You Never Know When It's Going To Happen...

Prologue

"You never know when it's going to happen."

Those words replayed in my head.

I've repeated them in my head hundreds of times growing up.

But I only heard them out loud, once.

In the middle of the night when I was 8 years old. It was raining, I got startled awake by a scream and something breaking. I got up out of bed and walked out of my room to see what was going on.

My mother was laying on her back on the dining room floor and my father crouched over her holding his empty glass in one hand and holding her up by the collar of her shirt with his other.

"Mommy?" I sobbed. I didn't even realize I was crying.

I'll never forget the look she had on her face when she turned her head and saw me standing there in my pink nightgown she had put me in hours ago when she laid me down for bed.

She gasped, shoving his arms off of her and crawled over to me. She picked me up, buried my face in her neck and ran into my room with me in her arms.

Once we got to my room she slammed the door closed and laid me back into my bed. I could see the collar of her shirt stretched out. Her face was bloody, her eyes were swollen and she had little abrasions on her forehead. I knew she was hurt, but I was too scared to ask her anything.

She looked down at me, and all I could do was just stare at her. She just shrugged her shoulders and wiped away the one and only tear that I had seen fall down her cheek. She sat down next to me running the back of her hand down the side of my face pushing my hair behind my ear. She placed a kiss on my forehead.

Then she just got up and walked to the door. She turned the knob and pulled it open, but before she even took a step. She took a deep breath and said "Babygirl, you never know when it's gonna happen."

Then she just walked out without looking at me.

And that was the last time I saw her.

By the next week it was almost like she never even existed. She had left and my father and I moved. There was nothing left of hers, no pictures, no clothes, not even her smell. Eventually the memories started to fade too.

The only memory I had of her was the one from that night. Anytime I asked my dad where she had gone, he would tell me that "she didn't want him, so she couldn't have me."

I asked him hundreds of times and that's all he ever said about her.
Eventually I just stopped asking.

Everything changed after that.
I took over the things my mom did. I still had school, then came home and cleaned the house, and did laundry. My dad leaves for work before I leave for school so I never make breakfast, and I eat lunch at school so I only ever made dinner.

When he actually comes home.

We never really see each other. And I was okay with that.

He never stopped drinking, and eventually it only got worse. He started taking pills.

When I was 14 I found a needle, I confronted him about it, and he punched me right in the face.

That was the first time he had ever hit me.

I didn't know how to react. I just knew I couldn't let him see me cry, just like my mother didn't cry when he hit her.

I knew I couldn't let him win.

And I never wanted to be a broken girl.

But that's who I was.

The broken girl with no mother and a fucked up father who didn't give a shit about anything but himself.

The broken girl everyone wanted to be friends with, only because she was pretty.

The broken girl who could drink herself into oblivion and no one would notice because she still felt sober.

The broken girl who could be gone for days at a time and no one would come looking.

The broken girl with mental health issues.

The broken girl I didn't want to be. But I was.

The girl who was so broken and damaged that no one saw me going down hill.

Until it was already to late to help.

So what did I do?

Drink.

Drugs.

Sex.

Anything I could do to forget that I was myself. To shut my brain off.

But none of it ever worked.

My brain is always scrambled and my body is numb. I don't even know what I'm doing most of the time.

I couldnt get drunk enough. High enough. Couldn't have an orgasm because my brain wouldn't shut off. Or the guy only lasted 2 minutes.

Yeah maybe I've taken it to far a few times.

Maybe I haven't taken it far enough?

~