A/N: I wrote this a long time ago, and I was planning on posting it, but then I got nervous about it, and didn't post it. And then my computer died, so I thought I'd lost it, but I found it in my e-mail, so I'm posting it now. It's triggery, and I'm not totally sure I'll continue it, but just in case I lose it again, I'm posting it. If you hate it, tell me, but be gentle about it, because I've never written anything like this before. If you like it, and want me to continue, tell me that, too. It might push me to write more for it, because otherwise, it's just an unfinished thought, and it doesn't make any sense in the Pezberry category. Okay. Enjoy, and R&R.
A/N 2: Also, I think it needs to be said that I don't hate Finn. It's just really easy to write him as an asshole.
Disclaimer: Don't own Glee. Please don't sue.
Life is a funny thing. You spend so much of your youth planning and preparing and obsessing over the future, but no matter how well thought out your plans were, they very rarely come to fruition.
That's pretty much my life in a nutshell.
I spent every moment of my young life thinking that I'd end up on Broadway, adoring fans screaming my name and waiting outside for hours just to get my autograph. I knew since I was very young that I belonged on the stage. My parents weren't always supportive. Well, my dad didn't mind so much, but my mom was against it for a very long time. She was afraid that I'd face the same fate as her. She'd tried for years to make it on Broadway before finally giving up and moving to Lima to teach show choir. She eventually came around, though, and she put me in every singing, dancing, and acting class we could afford.
I loved performing. I loved entertaining people. Even when there were only a few parents watching at one of the recitals I had as a kid, I'd still throw myself into whatever role I was playing or song I was singing. When I could get applause from people, I felt amazing. When I got my first standing ovation from someone who wasn't my parents, I remember running backstage with tears of joy running down my face. It was incredible, and I felt like everyone loved me.
Well, I felt that way onstage. In social situations, however, it was a completely different story. It wasn't so bad when I was younger, but as we all got older, I found myself becoming more and more of a social outcast. It started with my clothes. While all the girls in middle school started wearing things that left little to imagination, I still wanted to hang on to my youth. I liked my animal sweaters, and I still fit into them, so I saw no reason to run off and buy a whole new wardrobe.
Then, there was my nose. I'd never really thought badly about the fact that my nose was a little larger than normal. I'd actually thought it was a good sign, considering that it made me look more like my idol, Barbra Streisand. The girls at school didn't agree. I started to come to expect at least one comment about my nose a day. Couple that with the wardrobe I mentioned before, and the fact that I wasn't developing like the other girls (in height or chest size), plus my habit of singing in public, and I was quickly put on the "not hot" list. No boy wanted within a fifty foot radius of me, and every girl looked at me like I had a disgusting growth coming out of the side of my head.
The boy thing didn't bother me so much on its own. I wasn't actually very interested in boys. I didn't see the appeal of having one of them follow me around like a puppy dog and slobber all over my face whenever they felt like it. It seemed more like a nuisance that a blessing. The problem was that it seemed that every other girl in school was obsessed with getting guys to pay attention to them. I remember the day that Lauren Zizes (almost as big of a pariah as I was) admitted to making out with a guy in the alley behind the movie theatre, and suddenly she was the most popular girl in school.
See, I didn't care about boys' attention, but I definitely wanted girls to notice me. I wanted their approval and acceptance. I wanted to impress them. It was an obsessive want that rivaled my need to make it in New York, and I didn't understand it. It was tolerable at first. I'd just throw myself into my singing and all of that, but as we moved to high school, and I still had no friends or romantic interests, I found myself trying to fit in.
My first attempt at really getting friends was making a MySpace and posting videos of me singing. I thought if the kids at school saw me singing (really singing and performing my heart out), they couldn't keep hating me. My voice always won the crowd over. Besides, getting my videos online was also a way for me to get my voice out there for producers and the like, so it was a win-win for me. That is, until the only people that watched the videos were the girls on the cheerleading squad, and that was only so they could leave nasty comments. It sent me into a depression that had me refusing to leave my room for an entire day. It wasn't until my mom threatened to break down the door that I finally left the room with a single goal on my mind. It should've been clear what I had to do when I'd seen Lauren's rise to the top of the social ladder.
I needed boys to notice me. It was the only way to get the girls at school to like me.
I started wearing shorter skirts, which started to get some boys attention. A few of them would make catcalls and such in the hallways, but this just made the girls hate me more. In fact, I started being greeted almost every morning with a slushie facial, thrown by either one of the popular girls, or their boyfriends. It wasn't like it hadn't happened before that, but it seemed that the more attention I got from boys, the more slushies were thrown in my face. I figured I was getting the wrong kind of attention. Maybe they thought I was trying to steal their boyfriends or something, so I decided I needed a steady boyfriend of my own.
