Elora - Squeal

21

"Unfortunately we are coming to the end with my interview with Elora Montes. I just have a few more thing I want to talk about." Elora was relieved. She couldn't remember when was the last time she cried so much.

"I'm ready. Bring em' on." El said smiling.

"Through your entire journey. What would you have changed? Or things, if there is more than one?"

Elora had been waiting for a question like this. "That has to be the best answer you've asked all night." She thought hard, there were so many things she wish she could change. "I'd probably changed working at that strip club. But then I would've never met Rico."

"And why is that?"

"Working there I got my ass kicked every day. I'd go out on that stage for twelve hours a night and give my one hundred and ten percent every time and come off that stage and get my hard earned money taken from me. If I could, I would change my death of my grandmother. She wouldn't have let me be on the streets or working at a strip club. At least if I did work there she wouldn't have let that man take everything I owned."

Oprah snickered at Elora's last statement. "One more thing you would change?"

"Not loving myself. That would be the biggest thing. I hated myself up until I got help most recently."

"Why?" Oprah frowned in confusion. She couldn't imagine someone as beautiful as Elora as someone who hated themselves.

"Because when you go through so much, you start to hate yourself. You lose your self-worth. You can love yourself on the outside but that doesn't mean anything if you don't love yourself on the inside."

"When did you start to feel that? And why did it stop?"

"It started when my father took me to court to take my grandmother's house from me. When he disowned me and claimed his other children and not me and it followed me even after his death. Rico's probably gonna think I'm creepy for saying this, but it stopped after I came home from the hospital and it was my first time ever sleeping peacefully through the night without some crazy nightmare waking me up. I had woken up for some reason I can't remember, like I was thirsty or something, anyway. Rico was sleeping. And he had his arm wrapped around me and i thought to myself "he's still here" Because he could've left me a long time ago. And there were times where I excepted him to leave. But at that moment I realized how much he loved me. Once that realization hit I felt this feeling I never felt before within myself."

Rico sat back in the dining room chair with a puzzled look on his face.

She expected me to leave? He thought to himself. I would never do that.

Oprah hesitated to mention her next topic but she did it for the sake of her own curiosity.

"Since you mention the hospital. I wanna ask about that day on the bridge." Everyone watching was sitting on pins and needles wondering the same thing. Everyone was waiting for her to ask. "We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to." Oprah said even though she really wanted to know.

"We can talk about it because I still don't have any memory of that day. I read the news reports and the crazy ass blogs but I still don't remember."

"If you don't mind go through what you do remember."

Elora sat with her right leg crossed over her left. "I remember waking up and being covered in sweat. It gets foggy right after that. I remember calling 911 on myself and screaming for helping. Then there was a voice in my head screaming for me to do something and the creepy image of blood everywhere in our bathroom. Then everything from there is nonexistent. I remember being in a hospital room with a headache from hell and answering questions my doctor was asking and then Rico coming into the room."