Today's the day. The day my miraculous adventure will begin. It feels like I'm shedding my old skin, ready to start fresh and leave it all behind. Sadness grips my heart, though, and whenever I let my mind wander it leads me back to that same heartache. I just have to let go and know I'm ready to lose connection with my childhood.
I twisted my hair between my hands as I looked around my house for the millionth time. There was a dent in the wooden coffee table from when my father came home drunk once. He was so drunk in fact, that he tripped over the table and his knee slammed into the hard surface. He yelled and cursed from the pain, and he attained a gnarly purple and blue bruise from that incident.
I remember when I was little, my mother would buy me Disney Princess dresses and always had tea parties with me on a small fold-up table. We kept our pinkies up, spoke in English accents, and bantered over which princess was better. It all ended with us laughing and my father shaking his head at us, but he was always hiding a smile.
My eyes welled up with tears. Memories flooded through my mind like a dam broke somewhere. The first of many warm teardrops fell down my cheeks, and I attempted to wipe them away as I remembered more.
I turned to the kitchen and saw myself making cookies with my mom at age eight. They were slightly burnt cookies, but that didn't stop me from having a good time. We made peanut butter cookies a few days later in an attempt to earn any self respect. Let's just say that the only remotely good thing that happened that day was that we managed to get flour on the ceiling.
The dining table had it's own collection of memories too. Visions of sixteen year old me filled my eyes, hunching over my homework in disgust. My dad came in and became concerned, seeing that I had been obsessing about exams and failure. My worries got so bad that I stopped eating, wanting to just sleep all of the time. My parents couldn't get me to eat, and so they took me to a doctor and a therapist, and even that didn't help. I soon developed anxiety, and suddenly I cared a lot about my life and how easy it is to die. I got depressed and no therapist would help. Hunger was the only thing that reminded me to live. I got over the depression and anxiety, and eventually my anorexia. I am still quite small and bony, my face a bit gaunt from weight loss.
"Charlotte?" A female's silvery voice filled the empty air.
I blinked a few times, startled at my company. My mother had just walked in to me in tears, either she'll know that I'm thinking about this house, or she will think I'm just sad. And staring at a table.
I looked up into her warm brown eyes as she engulfed me in a hug. I finally let go all of my pent up emotions through my tears. I buried my head in my mom's shoulder as she rubbed my back. Waves of pain swept through me from all those years of crying myself to sleep at night, suicide always on my mind. It hurts, not just in a physical sense, but it makes my heart ache for happiness that isn't there. Not that I wasn't about to embark on an amazing trip to the UK with my best friend, but I want to fix the past that can't be undone. Oh what I would give.
"Aw, what's wrong honey?" My mother's comforting voice soothed.
"I-I feel so bad about leaving you guys," I blubbered, "And I wish I was normal, but I'm not because I'm skin and bones."
I sobbed into the purple fabric, my nose starting to stuff up. It was true, I'm not normal and I haven't been since I was sixteen. Started young, and now forever corrupted until I'm at peace with the war in my brain.
"Charlotte, I'm going to be straight with you. You are a nice, attractive young woman. You are not skin and bones, but however you are pretty skinny. I would start with nice diet of meat, fruits, and vegetables. You are not upsetting neither I or your father on moving out of the country."