I know, it sounds crazy, but I was fifteen, and I wanted so badly to have friends.
I tried dating Jacob Ben Israel for a while. He'd been the only boy that was willing, and although I didn't feel anything for him, and he was creepy so often, he had moments where he was an absolute sweetheart. Unfortunately, dating Jacob didn't have the desired effect, either. He was a loser like me, so it didn't help my reputation with the female population at all. I broke up with Jacob a month after we'd started. We hadn't even moved past holding hands.
The abuse at school continued. Even after I joined our school's glee club at my mother's insistence (she said it was because she wanted her school to have a little competition, but I knew it was because she was trying to get me out of the funk I'd dropped into), I wasn't happy. Singing didn't provide the happiness and security that it once did. No one cared that I had an amazing voice or that my dancing skills were well above average. All they cared about was that I was different. I started thinking that the only way I'd be able to escape my bleak existence was to kill myself.
Then Finn Hudson transferred to our school, and everything changed for me.
Finn was one of those guys that everyone loved. He was tall and handsome and charming in that dorky kind of way. He was the starting quarterback during football season, and an excellent basketball player once winter came around. Every girl wanted him, and every guy wanted to be him. Even all the teachers loved him and let him slide on assignments and tests. Even his parents were becoming big in the community. His dad was a war veteran who now owned several branches on an insurance company, and his mother was very involved in the community and the PTA. He was our golden boy.
The day he talked to me for the first time is a day that I'll never forget. I was walking to one of my classes when someone decided to knock my books out of my hands. I was used to it, so I bent down to pick them up. The next thing I knew, someone was helping me. When I looked up and saw Finn looking at me, I immediately thought he was going to throw the book away or something, so I snatched it away from him.
"Whoa," he said. "I was only trying to help. I'm Finn, by the way."
"Um...hi," I said. "I'm Rachel. Rachel Berry."
"Yeah, I know. I've heard about you."
"You have?" I asked, totally caught off-guard.
"Yeah," he said, grabbing my books from me. "Let me carry these for you." I was too shocked to say anything to the contrary. "So you're in the glee club, right?"
"Yes," I said.
"Cool. I was thinking about joining. I sing a little."
"Really?" I said. "Because we can always use more members, and I'm still in need of a capable male lead that can keep up with me vocally. We have a real chance of doing well in competition, and it would look good on a college application."
"Oh, well, I'm probably not going to college, seeing as my dad's giving me a job after school, but it sounds like a good time," he said.
"Alright," I said as we got to my class. "This is me. I hope to see you after school at glee club practice."
"Definitely," he said, then he bent down and kissed me on the cheek. I didn't think I'd ever blushed so hard in my entire life. "I'll see you there."
Finn did end up joining glee club. He also asked me out a week later. The date ended with my first kiss, and although it wasn't as spectacular as it seemed to be in movies, I figured that was just because Hollywood was all about overselling romance, and I'd set my standards too high. I was just excited that he asked me to be his girlfriend on our second date.
Things at school immediately changed. For starters, the slushies stopped. So did knocking my lunch or my books out of my hands. Finn made sure to let everyone know that if they ever did anything like that to me again, there'd be hell to pay. Finn walked me to all my classes and gave me rides to and from school. He was always around me and always doting on me. It was very sweet.
The best part, though, was the way the girls treated me now. Since it wasn't cool to hate and pick on me anymore, the girls started to warm up to me. I found myself being invited to sleepovers and the movies. They'd ask me how I'd gotten Finn and what it was like dating him. In fact, for the most part, we talked about was boys, but I didn't care as long as they talked to me.
Things with Finn weren't perfect, of course. We'd had a few fights here and there. The first one was actually about my clothing. I'd been dressing a little more like the rest of the girls since my confidence had gone up. I'd thought that Finn would like it, but he turned out to be a little more conservative than I'd thought he was.
"You can't dress like this anymore," he'd said one day while he was driving me home from school.
"Like what?" I asked. "I'm just dressing like everyone else."
"I don't like the way the guys look at you when you wear stuff like that."
"It doesn't matter, Finn. I'm with you. Who cares if a few perverted guys look at me?"
"I care!" he yelled, startling me a bit. "Look, you're my girlfriend, and I should be able to go to school without worrying that you're trying to get attention from other guys."
"Is that what this is about?" I asked. "I'm not trying to get attention. I just like dressing this way."
"Yeah, well, if you keep at it, you just might find yourself alone," he said as he pulled up to my house. I felt the blood rush out of my head. He couldn't be serious. Being with him was the only thing keeping everyone from hating me again. I needed him.
