Author's Note: This is just a little something that I wrote during my daily 750words that I found myself enjoying. I think I might at some point in time, when I have a bit more free time handy (which isn't any time soon what with these essays and such, ahh, the life of a University student ;) ) I might expand this piece to be longer and more in depth. As it is, enjoy. :)
There are things in life that you know that you want without ever being told that you want them. Things like love. Things like happiness. Things that Quinn Fabray had never known in her life. Most children grow up with the love of their parents. The love that their mother gives them when they are brought into the world, the soft kiss on the forehead and the bright smile that brings them through the pain of labour and childbirth. Quinn Fabray never received that love. What she received was something less, something a little colder, but no one else could tell that it wasn't love. Not a mother's love.
Quinn's father certainly loved the girl, but not because she was his daughter, his little girl. No, he loved her because she was the perfect little child to bring into his family to make the rest of his life look that much better. She was the perfect little thing that he could use to make his position look even better to everyone that looked in on his life. She was something that he could use, which meant that he loved her, not as a child, but as an object. She was something to be used, but not cared for.
Her sister might have loved her. Once, perhaps she did. But even that young girl realised that her little sister could be used for something more than being the little thing that she could coo to and adore. Quinn's sister learned that she was the older sister, the responsible one, which meant that she could control Quinn. Perhaps it was the effect of her upbringing, but being able to control her little sister meant that she had an aspect of control over the rest of her life and she could use that, twist it into something that mattered to her.
Quinn Fabray had never been loved. She grew up without the kind touch of her mother as she put her to bed, or the indulgent smile that a father should give to a childish story, or the even the gentle teasing that a sister should provide. Quinn Fabray grew up with the cold reality of rules that she had to follow and things that she could never mention. She knew that her childhood wasn't that of the other children around her, but she had to pretend because to admit that she hurt inside would be less than perfect, and she knew that her father would not want her to be anything less than perfect. Quinn knew, and she tried to be perfect.
That little girl didn't understand that she would never be perfect in her father's eyes, because she could never try hard enough for him. He would always find something to fault her on, she would never be able to look into his eyes and see the happiness and the pride that she wanted to see because he would never show it to her. He would never give her the time of day to tell her that he was proud of her.
And in the end it didn't matter to her.
In the end, she knew that she would never be the type of perfection that he wanted, because she couldn't stomach the hours of pretending to be something that she wasn't. She couldn't stomach the idea of living a life that she did not want.
In the end, she wasn't perfect, but she found someone to show her that being less than perfect was what life was about. She found someone that showed her all the things that she had missed as a child, the things that she had craved without knowing what they were because she was meant to receive them. She was meant to receive those kind words, but she never got them until the point when it was almost too late.
Her parents never knew. Her sister never realised, but they had been losing her for years and in the end, when they lost her, they didn't even know when she had gone.
Quinn Fabray learned that to love meant to love. She learned that she didn't have to be perfect at every moment of the day because she would be cared for even if she was not the type of perfect that her father wanted her to be.
"Dad, I'm leaving."
Those were the last words that Quinn said to her father before she turned her back on her old life, because she didn't need them anymore. She didn't need to be perfect to be happy.