Are You Awake?

|Sugar coated lies|

Tuesday morning Shannon woke up with a start by her alarm clock. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her younger sister and her face was buried in Casey's soft, dark hair. Shannon's fingers were gripping the shirt the smaller girl was wearing tightly, almost like she was afraid the younger brunette would slip away at any moment, if she ever let go. Shannon was actually scared her sister would leave her one day. She was afraid that when her sister finally got old enough to understand what was actually going on within their family and with Shannon specifically, she would, as their dad had, give Shannon the cold shoulder.

Shannon had already had five years of therapy sessions, trips to the doctor's office and was five years into the process of becoming herself, not only on the inside, but the outside too, when her sister was born. The small brunette was eleven when Casey entered their already crumbling family. At that point the small brunette had just been started on her testosterone blockers a few months back and was already facing difficult times of her life. She no longer got away with only drawing and playing with her therapist anymore.

But Shannon was looking forward to having a sibling to share her time with and helped her mom prepare everything she could. What Shannon hadn't been prepared for though, was how her dad would treat the new member of the family, in contrast to how he treated his first-born child.

After Shannon's mom had explained the situation with the therapy sessions and doctor's appointments to Jim, he had immediately turned against his daughter. For five years Shannon had lived with snarky comments, cold stares, being told how wrong her 'choice' was or simply just being ignored by the man that had been her daddy for the six first years of her life.

But once Casey was born, the old Jim came back, after five years of coldness, the long-lost daddy she had missed was back. Suddenly her father was back to smiling brightly every morning. He kissed his daughter's forehead every night and read her a bedtime story before she went to sleep, just like he did before everything started to fall apart. He was back to running around inside with his daughter in his arms, occasionally getting yelled at by his wife for 'almost dropping my baby!'. He started taking his daughter outside to play football again and ran around in the rain with her, never caring how many pairs of jeans she ruined in their muddy back garden.

Suddenly, Jim was a dad again.

Unfortunately for Shannon this still wasn't for her to have. It wasn't Shannon's daddy who had returned, it was Casey's. Casey had gotten the father Shannon was in desperate need of. Jim's newfound desire to become a father again was only for his daughter. Which the older brunette obviously wasn't. "I must have done something wrong with your son, so I have to do it right with my daughter this time. I don't want another one of... those" he had told Debbie with baby Casey in his arms, making sure Shannon was close enough to hear his words clearly.   

The small brunette was constantly watching her own memories with her father replay before her eyes, but with her baby sister in them instead of herself, which broke Shannon's heart. Of course, she was happy for her sister. But never had her situation with her father been clearer to her than it was then. Shannon knew she had lost her father throughout the five years she had finally been able to be herself. But she wasn't prepared for it to slap her so hard in the face as it did.

Nothing had changed since then. Shannon was still not considered her father's daughter, and after the night she had just experienced, she knew she wasn't more than a freak in his eyes. In Jim's eyes, Shannon being herself was wrong. All Shannon did, with the help of her mom, was wrong. What Jim considered to be Shannon's 'choice' in life, was wrong. What she wore was wrong. Whom she hung out with was wrong. The things Shannon liked was wrong. She was wrong. In her father's eyes, Shannon was just wrong.