"Fucking prick" I scream into nothing.
The air around me thickens with my anger as my body shakes, violently, an accurate representation of the feelings coursing through me.
10 years. 10 fucking years and he waltzes back into my life like he never left, like he never hurt me, like he never broke me, in ways a father never should.
"Your mothers dead"
I repeat the sentence that has clawed at my mind since I heard it over that crackling phone line, though I couldn't mistake the news, words that I've waited to hear and to celebrate. Yet they haven't arrived with as much positivity as I had hoped. Instead, they've brought years' worth of suppressed feelings in tonnes, waiting to be unpacked. Luggage I wish I could store under my bed but instead I've got to find a drawer, or a shelf to place it on because if I don't, it'll kill me.
Is that such a bad thing?
The dampness of the tree stump seeps into my leggings as rain pelts down on me heavy, a weak attempt to wash away my past, but I'm stained, dirty and no amount of water can get rid of it. So, I'm left with the reminder. Memories, scars, social workers. All puzzle pieces into making up the fucked up 17-year-old that's me, Katie fucking Dumont.
Oh, and that's the best bit, not only am I plagued with seeing their faces every time I look in the mirror, I'm reminded I'm still a part of them legally. Every time I write my name on a schoolbook, or fill out my name online, even when I look at my bank card. Dumont is a ghost, one that haunts me religiously and one I certainly can't shift, it's like a shadow only it's not weightless but in fact is the weight of me, because my whole being is the result of two idiots who wouldn't know love if it hit them in the face. Only obsession and addiction.
So why in the after math of her death do I feel like mourning the woman who I've already mourned as a child, when she wasn't even dead, when she was meant to be my mother but strayed so far from her role she couldn't come back. She didn't want to come back.
No one ever comes back, they hurt and leave me. It's a repeating cycle that I allow, because I play the naïve card when I've been as mature as a fully grown adult from birth, because I know as I first lay in that room, that turned yellow from cigarettes and where wallpaper fell at the corners, I knew it wasn't home.
Home is the feeling I chase, because everyone always says it's the people that make it, yet what do you do when you don't have people.
I have my foster siblings, but in truth would they choose me? Or do they think I'm too twisted to be saved, can my wrinkles be smoothed and my rough edges sanded or will I always be the jagged prickly girl that scares everyone off. It's a waiting game. It'll happen and I've come accustomed to guessing when. Normally false hope puts the date longer, but it never reaches it, always falls short by a few days, or months, even years in some cases.
My two exceptions? Foster siblings that stand by me regardless much to my confusion and the boy that's plagued my life from birth, who got the luck of the draw. He got the parents that sobered up for him, I got the ones that sobered me up to reality, dulled any light and made me realise that dreams are simply that, no matter what you wish for you won't get it, not fully.
So why when I know that notion so well its carved into my person do I still dream of peace, or a life where I don't rely on the joint in my hand or the pills in my pocket to continue on, when I discover the girl hidden behind red rimmed eyes and bruised skin.
Blonde strands of hair stick to my clammy face as reality hits me smack bang in the face, I can't hide in this forest forever but hallucinations and delusion allow me to mentally do just that.
When my phone chimes again I sniffle once more, waiting to see what demand awaits me next, what false promise or twisted lie sits in a bubble for me to read. Yet when I spin the metal block in my hand I feel air to my lungs and clarity to my mind.
Olly: Where are you?
Pain in my arse or not he's my best friend, even if im not his because I can rely on him for anything, he's my fall back always and as much as I hate myself for putting the pressure on him I selfishly bask in the feeling of pretending someone cares, even if it is guilt that fuels him.
But best friend or not, he can't know, no one can, not Mallory or Matty, certainly not Becca or Lucas, just no one. This is my cross to bear and my issue to be harmed with no matter how much I want to let go, because I refuse to admit weakness more than I have.
Olly: Please Kat, I'm worried shitless here, answer your phone
I can't, I won't. Not now.
I need the silence, I need the natural punishment of the elements, from goosebumps on my skin to raindrops on my face, hard to distinguish them from the tears that give them company. The outliers in the equation, though you cant cancel them out as they burn brandings on my face, highlighting I'm weak and defenceless. And I prove them right as I take another drag of my joint, sitting in the stillness it ensues.
