Darkness Before Dawn

DBD | chapter 1

Chapter 1:

Time is precious and our moments on this earth are limited with the ones we love and adore.

That's what I like to dwell on now. I find myself reminiscing on some bittersweet memories. Well, all of them seem bittersweet now.

It was the following summer of my freshman year in high school when things started to change. My mom got back with my father-who we hadn't seen in years. Then she got pregnant. I had no idea why she would think of having another baby, let alone one with my father; the one who completely left us for some tramp 2 years ago. Now he decides to come back and act like nothing happened?

It didn't seem like my mom cared about what occurred in the past with her and my dad: the late night drinking and fighting, screaming, the cops coming over to our house. There is still a scar that is left on her right temple. It was one of the many my father had given her during these drunken brawls. But that was none of my business because I was a child, and "children are meant to be seen and not heard." At least, that's what my father had said.

When my mom had explained her and my father's relationship to me, she had just stated, "your dad and I love each other, and he's changed, he's sober now." Like that even mattered, he wasn't a better person sober. And how many other times had he gotten sober when I was little, then turned back into a drunk again? 

I felt like everything was happening too fast for me to wrap my head around. My incomprehensible, child head that didn't understand a thing about love. It felt like it was warping and turning to mush.

Toward the end of my sophomore year, my mom was nearing the end of her pregnancy and decided it was time for a change.

"A fresh start with the four us." She'd say rubbing her belly contently, "A bigger, better place." A bigger place where she could expand her obsessions for the new baby, but also keep her space away from my dad if things got bad. Just in case, I thought.

"Tyler Dean is what I'll name him." My mom grinned that day, finally choosing a name. She stuck with the family last name Dean. I liked the name. It seemed right for the baby.

We moved into the new house in Idaho, far away from Tennessee where all our friends and family lived. That's where I started my third year of high school and it's where I would have graduated.

Soon after we moved my mom went into early labor and was rushed to the hospital. No one ever spoke of the details. They were driving, got into a bad accident on the highway, I remembered the cop telling me as he pulled me out of class that day. Nobody knew why their car veered off. My theory is no one really knew what happened that day.

My father passed away a couple days after the accident. Too much swelling in the brain, as the doctors had explained. My mom was in a deep sleep, silent and unmoving under the brain scans. I got shipped off to my aunt in California after my mom was presumed a rotting vegetable, and never to return. Which is why they pulled the plug, and buried her next to the other two familiar tombstones.

I was falling into a spiral of sadness, caught in the everlasting dark hole where I was trapped. I was further from my friends, and my happiness.

Not like any of that mattered. My happiness was replaced by emptiness, longing for the return of what was once there. The emptiness of not having my mom by my side, or my dad- who might have actually changed for the better, or the thought that I could of been an older sister to an adorable little brother. I wished that this was all some dirty trick and I would wake up.

Maybe I shouldn't have of spent my time hating my father and mother for their choices and loved them, like a good daughter. To only think this happened within a year. A very long year of my life.