We'll Meet Again

Prologue

"What meaning does my living existence hold?" A question that Madison Gray held in the back of her head every second passing by. Life wasn't easy through her eyes; It had never been. The complexity started when she was almost ten years old. A child's first time acknowledging what alcohol abuse does to a person. To her father.

He no longer was in the frame of the perfect family that her mother hung up in the living room's wall for all the house guests to see. It was now her fifteen-year-old self and her older brother, who left the picture for college years after. All the crying, all the yelling, all the screaming were gone, but it would never leave her. She never saw her parents in love, there's not even a kiss in the forehead she could remember. It was exhausting for her to hear every single fight they had, hidden, in case of seeing her father's hand in the air ready to hit. It never happened.

It was difficult to find a word between missing and hating. She envied her father, how easily he had gone and the capability he possessed of leaving everything in the past; everyone in the past. Nothing mattered to him, then why did it still bother her? Probably because he appeared in her life repeatedly, opening wounds that were starting to dry.

There were those times when everything between them was perfect. The relationship father and daughter she always dreamt about. False promises he declared to keep her anger shut. Then he disappeared leaving no trace behind but a liquor smell that lasted weeks. A cycle.

Madison found an interest towards analyzing her mother's behavior. At first it hurt seeing the weight of blame she put on the shoulders of her own daughter. How she exploded without any consent or reason at all. She knew the mentally ill when it was shown but this case was something else. Empathizing with her mother and trying to justify her actions was becoming a habit to feel less to every word she spoke towards her.

"You don't deserve anything in life."

"You are the reason I don't want to live."

"You are useless."

Statements someone can forgive, not forget. But she never asked for forgiveness or felt bad after saying them. They were her truth. Her perspective.

Going to parties as an excuse to the unconscious became normal in Madison. She saw it as an escape to all that bleeding. Other life. None of her friends knew anything and she preferred to keep it that way. She questioned if her feelings were an exaggeration created by the sensibility of her heart. The blurry music and the loud vision made her non-stopping thoughts stop. Waves of freedom and happiness drowned her mind leading her floating body to the peaceful middle of the sea. Then she came back home and saw her father in the mirror which broke her but that didn't stop her.

Every late night, a different name between her thighs. She searched for validation from the first taste of feeling wanted by someone. No feelings attached. She had tried keeping up with romantic relationships, but they never worked out. The realization that someone could genuinely love her became suffocating. She could feel the chains in her wrists and the pression in her breathing, so she left any kind of commitment she was starting to get herself into. She wondered in her sleep if she would ever be in love and fill that desire. If she wanted it so badly then why couldn't she?

There was a boy who marked her in ways that she thought couldn't be possible. They used each other physically but ended up attracting a psychological need. Love? She never figured that out and neither did him because it ended too soon. It was summer and his studies were a thousand miles away. She still misses him but won't admit it. Nothing but a vulnerability to hide.

Suddenly her life took a turn on her second year of college. It was early in the morning when she saw big bags of luggage in the house entrance. She instantly recognized that her mother was leaving town. She did. Without a glimpse of remorse, she left her daughter and a two-page letter of reasons. It should have torn Madison away, but it made her feel numb, because part of her always knew that would happen. She would survive and she knew it. She had a car, the house, money and... Nobody.