Stuck

Question Everything

They locked me up. This room is strange. They put me in a hospital gown but there are a skirt and shirt, like a schoolgirl uniform laying on the bed. The room is a faded pink and I wonder who lived here before I was put in here. There's a dollhouse, but no dolls, no dolls that would fit. There's a dresser, a faded, dirt-white. The window is barricaded. Not with wood and nails, but with cement. I examine the room and notice there's only one doll. It's sitting in a rocking chair and the eyes stare into the distance, but still staring at every move I make. The hair of it was a tangled brown mess, almost like a bird's nest. It had a dress that looked like it was from the 70's and it hadn't been washed in years. One eye was missing and the doll was covered in dirt and dust. Never had I had chills run up my spine like the chills I got when I saw the doll. It felt like an eternity before my eyes left the doll's gaze. As I slipped the school uniform on,  my mind started to spin. I didn't know where I was I just felt like I wasn't supposed to be here. I knew this was a mistake. But my mother said this place would be good for me. I have always trusted my mother, but when she dropped me here, all the trust I had with her shattered like a newly shattered plate that had been thrown across the room. But now that she has abandoned me here, my early memories of her come back. They aren't the good kind. 

When my mother first had me, she was an alcoholic. She drank from the time she got up to the time she passed out. Sometimes I wondered if she was dreaming about drinking. Never did I ask her though, maybe I should have when she was "cured" as she called it. I would call it a miracle though. Whenever something wasn't going her way, things were thrown. Punches, dishes, books, her empty bottles, anything she could get to. Punches were the last thing she would throw. If she couldn't grab something then she would hit, kick, punch. Anything she could to make her point across, as she said. The first time she ever hit me was when I was three. I had asked to go to the park, which at the time was on the corner of our street. She was in the kitchen struggling to open another bottle of "the good stuff" which I soon found out was tequilla. Out of frustration, she yelled no. I quietly asked why and she gripped the neck of the bottle and chucked it at me. Luckily, when I was younger, my reflects were amazing.  I ducked and as I stood up and look at her, her fist was hitting my eye. One to the eye, the next to my stomach, when I fell she kicked me multiple times. When she finally let up and left to grab a new bottle, I ran to my room. I could hear her from my room upstairs screaming and cursing at the broken glass and spilled alcohol. Less then twenty minutes later, she was in my room gripping my hair and pulling me down the stairs to the mess, ordering me to clean it up. Out of fear, I obliged. She watched me cutting my small hands on the glass and soaking my pants in the drink. She was drinking a new one. She didn't even have to patience to take how much it costed off, which was a "tradition" for her. She could never look at the price once it was home. Once I had finished, I went to my room. She didn't make food again that night, and I was to small to cook. I went without dinner and the next day, I went to school. Pretending nothing happened, that I just fell on a rock. 

Remembering back on that, I could feel every heart wrenching, stomach churning, tear burning moment of that dreadful night. It took her until I was fourteen to finally quit her "habit." I never called it a habit though... I always called it a curse, a mistake. I knew she never meant to start it, but she was the opposite of me as a teenager. She was always doing what she could to be the best at everything. But once she went to her junior fall party, everything went down hill. Her grades slipped and she began her curse that would last for almost thirty four years. I gave up on hoping she would ever get better after my eleventh birthday when she didn't even show up because she was "working" but I knew she was either at a bar or a man's house from the bar. 

I was lost in thought when the door opened, which at that time I didn't know would be the last time. A nurse walked in, her smile was eerily stomach tightening. She set down three outfits, much to small for me but the right size for the life-like doll just across from me, staring into my soul. She told me they were for her then left. No name, just "for her." I need to think of something else. I start looking around. There's a closet. A party dress and two school uniforms just like the one that was on the bed. The doll's outfits matched mine exactly, to the last thread on the under lace of the skirt. When I turn her, she's staring at me. How is that? I'm right next to her. Her head was facing straight! until I notice the door is shut. There is no door? I can't find the door! I don't think I've ever felt more in a different universe then right now. I try to think of my mother, my new baby brother which was almost here when she dropped me off, my boyfriend. But nothing can calm me down. That doll is sliding into all my thoughts.