Stigma

~*The Beauty*~

The thunder rumbled in the sky and the downpour began. She pulled her knees closer to her chest and trembled in fear. She hated the thunder. It brought back the memories of the night it hit the car in which her parents were travelling and burned the whole thing down.

As it rained, her heart constricted painfully as she waited for another night of crying to follow. She sobbed in silence afraid that she will wake up her aunt who took her in after her parents died when she was six. She was not bad or anything, she just didn't pay much attention to her.

For her, she just existed. They seldom talked. After work, they would both stay in their own rooms and ate food separately. Only at the end of each month, they had a talk about the rent which she paid now being an adult and soon to be a university student.

The lighting and thunder brewed whole night and she just sat in the corner of the room sobbing whole night. She had no one to call or talk to for distraction. She never had many friends because no one ever liked her, her aunt once said that she had negative or unfriendly vibes around her which made no sense whatsoever because she tried my best to be nice to everyone and yet she had no close friends.

As if she was not scared enough, the power cut off and she put hands on her mouth to stop herself from screaming. She felt short of breath and she knew a panic attack will follow next. She has had few of those but no one knew about it. She plugged her my earphones and played her favourite playlist trying to stop herself from hyperventilating, trying to match her heart with the beats in the song.

She tried to calm herself as she tried not to focus on the bad luck that followed her since she could remember. She tried not to think that whenever she liked the dress it is sold out or that she never got hired as a part-timer at a decent place or that no plan she ever made went smoothly or that once she was going to school trip and it got cancelled or how she studied hardest and yet there was always one question that she can't answer as if her memory dies or that once a boy tried to date her because of a bet or that her parents died a day before her birthday.

There were several other instances like this, like how tonight it was storm and power outage.

So she had no hope at all that she would get a scholarship for all the university she applied for even with her more than average grades. 

But as she tried not to go in a panic attack in darkness her phone buzzed at three in the morning and she checked her mail. For a moment she forgot everything bad and negative accumulated in her life and felt her heart slightly at ease.

Miss Deliah Miller,

Congratulations! You are accepted as one of our scholarship students.

That was all to make her feel better and she didn't even bother to look through the whole thing, enough to make her hope maybe God has taken pity on her and from now she can begin a new better chapter of her life.

~*~

"I have something to tell you," She said to her aunt the next morning.

She didn't even bother to look up to her and just asked, "What?"

"I got accepted at the Elainer University with a full scholarship." She looked up now with a passive look.

"You got a scholarship?" She said in a mocking tone like Delia didn't deserve it.

She nodded.

"Great then, you can leave now." And with these few words, their talk finished.

Honestly, she was hurt, at this point, she wanted to share this news with someone who can appreciate her, her first win in life. But there was no one.