Way Down We Go

Chapter Fourty One

"Hey, guys." I said quietly, staring into the camera screen. "It's been a while," I tried to smile, but it ended up a half grin. "I'm sure that, by now, you've all heard what's happened over the past few months, so, let's talk."

"As you can see, we're not in the filming station," I glanced behind me, seeing the regular white wall, not one of the pretty backgrounds that I had used many times before. "This is just a regular room in my house, and there's no facades this time." I sighed.

"I'm not wearing a bright wig, not in extravagant clothing, no makeup, this is me. This is who I am." I said, standing up to show my regular, cheap black t shirt and oversized white-grey drawstring sweatpants. I sat back down and turned the camera around, showing the lens the lack of fancy lights or pretty things. I was just in a regular room with a window. No decorations, no anything, just the black couch.

"This is me, no more painting pictures of the idealised version of me. This is it." I said, turning it back around and letting the camera see my makeup free face and large silver rimmed glasses.

"My name is Mariposa Vivienne Mionette Valois-Angoulême. I was born on December 17th, 1995 and I'm twenty three years old. My father is James Stuart. He was a multi millionaire businessman, owner and creator of the Stuart dynasty. He was murdered when I was five years old."

I blinked a few times, clearing my throat, remembering those scenes that would haunt me for the rest of my life, looking straight into the camera again. "My mother is Marie de Guise. She was officially declared insane three months after her second husband died. She lived the rest of her life in a mental asylum, west of the city where I spent my first five years in. She was diagnosed with terminal lung, liver and blood cancer. She died on March 24th of this year. My maternal half brother and I were by her side. As of that day, I am an orphan."

"My eldest brothers and I took over their companies when I was twenty. When I was a teenager, I was officially diagnosed with depression, Generalised Anxiety Disorder, body dismorphic disorder, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and was regularly self harming. I have struggled with these for years. When I had just turned twenty three, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder and a mild form of dissociative identity disorder. I am in recovery to this day. This is simply who I am, and although this will forever alter my life, it will not end it."

"When I was five, I watched as my father was stabbed to death fifty seven times. He hid me behind a large grandfather clock, effectively saving my life."

"Before I was born, my mother and father had twin sons. They were killed in a car crash six months before my conception. This factor contributed to my mothers' constant declining mental health. It was only after I was born that she had her tubes tied. I have no younger siblings. None that I know of, anyway."

"My entire life, my mother struggled with bipolar disorder. I had always been used to it as a child, not knowing that this was an unusual accurance until a year after I was taken away. When my father was killed, it tipped her over the edge and she was taken away from my home. Three months later, she was officially declared insane. Marie de Guise was locked up in a sanitarium. I never saw her again, until the day she died after a long battle with cancer."

"On the day she was taken away, I was taken to hospital for two weeks, before being placed into treatment facility near Santa Barbara. I had been abused by my mother, through no fault of her own, and was in a completely catatonic state, diagnosed with PTSD and was effectively 'broken'." I made air quotes, humorlessly chuckling.

"Mariposa Stuart-de Guise had died the moment those doors closed, taking away her mother. From then on, my name was Blaire Emmerson. For security reasons, with the whole murder trial, I couldn't use my birth given name until authorities were sure that there was no longer a threat to me."