A/N: So in theory this was all in character and made sense to me; in actuality I have no idea what happened. I was at work and that's the excuse I am using. :)
-----
They all leave you. They take their paths through you life and carve out a bit of your heart each time they take that fateful step away. The little cuts and nicks on your soul are hidden by a façade; a well played out charade. You marvel at how easy it has become to act as though your life is perfect all of the time. Covering scars with carefully crafted and witty banter is your specialty. Patching the holes in your core with a smile is second nature. Masquerading through your own life so as to not let anything but the air of confidence exude from your being as you march down the hospital corridors is a trademarked forte. It is a delicate and exquisite mask you wear; carefully sewn together with the patchwork of all life's mistakes, traumas, disappointments, and travesties.
-----
Your mother taught it best. She gave you all of the tools required to be a different person outside of the four walls of your room. Well, technically seven walls; seven perfectly adorned and wallpapered walls. It's a covering of the beatings that have taken place inside. Of the bruises that haunt your essence. You had the technique mastered by the age of six. At that early age you learned how to tell people what they wanted to hear and not what they needed to hear. She trained you that what happened in your trivial life at home was of no importance to the people at the country club. The same one that you spent many hours at while she waved her empty glass at the pool boy who was also happened to be her lover. Like mother, like daughter right?
-----
At nine you learned what a pretty smile and a few quick eyelashes batted in appropriate direction could get you. You caught on quickly and soon had the art of manipulation under full control. She mimicked a perfect outline of how to get what you wanted out of people; out of life. Not what you needed; it is never about what one needs to survive. She gave you that. She held it out like a cookie on a silver platter for your taking, frosted with the pretense of motherly love. Then she left. Vanished into the night without a call or a care. That was the first time someone walked away from you. You didn't know it then but it was going to be a gift and a curse.
-----
The beatings started shortly after her departure. Her swinging door hit you face first by your father's skilled hands. He blamed you for her torrid affairs and derisory ideas of running away and being free. At age eleven you were only fairly certain that your mother's idiocy was not your fault but he felt differently. He showed you how differently in your seven protected walls with his fists. He hurt you but there were no marks; none visible to the naked eye because he was that good; it was annoying. The wall coverings that were promised to keep you safe laughed at you at night for being so naïve. They danced through your dreams and stabbed at your heart until you believed that everything was your fault.
You grew withdrawn and quiet. You only spoke when
someone else engaged the conversation. You watched with bloodied
eyelids as your father paraded many women from his room. Most of them
were your nannies. Apparently there was a job requirement that had
nothing to do with "taking care" of you. They came into your enclosed
world and left just as quickly. At age thirteen you politely pleaded,
as his hand crushed your left wrist, to not have any more nannies. You
were fine on your own; it wasn't like you hadn't been raising yourself
your entire life anyway. Like father, like daughter right?
-----
He died leaving you a rich legacy and lingering ghosts. You felt a sense of relief this time before the guilt set in. It washed over you as you hid in your closet beneath the hanging clothes skimming the top of your red hair. Trembling hands clutched photos and an old shirt trying to not forget the memories of when he was an actual father. Your tears soaked through the material wrenched in between your fingers and you felt the pain of number two leaving you. At least he had the decency to die. For one to be able to stand, walking away, (like everyone they left behind made no difference to them), was far more heartbreaking than the being released from you childhood prison.
You stood above his grave solemnly. You tried to remember what she taught you. How to not cry when they looked at you. No one wants to see you break down; it doesn't matter what you need Addison was on constant repeat as the cool air blew under your hair. Someone had once said that she did the best she could, (you think it was nanny number four), but to give something your best is to imply that one has tried. Your mother never tried to do anything but please herself. You like to think that beneath her shallow shell that she could have presented something worth loving and being attached to but it is far too late to re-hash the makings of one's seemingly perfect life. So you gather your mask with a fresh alteration and slide it over your eyes when they watched your every move.
-----
There were others. Those who left you. It's a long list including the family members who disowned you after you father's death, the boyfriends who couldn't handle your neurosis and the friends who wanted your life because they didn't know any better. They all left little abrasions. You felt each time they walked away and that's when you began to crave it. It wasn't healthy, definitely not healthy to use horrible moments into pressuring yourself to believe you were still alive. It wasn't okay to want to feel your core aching within your chest just so you could know that you were still sucking air in and pushing it out. You strived for that moment, the pinch that seized your heart first and then slowly burned a path up and throughout your body. It wasn't adrenaline. It was a slow and dull throbbing in the seconds when you completely expected it and yet is still managed to grab a hold and take you by surprise.
