Lydie Donaghy cried nearly every night when she went to bed.
Considering the alternatives, crying was the most constructive, least destructive, and easiest to move on from.
It was almost like a drug she had become dependent on, this whole crying deal. It helped her cope with her parents' loveless marriage, the girls at school who teased her about her hair, her glasses, her weird back-thing (she needed to wear a brace at night, and for this reason, she never went to slumber parties), and the fact that her seemingly perfect life was anything but. Lydie had tried making voodoo dolls to resolve her frustration with the matter, but she quickly abandoned that idea when she realized her Trinidadian nanny was not versed in the mystic culture of voodoo.
She often found herself wishing that she was someone else; someone who had the blonde (not frizzy) hair like her mother's, the mother who appeared to be Barbie or something. She wished that she was less noticeable, someone who could blend into the background and go about living her life as if she weren't the daughter of the CEO of KableTown or Avery Jessup, the head anchor for Nightly News with Avery Jessup. She didn't like the private school her parents had insisted she attend, and she did not enjoy the pressures that being a Donaghy-Jessup forced her to endure. She wanted to be normal.
At age ten, Lydie determined that she was no longer interested in being a Donaghy-Jessup. She was determined to find a different family, people who would accept her as the oddball that she was; frizzy blonde hair, brace, glasses, and all. She wasn't going to continue the life she led, trying to be better than herself. She was just herself, and despite all that her father tried to tell her, all those stupid affirmations that he forced upon her, she was not going to be better than herself. That was just stupid.
She resorted to the attic, a place that she frequented to get away from the angry yelling match that her parents would break out in on a weekly, if not daily, basis. The attic was a bright, warm, cheerful place that always had some sort of treasure to uncover. Lydie felt like this attic was an archaeological site, where her parents' pasts could be pulled apart and put back together again with each item she uncovered and categorized to her fancy. She didn't care if the stories she came up with were accurate; just as long as she didn't have to face reality.
One particular afternoon, Lydie retreated to the attic, unafraid that her parents might find her, as they had succumbed to yet another screaming match regarding some benign matter that had no necessity to turn into a nuclear-war of the words. Trying to hold back her tears, she threw herself down in a corner across the room from the door. She was trying to hide from reality, and this seemed to be the best place to do just that.
As she clamored over boxes, her foot caught on one of the flaps of a box, dragging the lid up. She didn't notice this until after she had curled up in a corner with her knees brought up to her chest. Noticing the box that she had opened, she leaned forward and gingerly brought the four flaps down and peered into the box. This box looked to be only full of paperwork, but being the oddity that she was, she decided to go through it.
She was surprised to find photographs, letters, small items of some sort of sentimental value, and cards in the box. Lydie recognized that this wasn't just a box of paperwork; this was a memory box. Of course, her interest peaked, and she began to drag out small stacks of the contents of the box. She laid them out on the floor in front of her, and examined the photos like a hawk, mentally photographing each item as she explored her find.
Initially, Lydie wasn't certain about to whom the box belonged: to her father, or to her mother. She had thought that the box belonged to her mother, given that most of the small mementos in the box seemed rather feminine and would be things that a woman would find relevance in. However, as she began to come upon the photographs and birthday cards, she realized that this was her father's box.
Most of the photos were of a woman with brown hair and glasses. She looked normal, but didn't look as though she really belonged in the world of her father. She looked too happy to be one of the women who would associate themselves with the world of Jack Donaghy or Avery Jessup. Lydie imagined that the woman the photo was someone from her father's past, probably from college or something, and that he had kept the photos as a token of his days at university.
She soon figured that the name of the woman in the photo was Liz. Or Lemon. Maybe her name was Liz Lemon. Lydie wasn't sure.