I'm not entirely sure about it, but it's different to what I normally write – please review. Actually, having originally written this with the intention of it being a one-shot; there may be a second part. Hmmm. I hope you can all guess what I'm on about in this story.
She wasn't good enough. Never had been. Never would be. That was what she thought to herself; told herself every day – morning, noon and night; repeating the mantra like a sick prayer, trying to become perfect in a vain battle that nobody could ever win.
For her father; the man who had shaped her life unwittingly, it was always the job that came first. Always. He never cared about anything else, never talked about anything else, from what she could remember. It was always work – he'd rather go to the pub with the team than come home and spend his evening with his family; leaving his daughter at home when her mother spontaneously decided to have an evening out without so much as a word to her husband.
He eventually left when she was seven. She'd asked him why – what she'd done, if it was her fault that he was leaving them alone to fend for themselves; letting his little girl grow up without a father, never having the chance to so much as speak to him – her mother never let her; anyway, whether he'd wanted to know her or not – and so she never knew whether he loved her.
Yet he never did answer his little girl's question. It must have been her fault, she thought. What else would cause a man to leave his wife, other than his ugly little daughter driving them apart? They'd married for a reason, surely – once upon a time, they'd been in love. And their daughter had destroyed that reason – at least in her own mind, she had. Nobody had ever bothered to prove her wrong about that theory; and so it grew, along with other mad and irrational thoughts that lived like weeds in the sanctuary of her mind; twisting their way around the tracks and viciously derailing the trains of thought that occasionally appeared bearing glimmers of hope, far away in the distance.
She hated herself so much – her mother hated her. Her father hated her. She had no friends. No one cared... but she'd learnt not to care about them – it was easier that way. Not caring meant that you couldn't get hurt. If you didn't love anyone; they couldn't break your heart.
Now, she was sixteen. Nearly ten years had gone by – and she avoided looking at herself in the mirror, because she couldn't bear to see herself. Instead, she bowed her head, shaded her vision with her hands and moved on, fighting back the tears with all her might, biting her lip so hard it would bleed; the crimson liquid representing her torment as it trickled down to her jaw before she wiped it away determinedly, trying to carry on when inside she was ripping at the seams.
She looked like him, with her blue eyes, dark blonde hair, tall body and long limbs – everyone told her, she had her father's eyes. Her own mother hated her for reminding her of him. The man who had broken her heart when he abandoned them; leaving her to pick up the pieces and try in vain to glue them back together and resemble what they once had been – although many of the pieces were missing; leaving gaping holes, no matter how hard they tried to ignore them. She reminded her mother of him so much that it hurt both of them; tearing them apart until they no longer spoke.
But no one could understand just how much she, herself, was hurting. They'd never experience the torture she went through every single day without fail, the self loathing so strong that she wondered what use she was in this world to anyone. No one could ever possibly endure what she did, crying herself to sleep every night. No one cared enough to notice her torment; the deep scratches on her arms made by anything she could possibly find that would cause pain, scars on her knuckles, her hoarse, weakening voice.
Bones and muscles protruded around her body, but they were camouflaged by oversized clothing, and the way in which she pushed out anyone who looked as if they might try to stop her – she felt comfortable in her own skin only when she was starving; her head spinning yet still determined that nothing was to pass her lips.
She walked a troubled track in life; she had done ever since the day that her father had walked out on her. She didn't let anyone get close to her; it was too dangerous, too scary. People could take her heart out and crush it, while she looked on, powerless to stop them. Now nobody could ever hurt her.
Other than herself, of course.
She flexed her stiff, bruised knuckles as she stared down at her fragile body, stood in the bedroom of a squalid, cramped studio flat in the roughest, cheapest suburb she could possibly have found. Encased in a short black dress and laddered black tights, she hoped desperately for the first time in forever that she'd find a man who cared tonight. She was fed up of being alone.
But he didn't care. He told her he loved her that week. That he'd never felt like that about a woman before. She felt special. She felt wanted. She felt loved – a feeling she hadn't experienced for as long as she could remember. Since even before her dad left. She'd never know how it felt to be truly loved – she couldn't remember what the emotions were like; in fact, she couldn't remember how to love anyone else.
If he didn't love her, she couldn't make him angry.
He would never hurt her if he didn't love her. That was the way it worked; right?
She didn't go to the police. From her experience, they wouldn't care. Even if she told her dad; she thought that he wouldn't care. She'd just have to get on with it. After all; that's life, isn't it?
When her man hit her, she knew that he loved her. She was sure that he did. It felt almost as if he was kissing her – a kiss from a fist was better than none at all.
By the end of her sixteenth year in the world, she was five feet and nine inches tall; weighing 4 stones, 13 pounds. Dangerously underweight; but still fat – still ugly; if only to herself.
Two broken ribs, a black eye, split lip. Internal bleeding. Ruptured heart.
Alice Jean Hunt.
12th November 1964- 7th September 1980.