lovely // analogical ✔

☆ 56 - dear diary: wHYYYY ☆

Virgil held Logan's hand and spoke for him. "He just wants an answer. Give him anything."

"I don't know if I can do that. I'm sorry." She shook her head sadly.

"He's been waiting his life away. Family is supposed to be open with each other. I'm bonded to my parents forever, and they love me and we tell each other everything—even the smallest things. Why can't you share one of the biggest issues in Logan's life with Logan himself?"

She bit her lip and looked at the floor, then back up again. "...Okay."

☆

*tw: domestic abuse story, mention of depression and vvv brief mention of suicide attempt*

"At first, I really did have a lot of business trips," she began. "But sometimes I stayed there a little while longer. Because I was too afraid to come back."

Logan bit the inside of his cheek.

"I got married very young. I was just out of college when your father proposed, and I had to say yes. Not only did I love him, I was afraid of my parents. Even more than that, I was afraid of his parents. They are very traditional and to them, that was the time when girls should throw themselves into the arms of a man and stay there. I was expected a happy marriage that lasted a lifetime, and I knew while I said yes that I would not ever have the heart to get a divorce.

"Even though I loved your father, I still knew we were so young and neither of us really understood relationships. No couple in either of our families had gotten divorced, and I felt so much pressure from his parents to be a housewife. It was strange, and I obviously refused to be a housewife and continued biology, because that mentality belongs to the 50's. But I still let him walk all over me because I didn't know what he was really doing.

"He cheated on me. Multiple times. But in my family, it was expected of me to get permission from my parents to get a divorce. My parents said no, and I didn't have the heart to defend my case. So I already started avoiding him as much as possible. Then... he got me pregnant and I thought he'd used a condom that night. He didn't, then got upset with me for getting pregnant. I wanted an abortion, but both our families are very conservative. They are all pro-life except for my sister and your aunt Leia, who was the one who drove me to the doctor when I went into labor. She was there because your father didn't want to go.

"I was 26 when I had you, Logan. And you think when you're younger that 26 is grown up, but really, 26 is when you realize you haven't grown since you graduated college and you're still figuring everything out. I struggled with depression for a long time, and then finding out when you were diagnosed that it was hereditary, my heart shattered."

Virgil let Logan lay his head on his shoulder.

"I did so many risky things to keep my mind off your father whenever I was away. I drank too much, I drunkenly kissed other men, I stayed away from home as much as possible. Once, I purposefully... swerved my car. To get away from him. I was in the hospital. That was why I was gone for two months before your fourteenth birthday.

"Then you turned into how your father used to be when he was a teenager, and I couldn't take it any longer. He was a great man. But most times I came back from being gone again for a long period, he usually didn't care. I was stupid and I was selfish, and even after watching what he did to you, I ran away. Once, when you were three, I tried to find someone else to take care of you—to keep you from him, but he found out. I had talked to him about bringing you with me on 'trips' but he was always possessive, and he always threatened to do terrible things if I disobeyed, so I went alone. All the time."

She let out a loud sigh. "Questions?"