You're Mine

2: First Day In a New Life

My alarm started ringing and I opened my eyes from a dream that I come to know well as it had come to me several times in the past couple of years. I was unsurprised that the dream would return to me during my first night sleeping here in this house. It was a memory I had of my final summer here and a boy that I met briefly in passing while out with my grandma one day. The memory itself was pretty insignificant. He was beautiful and kind, but it was no more than that. The disturbing part of the dream I had come to know too well was the visions I would get about him following our brief interaction. In the visions, I was drawn to him but he had a dark secret that the whole town was involved in. I could never quite tell exactly what was wrong with him, but I would repeatedly put myself in danger in the dreams to get closer to him. I had spent time before trying to figure out what it meant or how it could apply to my life, but nothing made sense so I eventually stopped trying. I couldn't let the same dream I had let bother me for so long bother me today with all the day had in store.

 Today was my first day of of my senior year, midway through the year at a brand new school in a brand new town. I threw my legs out of bed and turned back to make the bed so it would be tidy when I got home tonight. I walked into the bathroom to wash my face and as I looked into the mirror, it dawned on me that this was truly the beginning of a brand new life for me.

I brushed out my hair and worked some leave in conditioner to the ends, giving it a soft feeling. I decided to pull out my old makeup bag and apply a thin layer of eyeliner before adding mascara to my eyes. I thought about how I had my father's blue eyes. It was the only thing about me that resembled him. With my mother's small frame, thick brown hair, her lips, her nose, her taste and preferences, I was essentially a copy of her apart from the light blue eyes from my father.

I walked out of the bathroom and put on a soft pair of black leggings with a nude colored sweater. I slipped my feet into by black boots, Doc Martens, that my auntie got me for my birthday last year and thought about the fact that I may never see her again. I had no current plans of ever returning to my hometown or ever facing my father, stepmother, or the three step brothers I had been forced to live with in the last few years. Unfortunately, that meant that there were some innocent people I would never see again like my auntie.

Thinking of my auntie also reminded me of my best friend, Ana. The two of them were the only ones who knew the details of my mother's incident and just how horrible my life got after she left. It pained me to know I could never share the trauma that hardened me into this version of myself with my mother, despite her abilities to comfort me and bring me back to myself in so many other situations. I just couldn't put that pain on her. I couldn't take the risk of her feeling guilty or at fault for the things that happened to me in her absence. I had yet to process all of it fully, but I knew that I couldn't change what happened so I tried not to think about it too much.

I typed a message to Ana. First day of school, wish me luck :')

You've got this. Take a breath! She responded. Our friendship would survive the distance, I was almost certain of it. My mother was already planning a time for her to come out and visit this summer after graduation. We met as children in school and grew up to do everything together. I never had a sibling, so Ana was the closest thing to a sister I ever had. We played all of our sports together, we were involved in the same programs and clubs at school, we took the same classes, everything. And it wasn't just because we wanted to do things together, although that was part of it at times, we just genuinely loved the same things and naturally wound up involved in the same activities.

Ana also made me feel less embarrassed of the emotions I experienced while processing my mother's incident. I was always told how similar my mother and I were as I was growing up. So when my mother found out about my father's affair and attempted to take her own life, I felt connected to that. I felt like if my mother reached that point of deciding that nothing was worth it anymore, maybe I would too one day. Ana was the first person I ever confided to about that fear of our similarities and she always assured me that while my genetics could determine how I looked and maybe some things about my preferences or my personality, at the end of the day I got to decide which things would actually become a part of who I am. It was her persistent teachings of taking back my own power that helped me overcome my fears about being like my mother and battle the depression following my experiences in those 3 years.