CHAPTER ONE
My dreams turned to whispers in the back of my mind, and my mother's scarce appearances in our shared home lessened more and more as my father's death became a distant memory. You see, I always knew who I planned on becoming, but as my mother's destructive behavior got worse, I found my dream fading faster than my mother had moved on from daddy. Of course, mamma was never in love, she never wanted to be. She had a passionate desire for male companionship, a fire inside of her for adventure and lust that I, unfortunately, inherited, despite daddy's desperate attempts to put out the growing flames. I know he knew of her secret affairs, everyone in our house knew of her attempts to find freedom from the life she made for herself.
A seemingly perfect life still has flaws, underneath what the press had portrayed as a certain kind of "heaven on earth." My father grew more ill than I had known him to be in the time I knew him, however, mamma didn't show even the slightest remorse to his worsening condition. Despite her mostvaliant efforts to save his life for as long as medically possible, I knew what was happening. My mother and I were more alike than most thought, and I saw the inevitable happen before it actually did, I saw our future together alone, because I thought like mamma, as long as daddy was alive, she kept her millions. As long as daddy was fighting for his life, even though I can't begin to fathom why he did, mamma got what she wanted. I assume he held on for me, dangling by a strand of his silver gray hair, but soon his last breath whispered from his chapped, pale lips, along with every family secret, and I was left feeling hopelessly, and depressingly alone.
I scarcely lacked the gift most are given to be intimate with others, on any level of a relationship. I could never speak my mind at the risk of hurting another, so every night I lie awake with the burdens my mother unknowingly forced my to carry, due to one of my many flaws. This one, just as my others, destroyed me mentally, and terrified me to a point that I can't even talk about it. I knew what I wanted to be, but I couldn't leave my mother where she was now. My fears mixed with alcohol and my fathers old cigars, doused the last hot coals of my dreams to escape from the firm grasp of my drug induced mother.
My future, I assume left with my father, because, for the longest time, I didn't see its shinning little face running out my front door, through our gardens, to a world I was excluded from; a real one. I couldn't even see a tomorrow for me, only what was laying right in front of me, which was, inevitably, a morbidly depressed mother, whose yearn for adventure was just as great as mine.
I look like my mamma, I'm told. We have the same high cheek bones, full lips, and dirty blonde curly hair; however, I have my daddy's piercing blue eyes, rounded face, large nose, and rosy cheeks. Somehow, others find me beautiful, but I see my flaws just out like a million thorns in a rose bush.
I strain to fulfill the standards that are ruefully set for me. Sit up straight, smile, but never too noticeably, dress as if every eye would be judging the slightest sign of imperfection, because they were. I left my house with cameras flashing like the visions of my abandoned past. I always expected my life to turn out like this, the only difference between then and now, however, is that i enjoyed every part of this a year ago. Now, as I am rushed through the crowd, just like I was rushed through my blured childhood, I picture my father smiling with me in his arms.
For months, I've been seeing a married man, becoming my mothers daughter in every way that can be found humanly possible. It could be my growing passion for the adrenaline that pumps through my veins everytime his lips brush against mine, or the shimmering desire to understand why my mother commits herslef to the shame and secrecy of having an affair. But when our bodies become a tangled conglameration of our promises whispered through clenched teeth of our future together in a bed his wife will later sleep in, I feel something I can't begin to explain, or even understand; but I am and always will be the other woman. I belong to no one, no one but him. Sometimes I honestly believe we belong with each other, to each other. But, just as suddenly as that thrilling thought comes, it goes, and I face the cold reality of what our relationship is; a lie from the devil himself, who manipulates my conscience into believing this was morally and ethically acceptable.
