in which she swims to forget all the pain, but he sees it all because dallas edlen is not ok and, having loved her for years, seeing that was no task.
ONE BREATH
MINIMINTER
SIDEMEN
DEATHLIES 2016
[COMPLETED]
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THIRTY SEVEN d a l l a s
Her entire body ached.
As she stood in front of the mirror that spanned from the ceiling to the floor, examining the damage, she felt the ache worse than ever before. Splaying across her ribs was an ocean of purple and of blue, intertwined with one another as if they were in absolute awe of one another.
Dallas saw herself as the purple. The bold one. The one who swelled to the surface and stood out, even though she didn't want to. She did not see herself as the blue: the reminder. That was Simon. He reminded her of everything she needed to be and needed to do to become the person she wanted to be, but he would fade and so would she.
Eventually.
The purples and the blues swelled along her skin, wrapping around her ribs to her front and rushing along her stomach. It was not pretty, nor was it of any loving intend.
It was abuse, not to be romanticised and not to be thought as an aesthetic to strive for. It was fact and a topic that should not be handled with such petty, ignorant views.
So, as she looked at it, she wanted it to be gone. To be replaced by the tender love of a mother and of a present father and for her life to be valued and treasured as if it was worth more than being the daughter of a rich young man and his trophy wife.
She gently touched her finger tips to the bruise, but flinched away at the pain. It was too much to bear. Too much of a punishment for an expulsion the result of illness and mistakes that could have been helped simply by love and acknowledgement for everything she was doing right.
All her life, there was little. When Adam was alive, he was the golden child. The one who received endless praise for the smallest of things, but after he died in a car crash the praise did not shift onto Dallas. All praise was withdrawn. Dallas didn't think there could be any less, but there was because her dad was away in LA for most of the year and her mum was drunk too much of the time to care.
Dallas, although she likes to pretend otherwise, cared more than she let on. She wanted to be praised because recognition was the only way of figuring out what was right and what was wrong. All she learnt she had to learn from being in school around others, not from her parents. The only thing she learnt from her mum was that alcohol isn't as great as American teen fiction movies make it out to be.
After all, it's addictive and the last thing she wanted was to end up like her mum.
If there was one thing in the world Dallas would despise the most it would be for her to treat her own children the way her mum has treated her.
She pulls her top over her head, concealing the purple and blue bruises. With a lengthy exhale, she slips herself between the covers and lets her head sink onto the pillow, but whether or not she would find the sleep she was seeking for would be another matter altogether.
There was too much to think about for there to be time for sleep.
