Going Nowhere [Watty 2014 Winner] Coming soon to Galatea

Going Nowhere - Coming Soon to Galatea

Prologue.

Love. Even the word sounded like some kind of mystical unattainable dream. The only problem was I knew it existed. My parents were the perfect example. They'd been like lovesick teenagers for years.

Love just hadn't happened for me. I guess I shouldn't be so cynical. I've only had one boyfriend in my life time after all. It's just that he set the bar and what happened scarred me in to hiding from everything and everyone.

Being invisible is hard sometimes..

 My mother is a superstar, she was discovered by my father at 18, they fell in love and the rest is history as they say. Except, it kind of forced me into the public eye. I guess you could say I was popular by association, this 'celebrity status' followed me in to high school. Where I was welcomed in with the elite. I'd always been a little to naive, to naive to see that I was so different to them. I was just happy to be fitting in, even if I was a star shaped block trying to fit in a square shaped hole.

I wasn't immune from bullies though, even with the spotlight on me constantly. My parents best friend son, took it upon himself to ridicule me ever chance he got. He was part of the alternative crowd. The kids who caused trouble on a regular basis. Xavier was the bane of my existence, and I was lucky enough to see him everyday, as well as every other weekend.

 So I threw myself blindly into my friendships. My popularity protected me from his obnoxious attacks, and I was able to build a wall around myself that deflected his cruel attempts to make me look stupid. He wasn't the boy who forced me in to hiding though.

 That crown belonged to a boy named Ryan. We'd been dating for 6 months. I was 17 and considering losing my virginity to him. He was kind, considerate and had good grades. Dad didn't like him much, but I thought that it was normal for a dad to dislike his daughters potential suitors. In hindsight, I think he could see something I couldn't.

 On the night that I'd chosen to tell Ryan I was ready, I wanted to have sex with him. I went to the party. We were meant to met out the front at 9pm. He had work, and couldn't get there before then. But when I arrived, one of my other friends told me he was inside waiting for me in a bedroom.

 My heart was pounding, I remembered feeling nervous and excited. Finally I would drop the stupid V card my friends had been teasing me about.

 I pushed open the door where he was, and well. Lets just say, What I saw was straight out of a dirty movie. Until that point of my life I'd never seen anything sexual. A grope during a make-out session was as hot as it got for me. But Ryan had one of my so called best friends, spread eagle, legs in the air on the bed. They didn't even stop once they realized I was there. Ryan, who was drunk asked me to join in even. Surprisingly though, I wasn't brokenhearted. Ryan had never lit that spark in me. He'd never made me feel like I was the only one for him, and I guess I was the same toward him.

 I was hurt though, my friends had used me, and laughed at me, and had done things far crueler than even Xavier had ever done. I withdrew myself from their group, and from life in general. A few months later a video surfaced. A sex tape. The one make out session Ryan and I had started it. Unbeknownst to me, he'd filmed it. The rest of the tape was my friend, but the video didn't show her face. The media decided it was me. I was the girl in the video.

My father was angry at first, with me for being so dumb. For giving myself to someone I clearly didn't love. But I explained the truth, and for the first time in my life I realized just how much a person can fuck you over when they think they can make something from you.

 When graduation came, I studied early childhood education, even though my passion lay with music. I'd always been shy, so hadn't taken it at school. But when you are surrounded by it all the time, it rubs off. After high school, I pretended I was tone deaf.