life, but it was my life.
The more time passed, the more I left emotionally drained. He was unpredictable. One day, he was nice and sweet, then the next he was ranting about something wrong with the world. It was fine once in a while to down on the world, but when you hear it every day, it sucks away your energy to try to be happy.
He spoke about political and how stupid they were. He even went as far as saying he could do better, and should run for President one day. What he really hated was Liberals. How they were trying to take his guns away, and how they stick their nose in everything and blah blah blah.
The good old days were his favorite, when a woman stayed at home and took care of the house. According to him, affairs started when females started to enter the work force. That’s when ‘diky’ ‘unattractive’ and ‘fats-o’ started appearing. Women have gone off the deep end, to him.
I wanted to shout “Shut up!” and go chop off all my hair to just piss him off. He went on about how beautiful I looked with long hair and no makeup. I was all natural.
When he would rant, I would go to my happy place in my mind. It was the only thing not to make myself go crazy. In my head, I was dancing in the dessert, far away and happy. Truth be told, I was just sick of the snow and cold. The thought of putting on shorts and soaking in the sun was a good place to runaway to.
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