when night comes (camren)

Twelve

           

Camila Cabello was twelve years old and she knew she was one of the shortest in her class, barely passing for a middle schooler. She knew that unlike the other girls her age, she still thought boys were gross and the idea of kissing one disgusted her, but Lauren had really nice lips. Not that she wanted to kiss Lauren or anything, no way, definitely not, that would be weird... but she still liked to stare at her lips sometimes. She knew that Wizard of Oz was her favourite film because something about it always made her feel hopeful. She knew that she liked writing almost as much as she liked singing, and that was a lot like a lot lot. She knew that when she got up for school in the morning, four times out of five her mom would still be sprawled out drunk on the living room floor. But what she wanted to be when she grew up? Camila still didn't know. All she knew was that she wanted to be anywhere but home with her mom.

"I remember when you were a baby..." Her mom slurred through forced tears that never actually fell, as Camila tried and failed to go pass her to get out the front door. "I would bend your knees like this and put you on my lap, so you were facing me, and you would just stare up at me with so much love. You don't look at me like that anymore, you hate me." She said and tried to sound sad but failed.

Camila frowned but didn't say anything, not because it was true but because she wished it was, she wished she knew how to hate her mom. If she hated her maybe it wouldn't hurt so much seeing her mom so wasted in alcohol every day.

But deep-down Camila still didn't believe her mom was all bad, because although they came a few days her and there she was sent drunk, sometimes she had good days. Every once in a while, Camila would come back home from a day at school to her mom smiling, a home cooked meal and an almost unrecognizable woman asking about her day.

For a second it would make her forget the feeling of fear that usually ran through her veins on the days when she came home to look at a pair of eyes that looked nothing like the unconditional love, she'd been told all her life that parents were supposed to have for their children. It was hard to really hate her because deep, deep down she wasn't a bad mom. Sometimes she just had a few drinks to much and forgot she was a mom at all.

"Well Camila if you hate me why don't you just fuck off and live with your dad." Her mother now spat. Not figuratively but literally, her mouth slightly foaming at the edges. "You think he would take you? No, he fucking left you" she screamed, and tears formed in Camila's eyes

"Just like he left me. He'd rather be with that whore" with those words a tear begins to stream down her cheek as she fast wiped away not to show her mom how it affected her, as her mom hardened, and a sneer took over her face, her mind visibly searching for whatever words it deemed most hurtful.

"Nobody would ever want you. You're a selfish, horrible, little bitch." Camila stood in silence, she'd lost the will to fight years ago. Long gone were days where she would try talking the bottle out of her mother's hand or put sense into her mind. It was useless, because when her mom was drunk nothing Camila said ever seemed to register, yet when she was sober, she didn't ever remember the pain she'd caused the night before.

She did not have the same memories as her daughter because she was there, but not really there. In her mind it was just blur off words and lost dreams.

Camila swallowed the lump in throat and left without a word, because no matter what she said, no matter how hard she cried, in the end the bottle always won.

"I'll kill myself while you're at school and it will be all you're fault." Her mom called out across the room. It was an empty threat that Camila had heard too often for it to stop her from shutting the front door behind her, still one that would sit nervously in the back of her mind for the rest of the day. Camila often thinks why her mom says that every time she's on her way to school but often push the thought away because it hurts and only brings pictures of her mom in a bathtub, blood everywhere and Camilla sit beside the bathtub crying in the phone with someone. Her thoughts wondering that even if her daughter's body could escape the house for six hours of freedom at a day at school, her mind would never truly leave the confines of those four walls.