Life As I Know It (Completed)

Author's Note

I wanted to thank everyone who stuck by this story in the past 4 -5 months. You guys are awesome and I never would have had the motivation to finish this, if it wasn't because of the encouragement you guys gave me through every single read, vote, comment and follow! There were a number of times that I just wanted to give up and delete this story, and then I'd get a comment that encouraged me to update, so thank you! This is my first ever story and so I know that it's not the best that it could be, but I feel like my writing has improved and matured over the course of this story and I hope it will continue to do so :).

There won't be a sequel for those of you who asked, sorry.

Thanks for everything.

xx

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EDIT (28/12/13):

I wanted to give a big THANK YOU to DanaScully who edited this story further for me. It takes a whole lot of sefllessness and comitment to edit an entire story, but she took this story on without asking for anything in return. I can't gush enough over how AMAZING she is. :) She has some truly beautiful and heart-wrenching short stories on her profile, as well as some stunning poetry, which you all should definitely check out!

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Also, Please check out my newest story? It's called Just a Taste, and here's the first chapter:

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          When I was eleven years old, my life changed forever, though I didn't know it at the time.

          I was in my favorite black leotard, and a baby pink tutu was secured around my waist as I sat on a bench in front of my father's office. I was wide-eyed as I looked around at my surroundings, swinging my legs back and forth as I did so – my feet not quite reaching the floor due to my 4 ft. 9 frame. Being eleven years old, I hadn't yet been to the local high school before, and the experience was an intimidating one. Usually, Dad would collect me straight from whatever after school club I was attending that specific day and we'd head straight to the hospital to visit Mom for a few hours. But my ballet lesson had been cancelled for today, and would most likely continue to remain so for the unforeseeable future, as my instructor had broken her leg. Dad finished work a whole lot later than I finished school, which was why I usually attended an afterschool club every day. Today, I was stuck there, outside his office, waiting, and waiting.

          I'd been kind of glad that I wouldn't have to attend ballet classes anymore, but I was less than thrilled to learn that I'd have to spend that time waiting for Dad to finish up with work. Mom would hopefully be getting out of the hospital soon though, and then she'd be able to come collect me from school at a normal time, and I wouldn't have to stick around waiting. I'd probably still carry on with karate though, which I'd been doing for years and actually enjoyed. I'd told Dad repeatedly that I could walk home by myself. Loads of my friends did. But he wouldn't hear of of it, and he couldn't really afford to pay for anyone to look after me. He had to pay the portion of Mom's hospital bills that the insurance didn't cover, as well as the mortgage on the house, and Nana's bills at her nursing home. I knew. I'd overheard him worrying about it over the phone to someone one day.

          I was growing increasingly bored sitting there with nothing to do. I could have gone into Dad's office; he'd told me to as soon as my friend's mom dropped me off. But I could see that there were two big boys in there with him and I wasn't sure if I should. I sighed, slumping into the wooden bench, and yanked at my hair. I had pulled it into a bun for class, and it always made my head hurt. I couldn't do it properly by myself; Mom always did it much better.