Mental Health And The Girl Next Door

meeting Emmily

This is a story about a girl with slanted, inky brown eyes, olive skin and sooty brown hair, born in august 1998. Her name is Emmily. Emmily is the daughter of Travis grace, and holly Reece. Holly and Travis had two children together, both being daughters as it turns out, Rachel and Emmily. Rachel has pale white skin, hazel doe like eyes and dark brown, almost charcoal hair that was a few shades darker than her sisters. Rachel was 14 months older than Emmily, being born early 1997.

Travis was adopted as a child, his younger brother died of a heart condition when he was around in his teen years. This caused him a lot of grief understandably, and would later be blamed for his behaviour towards his children in the years to come. Travis was an odd man with grey hair which had started bolding on the crown of his head.. His face held a beard a few inches thick that connected to a thick moustache. Both framed his face in a way that made it look thinner than it was. He was a burly man , no taller than 5'9, with a protruding beer belly and a pink scar ran a down from his shoulder. Many people believed he was bipolar, having the ability to laugh and joke one minute and tell the next, Emmily never knew if the father she was talking to was the gentle joker that always seemed to have an amusing quip or the father that had a zero tolerance for kidding around with a temper shorter than his height.

Holly was a chunky woman, with wiry brown hair and slanted hazel eyes that matched her daughters. Her face was aged softly, she was gifted with skin that held its age well, lacking the wrinkles a person her age would have. Holly had two brothers and one sister, she lost her younger brother when she was a teenager, this is one of the emotional trauma's she has suffered. She isn't always the ideal mother and at times she screws up but she always tries to keep Emmily on the right track.

Emmily doesn't remember the early years of her life, but what she does remember, isn't pleasant.

Emmily and Rachel grew up in two houses from the age of zero to five, one of the houses was shared with holly's parents, Rachels and Emmilys grandparents, Merida and Fredrick reece. This house was decrepit, and outside was under construction at the time. The house had three to four bedrooms, two lounge rooms, and an en-suite connected to the main bedroom and a bathroom. This house was in a little colder sack street which consisted for only seven other houses, not a shabby place to live, but the second house the girls spent their time living in was much, much worse.

The second house was inadequate to say the least, it had two bedrooms, one being a master bedroom which happened to be where the four of them slept (Rachel, Emmily, Travis and their little brother Mitchell, the son of Travis Grace and his next girlfriend Mina Laurence), the sleeping arrangement consisted of Rachel, Mitchell and Travis on a matured queen sized bed, and emmily on the floor on a blue, ratty blow up mattress. Plus, one conjoined bedroom, it didn't have any doors, just entrance ways that were covered by a tattered, pink bed sheet that was held up by nails. This room was overflowing with toys and garbage making a flat wall against the back of the makeshift curtains, the reason it's a conjoined bedroom is because the damaged dividing wall was knocked down long before Emmily can recall due to termite damage. It had one small bathroom and a separate toilet. Both the bathroom and toilet were riddled with different types of mould, a tiny shower bath combo that was used to bathe all three children when they were little sat in the bathroom on the right hand wall, and a minuscule vanity with a mirror sat directly across from the door. A lounge room with a modest TV, rows and rows of DVDs and a lounge made of shredded ashen leather, backed up against a chipped oak painted wall, this couch happened to be the home of infestations of maggots in old pizza boxes. The lounge room was allied with a dining room. The dining room consisted of a wooden table, chipping around the edges with both clutter on top and underneath it. Opposite the dining room was a kitchen, mouldy and squalid, with a desolate fridge that never seemed to be full, and a sink was unkempt, with crusty pots and plates that no one ever remembered using.

Emmilys mother often dropped the two sisters off at their father's house while she went out partying night after night, she would often leave them with him for days on end, sometimes she would leave them there for up to a week at a time. At the time she was unaware of the condition the house was in, or how they were treated by their so called father.

Long before Holly moved out and away from Travis, Travis had an affair, with a lady called Mina, yes that Mina, the mother of Mitchell. Mina was an awful lady, with off blond hair and a belly almost as big as Travis', but there was something even bigger than that, her attitude. Mina wasn't known for being a nice lady, and Emmily never really understood what Travis saw in her, but she pined it down to one thing, desperation. When holly moved out Mina happily moved in with her two sons, Denis and Frank.

Before the divorce was finalised and the custody settlement was agreed upon, that was how everything worked. But Thankfully after three years Holly found someone and remarried, that's when things settle down a tiny amount, and it was only every fortnight the two girls would go to their father's house. Holly's new husband was called John Fraiser. John was thin, with pasty white skin, dull blue eyes and sandy brown hair always chopped short. Together John and Holly had a child, another daughter named Lindy Fraiser born 2003, with ivory skin, wide hazel eyes and strawberry red hair, she was beautiful.

This is Emmily's story. I am Emmily, and this is my story.