Finding Melody

01: A Sleepless Night

Some people say you can move on from trauma, you can move on from the feelings those people made you feel. But what most bottle up about this trauma, is that it'll haunt you until the day you die. Every moment, every wound, every vile comment, and while everyone else is living painlessly and perfectly, your stuck in that never ending movie of how tragic your life is and always will be.

"Dinner", I heard Nolan knock on the door, as I quickly flipped the box of my little knick knacks under my bed. I couldn't let them see what was in this ever so discrete box, that was labeled as a new pair of soccer cleats.

"Coming", I yelled out hoping the door wouldn't fling open and Nolan would sit here with me as he asked me what was under my bed that I kept in a box. How could I describe the contents of this box in anyway where they would understand it?

I took the box back out, flipping underneath it to the photo I hated the most. It was him, my tormentor and previously my father who had passed. I was thankful he died, I could now live knowing he would never have his hands on me again, but I should've known I would never be free. Every moment of my life there he is haunting me, following me, scaring me, taunting me he's there every time my eyes shut for just a couple seconds.

I had no explanation why I kept the tortured photo, it was just simple a photo of him from a newspaper at some event. I couldn't explain it to anyone who would listen, all I knew is that one day when he stopped haunting me I would burn the photo.

I stuffed the photo under the rest of the papers, and flipped through the rest seeing his death announcement in the newspaper I had cut up, a necklace that Natalie had told me belonged to my mom, and my detailed statement of the neglect he showed me and the physical, mental, emotional abuse he made me suffer.

There were pictures of my bruised body in those files, I would burn all of them when he stopped haunting me. I would burn them all, just like Natalie who doesn't even touch on the subject that she suffered tremendous amounts of abuse and she is happy now, I always wondered how she could be happy now. It had been not even a year since the last time, and she had gotten over it, but I couldn't.

Natalie, my sister was one of those people where she didn't hold grudges, she let it go and wouldn't hold onto it, but I was the opposite I couldn't believe he was the person who I was supposed to call my father.

I couldn't just get over the list of things he had done, he had emotionally, physically, mentally abused my poor mother,Natalie and myself. And for all of that he couldn't even make it to trial, he went and hung himself, because he couldn't suffer the pain of it all. I just wanted him to know what it felt like, I just wanted him to know that agonizing feeling but he couldn't even handle having his business all out in the open so he ended any chances of that.

But for Natalie, I saw many reasons for happiness, she had forgotten about it all and I knew she didn't have nightmares so she lived her life with the people she loved. She gave all the credit to her husband, Nolan who Daniel had forced her to marry. I guess something did come out of that trash man, a marriage.

"Melly everyone's at the table", Natalie complained, I took the necklace out of the box and hung it around my neck then I shoved the box under the bed and quickly slipped on the dress I was wearing earlier. I opened the door, and saw Natalie standing there with her hands on her baby bump, it was her favorite unconscious thing to do. I think sometimes even she couldn't believe she was pregnant. Her and Nolan had been trying for an eternity and they had ran into a lot of complications so this pregnancy meant everything to her.

"Sorry, I was just studying", I said knowing she knew I was stressing about the exams that were coming up.

Her eyes wandered to my neck, and she acknowledged the necklace without a word.