I always watch her from the shadows of the night. Ever since I was young I would run to where she was and watch how she would sit in her fathers lap as he read to her fairytales. About princesses who meet their prince and fell in love and lived happily ever after. I would see her mother lying in the bed next to them, running her hands along her daughters back in a lazy calm gesture of warmth, love and affection. I would watch as they kissed her goodnight as her eyes tried to remain open. Watch them softly say I love you as they walked out. I would always feel that sharp sting of tears as I watched the innocence and the beauty of it. Something that I always longed for. I would always try to imagine my family like that. My mother always cuddling me and telling me that she loved me, my father playing games with me in the yard, like a normal family. I would then claw at my bruised and battered skin and openly weep in self loathing as I though about what I did have.
I was taken away from my biological parents when I was very young. My father had died leaving me and mom by ourselves. Shortly after mom had spiralled down into insanity. She couldn’t cope with the loss of him so she took this out onto me often. Lashing out at me after she had a few too many drinks, drawing blood from my cheeks, which had trickled down and stained the carpet. “Why couldn’t it have been you?” she would always whisper as I lay there on the carpet clutching my wounds in agony. Then she would withdraw away and shun me. Never looking after me, leaving me to try to get my own food, and left me with my dirty clothes and malnourished. It had changed somewhat when my best friend Sarai’s mother had noticed my bruises and had taken me in for awhile, before I had found a foster family.
I had known Sarai ever since I had come into this world. I am not sure when we had first become friends, but we had never been apart. I would always try to escape from my mom and meet Sarai in the small wood that had separated our houses. There we had planned that we would run away together, hop onto the next bus that came not caring where it took us. We never worked out the full details but we never cared either. We had always believed that this would happen. The innocence of our childhood had never allowed for any doubt.
