Diamonds Made of Glass

I stopped eating. Not that I hadn't stopped it before. I had. But back then it was part of my pre-teen phase of when I look fat in every angle even if I'm normal. Now it was an alarm I sent out, one that wasn't received. Sure, I was hungry. But I wanted the attention. I wanted someone to be sorry. I started staying home in the mornings. I was the best at faking a sickness. But somehow my body became sick precisely at the time I wanted it to. It was a strange sense of power that I received from it, the illusion. The walls closed in on me in the new apartment. When I was at mom's I was the all-smiles daughter who went to school and did her homework, helped at home, spoke with her mother when she had to, lied to perfection. The guy started spending weekends now and my midnight soundtrack began to be a weekly occurence, an all-night-lasting attack of voices from the bedroom across the hall. Half of the times might have been the fear of it replaying itself in my tired brain but why would I go check? I'd know when it stopped; Mom was still the same and strode quickly to the bathroom, holding his underwear between her thighs. I'd hear the shower then and sigh in relief, curling into a little ball against my blankets. It would all go on repeat in my head from my fear of another round and so deprave me of the last few hours I could have slept. After a repetition of this most weeks, I came to Dad's, I came home, to rest. The weeks at mom's would always stretch on. The house was not my home anymore. It smelt. It reeked. It was him.

Winter came. The coldness outside matched the one within me. My friends were long gone now, after all the weeks I'd spent home crying and sleeping. We were all camped out in Dad's bedroom, me, my sister and him. We were too scared to part ways at night. We did this at mom's as well. It was a weird re-attachment to my parents. I'd lost a family, so I kept my limbs attached to both parties as well as I could. I hated sleeping by mom's side. I felt disgusted sleeping in that bed. I held my breath constantly, my body hurt because I was keeping myself tense, not wanting to relax where he had been.

I didn't care that much anymore. I welcomed the new relatives mom brought to us. I babysitted the cousins that from then on were mine; two cute little boys that in all their innonce made breathing a little easier. They adored me and my sister from the start. I was happy to have some reason to actually visit mom's "other home" or should I call it real home. She spent the weeks with him. When we were at our father's she was never around. It felt nice to be away from her. To me she had become a creature of pure evil. I demonized her. I wanted her hurt...