She had been raised on unrealistic dreams, a broken family, and an unhealthy reliance on sleeping pills.
She was terrified of becoming her mother; trapped in a small town with a deadbeat boyfriend who would take her out to Olive Garden for a monthly date night and get her car's oil changed, but would take a swing at her every time he had too much to drink. She began hoarding cash in an envelope hidden in the back of her closet, a desperate attempt for future salvation. Enough money to help pay for college if she got a scholarship, enough for a small apartment if she could get a job, enough to buy a bus ticket and drive far, far away if she found somewhere to go. The problem was all of her plans were riding on ifs.
She might've been smart enough to get a scholarship. Unfortunately, all of her study time was squandered working, doing whatever she could to earn some extra cash. She was a Bs and Cs student, the girl who handed in her homework late and fell asleep in class. She heard the same mantra over and over from teachers throughout her whole career in education. If you applied yourself you could achieve great things. If she could've forced herself to study she would've, but she couldn't. Some people sought academic validation, she sought that warm, hopeful feeling deep in her stomach whenever she shoved some more cash into that envelope.
She wasn't just seeking financial validation, no, the male gaze brought her some of that too. She realized later in life it was probably the lack of a reliable father figure that led her to seek male attention the way she did, but she didn't know that at the time. All she knew was that when she leaned over so a guy could see down her shirt and she saw his dick harden in response, it gave her a sense of control that she craved.
She supposed she was pretty. Or easy. Or a little bit of both. Either way, men seemed to like her. She had her first boyfriend when she was 12. He had been 15. They dated for a year and a half, and he taught her how to drive in his dad's truck in the high school parking lot. He was the only boyfriend she might've loved. But she wasn't sure. She could've just been young and dumb and naive, and confused the amazing feeling that came with adventure and attention with love.
The next boy she dated she didn't like as much, or even at all after a little bit. She was 14 and he was 18. A freshman and a senior. She had realized by that point she had a thing for older guys, but she still hadn't quite figured out why.
She had figured out a few other things though. She was insecure about her body, of course she was, everyone was at that age, but she realized if guys were distracted by cleavage they wouldn't be looking at her thighs or her stomach or any other part of her that made her want to skip meals and force herself to go on runs each day.
She had also figured out that if her mother wasn't going to be an adult, she had to step up and be one in her place. She began doing the taxes, the laundry, and paying the bills. She started watching YouTube makeup tutorials so she could cover up her mother's black eyes so that she could still go to work without anyone asking too many questions.
Sometimes she would lie in bed at night and look at her life from an outsider's point of view. She realized how sad and pathetic and desperate she was. A little girl playing dress up as a grown-up. Saving up money when she knew it would never be enough to get out of that horrible town. Dating guys older than her to feel older, even though she knew how their relationships looked to everyone else: a little creepy and an overall bad decision on her part. She knew perfectly blending the foundation over her mother's face early in the morning before her shift wouldn't change the fact that her boyfriend beat her. She knew she could never do enough, never would be enough.
Halfway through her junior year, she realized salvation was unattainable. She had just dumped her 19-year-old boyfriend for cheating on her while his band was on tour, and she was lying on her bed feeling depressed when her mother came through to check on her.
"Oh, don't cry," she had said. "I went through the same thing in high school. Trust me, it gets better."
But it didn't. Because her mother was still living here, in this town. She was still dating a piece of shit, different than the one from high school, but still, a piece of shit who gave more fucks about his PS4 than he did about her. She knew at that moment she would become her mother. There was no denying it or trying to stop it. And with that revelation, she gathered her envelope full of money and deposited into her mother's account, so they could use it to pay the bills for the next month.
