A/N This is my first try at writing on here. Please read and review. I would love to know if my writing is worth reading :) Thanks!
Chapter 1- New
I stepped into the stuffy dorm room where I would spend the next year of my life and took a look around. Boring, brown, empty and smelling like cardboard, it represented my new blank slate. I would no longer be under the control of my mother. I loved her, loved her more than I could explain, considering the pain and disappointment she had injected into my spirit over the years.
***
"I'm so disappointed in you," she scolded as I winced away from her icy glare. I was ten and didn't want to take ballet any longer. "Everything I do, I do for you, Bella, and you throw it away! You have no idea how lucky you are," she choked out, starting her familiar guilt inducing cry. At which point, I slowly made my way back into the studio to join in on a class I had grown to hate. I was really, really good at dancing, but the instructor had her favorites and, no matter what I did, I was placed at the back of the choreography, wilting into the scenery and feeling useless and unimportant. Self esteem and pride had already made their exit years before and, after the class, I stared out the car window into the rain as my mother droned on and on about how I should be at the front of the class. Yet another way I had disappointed her. At the age of ten, I knew too well that I would never be good enough for Renee. I would always be the daughter that should have tried a little harder.
***
During my senior year of high school, I dated Mike. He was a really decent guy that made me happy. As much as you can love someone at an age, I loved him, and the summer after we graduated, I gave myself to him in the sweaty, stuffy attic of his tiny home, that was his bedroom. His family didn't have money; his parents had a tiny bungalo style house in the suburbs of Phoenix, and he was Chilean and beautifully bronze and sculpted. I loved him for his carefree spirit; we laughed, we played and the first time we made love, he treated me with all of the sweetness I felt I didn't deserve. He was a gentleman and, for the first time in my life, I thought someone could love me without expecting me to be something I wasn't.
And then, it was over. And the crushing pain was more than I could bare. And then, it was doubled by the joy I caught in my mother's eyes as she learned we had broken up.
"I'm sorry, but I can't help but be happy that you aren't with him any more, sweetie" she said after I caught her smiling through my blurred eyes. I had heard that my boyfriend, Mike, of two years had been with another girl and he had accidentally confirmed it. Not good enough, again.
***
I snapped out of the thoughts of my mother and tried to concentrate on the newness of school, my freshman year of college, and my chance to be, well, just ME.
My peace lasted just exactly until my mother made it up the steps to my dorm room; exactly two minutes after me. From that moment and for the next half hour, my first day of college was about her. But, then again, that was the story of my life. Everything that ever happened to me was about her, or more aptly, how it affected her. She stood there crying. And I stood there feeling sad for her.
Why was it that she always had the ability to make me feel so miserable for her? Why couldn't she just hide her feelings and let me be happy? Why couldn't I just enjoy my first day instead of consoling my mother? So, that's what I did on my first day and, at the moment I held her while she cried, my own grief struck me as I said good bye to my young self and hello to the things that would shape the woman I would become.
A/N Review please? Thanks so much!