Through my 16 years of life I had moved a total of 3 times. Don't think I had travelled all around the world because no, my movings away were always limited between the states of Washington and Oregon.
Originally, my family is from a tribal reservation called La Push, next to Forks, Washington. That introduction is what normally explains my copper skin and the oh-so-typically-stereotyped black hair of native americans.
My family, meaning my father, mother and me, lived in La Push for my 8 first years of life. There I enjoyed a childhood surrounded by my uncle, aunt and cousin, as well as many close family friends. La Push is small, with little over 300 residents, so in general, everyone pretty knows everyone and you can't walk the streets without an elder stopping you to comment how big you are and all sorts of embarrassing things.
Life there was peaceful and quiet, with trips to the beach and playing on the streets like little wildings with the other kids. It really felt like a family, a really big and distorted family.
Leaving La Push caused a permanent rift between my parents. Dad's job was what caused us to move, and mum forever resented leaving home. By the end of the second moving, I was already used to the screaming matches and the reproach on every sentence they ever spoke to each other. My dad became someone "too hang up with money to see what it was doing to the family" and mom became "an ungrateful wife who doesn't even appreciate all the work he has to do". Unfortunately, I was caught in the middle of it, and while mum avoided the problems by doting at me, dad slowly drifted apart. His reasoning was that I always sided with my mother, even though all I was was a child that seeked the warmth instead of the shouts.
Entering my teenage years, it didn't took long to notice that my father depended a little too much on alcohol and that my mom smiled less and less each day. Dad's attitude towards me also changed, as he no longer even tried to get me on my good side.
Don't take me wrong, dad was always out of the house so I wasn't that close to him anyways, but you certainly notice a change when instead of the somewhat loving attitude, all you get is an him being irritated at your presence or just blatantly ignoring you.
During all those years, life at home was tense, with fights breaking at every little detail. Therefore, I had a little set of easy rules I had to follow every day:
1. Avoid dad when he's drunk at all costs
2. Be invisible whenever dad is home
3. Be home before dad comes
As if destiny wanted to twist my life even more, mom got hit by a car three years ago. The days following the accident were dark, I had become motherless and instead of being comforted I had a father that blamed mother for getting herself in an accident, and hadn't it been for all the people from town, she probably wouldn't even have had a proper funeral. Dad prohibited anyone from La Push to come to the funeral and I had to watch by myself as my mother was lowered to the ground because father
decided to go to a bar and drink his own sorrows.
Through a sloppy letter we were informed that when news of mother's accident arrived to La Push, aunt Sora was so devastated that her heart couldn't handle all the sorrow and died within days. Father didn't let me go to the funeral, saying to me that no-one in La Push would have wanted me there, as it was my mother's fault to die, and as her child I was also to blame.
After that, my rules grew bigger and bigger, as I had to do all the housework my mother usually did. Cleaning, cooking, paying the bills, shopping...everything was under my watch as dad rarely was out of a bar.
With dad drinking more and more, he also became louder. The shouts once meant for my mother were now directed at me, blaming any flaw he could find in the house. That, however, didn't happen every day, as he normally liked to act as if I didn't exist at all. It was only in his drunk rampages that find my teenage body and mind the perfect target, more than once his hand was used to stress what he was saying.
One night though, he snapped and disappeared through the door. At first I thought he was just at some bars, wasting away but after three weeks and no sign of him I started to grow worried. What if he was dead in some dark alley? Maybe he wasn't the best parent in the world but he still was the one that gave me life, so I had a right to be worried.
When the third week of his disappearance rolled to its end, a neighbour came to the house. Apparently he was concerned after three weeks of not seeing my father's car on the drive-way. Once he found out what was going around, he didn't waste time to call the social services and that single phone call sealed my fate.
I was going back to La Push to live with my cousin and uncle.
Hey guys! Lily here, this is my first story ever, so please be kind x
See you next time