"Okay. I-I didn't mean to upset you. I'll go back to the way I was dressing-"
"Minus the skirts," he said, and I nodded. Instantly, his demeanor changed, and I let out a smile of relief. "Sorry, babe. I didn't mean to scare you or anything. I just wanted you to know how important this was to me."
"I know," I said, then I kissed him and walked into my house.
Most of or fights went something like that. He was always changing little things about me. He'd stopped my babbling when I got nervous, because he said that he had a hard time keeping his interest up for that many words. He didn't like me wearing any make-up, because it just made me look like I was trying to hard to look pretty. Things like that. He just wanted me to be the perfect girlfriend, and I could understand that.
The hardest one to understand had been when Finn wanted to sleep with me. It was our junior year, and we were in New York for a competition. He'd managed to convince everyone to leave us in one of the hotel rooms together. It had started out innocent enough. We were just laying on the bed and kissing, but when I felt Finn trying to pull my top off, I sat up and scooted away.
"What the hell? What's going on?" he asked.
"Finn, I'm still not ready. I know you are, but this is really important to me-"
"What, you think I'm not good enough for you or something?" he spat out.
"N-No. It's not like that-"
"Then what? Are you planning on losing it to somebody else?" This happened a lot, actually. He wouldn't really let me finish what I was trying to say. He said it was because he already knew what I was thinking. He was wrong a lot of the time, but nobody's perfect, so I let it slide.
"Finn, you're the only guy I want," I said, and it was true. Being with Finn had made my life so much easier.
"Good, because you know no other guy would put up with you, right?" I nodded in agreement. "Look, I'm a pretty patient guy. I mean, the fact that we've been together so long sort of proves that, but I'm done waiting for this. All the guys on the team are ragging on me for not sleeping with you, and I can't have that."
"All the girls think you're really great for not making me do it."
He laughed. "Please. Like I care what those girls think. They only say stuff like that to you so you won't give it up. They're just trying to bring us down, Rachel."
"No," I said, shaking my head. "They're my friends."
"Really? Because I'm pretty sure that before I showed up, they were all throwing slushies in your face. They hate you, Rachel. I'm the only one that really cares about you."
I hated what he was saying. I wanted so badly to not believe it, but it was so true. If Finn weren't here to protect me, the same girls that I considered friends would probably still be my biggest tormentors.
"I...I still don't want this right now." Finn just sighed and pulled me back down on the bed.
"Look, this is happening. I know what's best for us, okay? Whatever your instincts are telling you to do is wrong. I mean, when have they ever been right before?" He started kissing my neck, and I felt this sense of dread rise in my stomach. I pushed it away, though. Finn was right...he had to be right. He'd been right about everything else, so I let it happen.
It hurt. It hurt so bad that I had a hard time breathing between sobs.
Fortunately, it didn't last very long, and I'd been on the pill for months, so I didn't have to worry about pregnancy, so I let Finn fall asleep next to me, and I was able to stop my tears after an hour or so. Every time after that got a little less painful, until I didn't feel anything at all anymore. I was a little worried about the fact that I wasn't getting anything out of it (Finn even had to go as far as buying lube because I couldn't get wet), and at first, I thought there was something wrong with me. Finn told me, though, that it was way better for the guy than the girl, and most girls lied about how great their boyfriends were. He said I should do the same, so I did.
Finn and I went into our senior year together and happy, and when he proposed near the end of the year, I accepted without a second thought. I had no doubt in my mind that Finn was going to be the best I could ever find, so it only made sense for me to marry him. My parents weren't exactly thrilled by the prospect, but Finn said that we were making a new family, so our parents' opinions weren't as important anymore.
We got married right after we graduated. A lot of our classmates and his parents came. My parents, unfortunately, didn't. I'd cried about it for days, but I felt like this was the right thing to do. Well, my instincts were saying this was the wrong thing to do, but Finn was right about my instincts. They never told me the right thing to do. I knew I needed him in my life to keep things simple and easy.
We stayed in town. Finn got the job at his dad's local insurance branch. I stayed at home for the most part. After high school, Finn thought it would be best for me to distance myself from my friends. He said they only made trouble for us. He also said that keeping up a marriage and going to college would be too much for me to handle, so I let my dreams of NYU go. It hadn't been an easy decision, but I'd just become used to going along with what Finn said.
We were married for two years without any problems. Well, there were some problems. Finn was very controlling, but that wasn't really a problem. He just always knew what was best, and he was adamant on making sure that everything worked out the way he wanted. He...also occasionally hit me. It started about a year into our marriage, but it was nothing beyond a few cuts and bruises, and he always apologized immediately afterward. I just frustrated him from time to time, and he'd lose his temper. They were all problems I could ignore.
Then Santana Lopez moved to town, and turned my world upside down.