Cheers to New Beginnings

Prologue: Lilibeth Edwards

My sister once asked me what I would do should someone from my past suddenly appear here. I swore up and down that it wouldn't matter. Anyone from my past that ever crossed my path again couldn't hurt my new life. I didn't fall to peer pressure to anyone from that time in my life. I could easily refute their claims. None would be able to make me slip up on the truth. At the end of the summer before my senior year, I'd vowed to myself that the next guy I would have sex with would be my husband. I refused to do drugs any longer. I was taking my fresh start and recreating myself to how I should be, how I should have been when Mom was alive.

See this wasn't my first "fresh start". When my mother was alive, I knew she was dying. It killed me to think, she'd never see my greatest accomplishments. So I devised a plan. At least once a week, I'd do something to make her proud of me. I studied all the time. I tried to have the right friends. I tried to hold my tongue even during times I should have stuck up for myself. It killed me not to be able to blow off steam when I needed to, but seeing how happy my mom was made me keep doing it. I'd convinced myself that I was being true to myself, that that was who I really was. But Mom died when I was thirteen. The only close family my sister, Tammy, and I had was our Aunt Tonya. Social Services sent us to live with her because she sobered up enough for the drug tests. She just wanted the allotted money she'd get every week for keeping us. Tonya was a drug addict and a drunk. Tammy took the transition horribly. She was fourteen for crying out loud. She stayed at her friends house every chance she got. I'd tell her I was staying at a friend's house as well, because I didn't want her to worry, but I didn't have any friends to stay the night with. With in a couple of months I'd gotten into multiple arguments with my aunt, her calling me a prude. I began to believe it, so I decided on Halloween night that I was going to have a fresh start, a new beginning. A six dollar hair dye changed my hair from dull brown to platinum blond. I put on a leather mini, high top leather boots, and a white button up flowy shirt, knowing my black camisole was visible underneath. I called myself Lili, not Lilibeth. Our house was near an old park that a bunch of the kids used as a party zone. It didn't take long for an older teen to take me under his wing along with his fourteen year old little brother. I lost my virginity within the first month and was drinking with the best of them with in two months. The piercings came next, first an eyebrow ring, the snake bites. Soon enough it morphed into a belly ring, a tongue ring, and a tattoo of a sword down my spine. My sister realized to late that she had lost me.

My life turned into a different guy every month, different drugs every weekend, but when I'd wake up with a hangover every morning, I'd hate myself. I had a few steady boyfriends, but I started dating a guy named Cadience when I was fifteen. He'd been the little brother of my "mentor." A year went by and I started to like him more than I should, and I thought he felt the same, so we broke up on my sixteenth birthday, right after I got my birthday sex. After we fell out, I started hating the party scene more and more. I'd see him every where with a different girl and finally realized I'd never find a lasting relationship if it was based on drugs and sex.

The day my sister turned eighteen she filed for custody of me, even though I was near seventeen. The court gave me to her before the ink was dry. A friend of our Mom's lived in a city across the state, so we moved into her rental apartment.

That was my second new beginning. My jewelry came out mainly, although I didn't take out my tongue ring. The other's I put in daily to keep them from growing up. I dyed my hair back brown, and started paying attention in school again. My new name was Beth.