Celeste's childhood wasn't something she loved talking about. It was filled with nothing but painful memories. Whether they were the ones from when her father, along with her brothers, left, or the ones from her mother's death and her stepfather's a...
tw: mentions of suicidal thoughts and tendencies, self-harm, and panic attacks. please be careful while reading.
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MORE OFTEN THAN not, I found myself a prisoner of my mind. I found myself retreating into the dark pits of my past, wandering through their secluded alleyways and moving past their lingering dangers.
The memories often started with my childhood. The bits and crumbles of my past that still clung to my mind as they dug their path into its depths. The first station I would often visit had always been the first few years of my life: the ones I'd survived before Celeste had come along.
If I were to create a painting out of my childhood, the background would be a blend of every bright color combined and merged. Stripes of red and yellow would litter the canvas, concealing the traces of black and gray that lay under their surface. That was what my days had felt like back then. Blinding. Deafening. And clashing.
My days had always clashed. When my father would pick me up from school, he would smile and laugh, pretending to be a good father. He would pull me into his warm embrace and draw a grin across my face, putting up a mask for the world to see. But as soon as the doors would close and the keys would get tossed, reality would flip. The floor I stood on would slip under my weight, tripping me, hurting me, and painting my skin with its shades.
The painting of my childhood would contain a more prominent black spot. A shadow, almost, painted in the corner, away from the lingering eyes, for at the end of the day, I was no different from one. A shadow. A ghost. A figure that no one saw. My voice was a whisper of a scream that no one heard.
It had always been like that.
The world surrounding me was bright. It was too bright. The noises were loud. I heard laughs. I heard chatters. I heard whispers and words. I saw smiles. I saw love. I saw families. But I always stood on the sidelines, craving. I was always an outcast.
The words, the laughs, and the sounds: they had rarely been shared with me. The love, the families, and the smiles had stood far, far away from me, as though my mere appearance had repelled them, as though my mere existence had disgusted them.
I wouldn't blame them.
Not really.
I'd made it to the juvie, after all.
The parents had been right when they'd told their kids to stay away from me. I'd always been a threat in their eyes, after all: a bad influence. I would skip school one day and go back the following one with nothing but a pencil and an empty bag. No food, no solved homework, and no notebooks. My hair would be a dirty mess, and my clothes would barely get washed.
I'd stolen the pencil from the art room when no one had been watching.
A strangled sob often choked me when I thought about the past. It clogged my throat and blocked my airways.