-----
Every year during New Year's you used to wonder who it would be this year. As the people with the funny hats and beer breath mouth raped one another you sat pensively gathering your bets on who would walk away that year. Frankly, you've gotten quite good on putting an expiration date on relationships of all sorts and it makes you a little gleeful. There has yet to be an exception to your rule and you find yourself oddly envious of your mother who started to live for herself as opposed to for another. But it is too difficult to switch gears now. The mask is glued to certain places and it would take peeling a few layers of skin off to get to another level so you'd just as soon leave it and revel in the disappointment of losing another. Wallow in the regret of knowing that you are always right.
-----
It only took one to prove you incorrect. It only took one to show you that the way in which you were raised was most certainly not of your own doing. He stripped away every last piece of your mask and threw it off one of his beloved ferry boats. For the first time in your life you felt alive without having to hurt. He gave you hope. He made you dream of something other than your father's legendary beatings and the tails of your mother's fur coat as she walked out the front door. You never told him about all of those nights you spent in fear of your life. Never once whispered into his ear about how you felt nearly dead before him. About how every motion was commanded by the autopilot light in your head. He didn't need to know. The only thing that mattered is that he wasn't going to hurt you. You weren't brought up to know "the one" but you figured that if he never caused even a sliver of the pain everyone else did you two could make it work.
-----
So
you were right, so what? It wasn't like you didn't know it. As he sunk
you to your lowest lows, down on your knees sobbing in the shower, you
held your head high and your smile wide in public. You were cheeky,
fresh, knowledgeable, and first-rate at your job. At work the sting
ceased. The things you felt at home, the gut wrenching feeling of
sleeping alone, stayed in your bed for a few years at least. You found
yourself scraping you knees on the rocks at the bottom of the river
trying to dig up your mask as the days progressed. Each one was worse
than the one preceding it. When your façade was finally recovered from
the icy depths you found that there were only a few patches left,
surely not enough to do the job you needed them to be doing at the
moment. You placed them carefully and tried your best to make up for
the rest that were missing in action. You cursed his name as he tore
your soul to pieces, finding that every time a "…not now Addison." was
seethed from his lips; you could actually feel his hate growing.
-----
You wanted to think that it was his fault. That he was having an affair. You wished on every shooting star you saw that he was thrusting into some scrub nurse in a dirty on-call room so that it wasn't your own doing this time. Because if he wasn't cheating, and the reality of the situation at hand was that he simply didn't love you anymore, you weren't sure if you could continue playing the charade. If you were the one who pushed him away and were no longer loveable (even within the confines of your now four walls) then you would have to work double time to hunt down a new disguise and superglue it to your core.
After finally getting sick of the hurt you took matters into your own hands. Like, mother/like father, like daughter, right? Who were you to break the cycle? You stood on your two wet and shaking feet as he slammed the door. He was number…well you've lost count over the years…but the third most important one to go. You drank the pain like acidy mouthwash, swishing it over your teeth until they were numb. He left the missing pieces of your little game that night. It took you a few months to place them back together in the right array but you finally got it. You sewed feverishly night and day to get them in working order. The joke was on you at the end. It was always on you. People can waltz about in their camouflage but it never hid you well enough. So you sit at the bottom of the concrete stairs in the rain trying to figure out how to go from here. How to make your life work, how to survive, all the while having never been taught the rules of the contest.
-----
It's an ongoing procedure to make sure you are taking the right steps. Sometimes you slip up falling into self destructive behavior and the need for anguish but you quickly catch yourself and push back. You labor over decisions because you weren't properly trained for anything outside of the OR. Maybe someday you'll get this thing called life right. Perhaps one day you will wake up next to someone who sees through the mask instead of removing it. You can only hope to break the revolting sequence of the ones before you because this time it is about what you want, what you need and everything in between. Time has come to live for yourself; to find out who that person is without the aide of a carefully carved disguise. Because life within the design was merely existing and this time you are positive that you deserve a chance to do something other than survive.
-----