Micah

Prologue- Coping Mechanisms

She laid curled up on her cousins musty and dilapidated basement sofa, broken—possibly beyond repair this time. The thin blade of the razor glinted in the dimly lit room as she caressed it carefully between skilled fingers. He had done his worst this time—the unforgivable and there was no coming back from that.
     Neither of them were financially stable enough to raise a child. They were both in school after all, but it should have been her choice.
  
   She'd suffer a few bruises here and there at his hands and a fractured rib once but never in a million lifetimes had she thought he'd force her into an abortion. A backdoor operation at that.
   One that her insides scarred. So scarred that the doctor in the hospital that she spent the following 3 weeks, after passing out from blood loss said it would be 'a Miracle' if she was able to carry another child.

Reality hadn't set in right away. No it waited. It didn't rear it's ugly disfigured head until she saw mothers walking around with their tiny pink, blue and soft pastel colored swaddled bundles. With their heavenly aromas and little tufts of fine hair or tiny digits peeping out, mocking her own empty womb.

  She felt nostalgic then for something she barely had a chance to process before it—she had been ripped away from her. Maybe, that's when this downward spiral began.

Despite everything that had happened the ultimate betrayal didn't arrive until after she had returned home from her turbulent journey of recuperating. He hadn't visited during her time in the hospital but she hadn't expected it to be as a result of him being engaged to a gorgeous brunette woman. The roundness of the woman's belly was unmistakable as she had watched the pair walk by her some weeks aback.
—That was the hay that broke the camel's back. She cried then, out of pity for herself and for the life of her child that wasn't. She hadn't thought much about children before, she had her whole life ahead of her after all but she had always known she wanted to become a mother at some point.

She had felt sadness before but not like this. This one was cold. So cold that no source of heat could warm her. Not a scalding hot shower , not all the blankets in the world, not hot chocolate, not the sun on a hot or rather an average summer's day in South Carolina. Theoretically speaking this was loneliness.
She laughed then, the sound flittered around the sparsely furnished room, at the cliché— what was the point of being educated about the mind but still being incapable of helping yours despite knowing how?
She ran the razor over her arm expertly. Again and again not deep enough to pull her away from all her sorrow, but enough to distract her from her inner turmoil. The more hurt she felt on the outside the duller the ache in her chest—her heart rather, felt for awhile.