Barefoot Cinderella

10. Always on the Outside, Looking in...

2 years ago...

2nd September 2013, Monday

Time heals all wounds...

Indeed it does. All in the span of three years I had lost my mother, father and my best friend - three people that meant the most to me in the world.

Initially it hurt a lot, like really a lot. At times the loss bore down on me so much that I found it really hard to even breathe. But eventually, as time passed, I was okay with it. Not because the pain had gone away, but because I was used to it now. I was in that phase of life when I had forgotten what my life was like without the pain.

The pain was my constant companion now. The companion I paid no mind to. The companion who was always there, lurking in the back on my mind, my heart. The companion I treated with cold indifference, like its presence no longer mattered.

I was trapped in my own little bubble of torment. The outside world seemed harmless to me now, and why it wouldn't. My own personal demons, which haunted me day in and out were far more crueller than the outside world had the power to be.

There was nothing left in this world that could touch me or affect me would do any worst damage than what I had already been through.

I was lost.

At first I found it incredibly hard to live my life the way my parents would have expected me to. But with time, the more indifferent I grew towards my surroundings; it got easier for me to do as expected. That didn't mean that I had grown impervious to the pain, the hurt other tried to inflict on my soul. All it did was help me become apathetic, the wounds no longer cutting as deep as they used to.

Maybe that was the reason why it no longer mattered how badly Rhea teased me or stepmother insulted me.

Even when Rhea and stepmother manipulated me into leaving my room, I obeyed them wordlessly - as if they were not shredding the last piece of my heart and soul that had been tethering me to the hope of a better future. I packed up all my things and moved out of the sanctuary my mother had created for me and moved into the attic.

Seeing my compliance, their behaviour towards me worsened with time. This series of unfortunate events began with the departure of my father to a business trip. He left me in care of my stepmother who promised him that she'd take care of me to the best of her ability. Little did he know how that little promise could be manipulated to her wills and whims.

Unbeknownst to us, my stepmother had to keep that promise for a tad bit longer when a month became a year, with no word from my father. This was followed by a visit from my father's lawyers, according to whom my father was never going to return.

I never got a chance to speak to them but from what I later learned was that my father had left stepmother and the family penniless. This drove to the heights of new lows, firing the entire household and what not, all in an effort to cut down expenses.

This, unfortunately, included stripping me of the few liberties I had in life.

By then I had grown numb towards the torture that their cruelty barely registered. It was as if they all blamed their misfortunes on me, even though I was just as much the victim as they were. They treated me more like their personal servant then a family member. I knew what they were doing to me was not right, but in the light of all I had been through, it all seemed like fate to me.

At times like these I even consider having a person to talk to a luxury. I mean this is why I am here scribbling all my deepest thoughts on a piece of paper, on the morning of my first day of high school because I have nobody else to talk to. Most people my age would be super excited at the prospect of starting a new phase of their life, but here I am dreading it. Why? I don't really have to tell you that now would I.