Dear Dan,

004.

November 28th, 2013

"If you wanted to parade someone around in front of your family you should have asked Catherine to tag along," I hiss as Dan pulls me aside from the rest of his family.

"What is your problem, Grazia?" he snaps, gripping my upper arm roughly.

"If you don't remove your hands from my arm I will scream this house down," I warn.

He releases my arm and shoves a hand through his hair, sighing audibly. "I just wanted to have a good Thanksgiving at my house and head over to your parents later, why are you acting like this in front of my family? What am I being punished for?"

I stare blankly at him before crossing my arms and clicking my tongue. "Why do you always leave me to hang out with Catherine? Why can't I ever come?" 

He rolls his eyes. "I'm not doing this right now, not here." 

"This won't go away, so don't even think about silencing me," We begin walking back into the dining room. "I want to make a bet with you."

He just looks at me. "A bet? About what?"

"If we ever break up, I want there to be a winner of the breakup."

 His jaw locks and then he scoffs. "Figured you would talk about us breaking up." 

"Stop pouting, it's not as cute as you think it is," I roll my eyes. "It's just a fun bet, it could make the breakup - if it ever happens - fun for the both of us." 

He rolls his eyes. "Rules?" 

I smile. "The winner will have had to do something really shitty to the other person, that's the only way they can win, and the loser has to tell the winner they won."

He nods and laughs. "It's on." 

"Don't do anything shitty to me right now, Dan, my heart won't be able to handle it. At least not right now anyway."

"What makes you so sure I'm going to win?"

"Catherine," I say, shrugging, then walk back into the dining room of his parent's house where I catch the stare of his Mother who quietly shakes her head at me, and I take it that she's heard my proposition, and suddenly I'm not so confident that my bet will make him more determined to treat me better, I think I've just given him a reason to fuck our relationship up.

My mother keeps saying how all Catholics are evil and how there is no God. She then goes on to tell Dan how I used to make up stories and then laughs instead of just telling him I was a liar.

My mother makes me terrified to be a parent because fuck, she's been the only role model of how to be a mother but I know that she is nothing to idolize and it scares me that one day I could turn out like her. 

I'm afraid I've swallowed the insults my mother handed me like birthday presents and that now they are bullets at the back of my throat on my tongue waiting to click into the chamber aimed at the forehead of my little girl. What if when she runs off on us, instead of saying 'you scared mummy, don't do that again it comes out like when I was six and my mother grabbed me by my shoulders and shook me until I was dizzy, shouting 'what the fuck were you thinking?'

My father, however, was built like a sinking ship and has been my hero since I was conceived. Even with his six-year-long battle with lung cancer, he is full of smiles. I am afraid that every time I leave him to go back to University, he will die alone and not in my mother's arms or even mine because of course mum stapled it to my head that you have to go to college.