The Scars of Six

13. An Empty Shell

Listen to You Are A Memory by Message To Bears

Listen to Sleeping At Last by Saturn

A/N: Okay Guys!

Fair warning, this chapter was really hard to write and it's really sad so please if themes of depression, suicide or anxiety trigger you skip ahead to happier chapters.

Thank you and enjoy!

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Denali's POV

"Mommy!" I yelled as I ran to my mom who stood on the front steps of our house. I remember the warmth of her embrace as if it were yesterday. She hugged me so tight that I squealed and struggled to get out of her arms to breathe again.

God, I would do anything to be in her arms again.

Absolutely anything.

I remember tears running down her face with a sad smile painted on her face. "Mommy why are you crying? Aren't you glad to see me?" I asked her as I wiped several tears away from her cheek. She let out a desperate chuckle, "Of course I'm happy to see you my sweet baby." She smiled at me trying to compose herself as she cradled my face in her hands, "I just love you so so much and I would never want you to go through anything bad, I want to protect you from all of this evil." She explained wiping the tears that had managed to spill again.

I furrowed my eyebrows together in confusion not understanding my mother's words, but I was only a kid — I knew no better.

My mom was a marine, a very proud and dedicated marine. I loved her and always looked up to her, she was very strict with me regarding everything, but I loved her for it. I wanted to be just like her when I grew up, she was strong, courageous, insanely smart and above all astonishingly beautiful. She was my only parent, my dad had died when I was just a baby, only having pictures to remember him by. My mom would tell me stories of the man he was, when she talked about him her eyes would lit up with excitement only to be saddened at the end, for he was no longer with us.

I remember how beautiful she was, how talented she was and how she always had a gleam of adventure in her eyes up until the last time she came home. The time when she told me that she wanted to protect me from all of the evils of this world — not really understanding her at the time. That day was one of the last times I saw her smile, even if it was a sad one. After that day she changed, she was no longer the same woman I knew, she was a shell of what she used to be. I remember waking up scared in the middle of the night when she would have one of her many episodes; screaming, crying and cradling herself in her bed like she was in the deepest pain one could possibly endure.

I grew up from loving my mother to being worried about her everyday. I would go to school and come home and fall into the same routine for many years. I was the one who took care of her when my grandma couldn't. My grandma never had the heart to tell me what had happened to her or why she had became an empty shell of herself, but deep down the secret was taking my grandmother down too.

All my mother did was stay in her room most days. She had this way of staring at the blank wall with her knees to her chest as she tried to get as far away from her mind as possible. She never smiled anymore, a permanent scowl plastered on her face for the remainder of her life. At times when she was feeling okay she would ask me to hug her and tell her happy stories only to shove me away halfway through the story. She would shove me away telling me to go away with tears in her eyes, she would yell at me and tell me how bad of a daughter I was, then she would realize what she had said and apologized for it. Every time I hugged her and read her a story I could feel her pain — it seeped through her body like steam. Whenever I would embrace her I could tell that she felt alone causing me to break a little more at the sight of her. She wasn't herself anymore, the life she once had in her eyes was completely gone. She had shut herself off from the world, she was a hundred percent gone and there was no getting her back.