Let's hope for the best

Chapter 4: Hate

So now, my second life had really taken shape. I was around 10, 11 years old.

It was around 2000, 2001.

A new millennium was starting off, but I was everything but enthusiast for what lied ahead.

I had basically become my brother and my sister's mom.

I cared for them, cooked for them, cleaned the house, read bedtime stories for them.

They still remember how much they liked my stories, to this day.

Maybe that's when my love for inventing- and later, writing down- stories, really began.

Life was hard, though.

I came home from school, made lunch, cleaned the house, did the laundry, sneaked to grandmother to get some food for dinner, came back, warmed up dinner; later I had to clean up the kitchen carefully, so that dad and his girlfriend could have their dinner.

Sometimes they would dine out, and we were gifted some peace.

He started spending all of his money on her: dining out, holidays, beauty treatments, jewellery, designer handbags.

It didn't change much for us: he wasn't giving us money, anyway.

Now my old life, made of toys, pretty dresses, ballet lessons and beautiful holidays, was just a distant memory.

Now I had to hope that my grandmother and uncles and aunts would manage to smuggle me enough food to feed ourselves.

I completely lost interest in everything else.

Beside, yeah.

There was one thing I never stopped loving: Harry Potter.

It was mandatory for my relatives to smuggle me a new Harry Potter book, as soon as it got published.

I guess, probably, as many children back then, I wished my own letter would come, one day. That I would leave my appalling life, and fly my magic Nimbus 2000 back to Hogwarts.

But of course; I turned 11, then 12, and no letter came.

I remained I die-hard Harry Potter fan though, throughout my teen-age years.

...

Through all of that, eventually, dad's girlfriend eventually moved in (they were together every day for a period, but not actually living together).

Eventually, they married, and she became dad's second wife.

I couldn't say I was sorry: finally, the situation was going to be stable for my sister as well.

We were going to be a real family.

Me, my brother and her.

....

When my new "step-mom" moved in, she had the whole house renovated. She hired a new cleaner.

I almost thought I was happy about it... at first.

Until she started throwing away all of my mother's memories.

Photos, clothing, personal objects.

She didn't want memories of another woman in the house, she said.

I kicked and screamed, and cursed, and threatened them, but it didn't work.

They would wait until I was out for school, and take everything away.

I tried to hide things, but they would find them most times.

I started refusing to go to school, but they dragged me.

Only very few things survived: the ones I was able to hide well enough, or smuggle to my grandmother, or some jewellery that was too valuable to be tossed in the trash.

I can fairly say that if I hadn't hated them before, I definitely hated them now.

For the disrespect they showed my mother.

She might not have been a saint: I didn't have a chance to know her well enough to say that.

But she was a decent woman, at least. She loved us- of that, I am sure.

She loved my father: I could see it in her eyes. Little stars in her eyes, when he complimented her, or only looked at her.

I could see she was in love.

She was in love; she married him; she gave him two kids. She even gave him a job (because he was working in my mom's family business, not his own).

I felt like my mom had given him everything. Her life, her youth, her loyalty, her family's business.

And now that she was dead, he was tossing away the memory of her, like an old rag.

Living a good life with his new, young wife.

And my mom was never to be spoken of again.

But of course, I wasn't letting that happening.

They could rob us of materialistic things, but not of our loving memories of her.

It was in that period, that I started to cut myself: it made me feel better.

As if the pain distracted me, for a moment, from everything else.