DISCLAIMER: I do not own life with Derek lol

Please keep in mind this is a work in progress! I have some loose ends to tie up in later chapters!

"Derek, just tell me what's going on!" Casey cried out, staring at the oozing red blood that was now slowly seeping out of my mangled wrists. "Why do you do this to yourself? Please, I just want to know, I want to help you!" I closed my eyes and thought back to when it all started….

I hadn't been born in Canada, like I have led most people to believe. I was born in good old Italy, where my dad had met my mom, when he had been visiting some of his family there. Apparently, my parents had never loved each other, since I had been the result of a one night stand. My dad says he isn't proud of it, but he met my mother who was a stripper at the time, after another one of her "shows" she had given. He had said that she was just so beautiful, and had seemed to want him so much that he just gave into his passion for her. And then nine months later, there I was. A newborn baby just waiting for the world to take me in and then slowly but surely destroy me. My mother wasn't exactly a "nice" woman, and at the time, my father hadn't even known I existed. That was when I guess my troubles started. The day I was born. I always thought I had been a mistake, and for the first few years of my life my mother assured me that I was. Shortly after my birth, she became a crack addict, and since her current profession wasn't exactly bringing in the money to give her the powerful fix she needed, she started to trade her body for the candy which she so desperately craved. Yes, that's right my mother became a whore. I remember the nights I would sit locked away in the bathroom, trying to keep myself quiet as possible as my mother skillfully handled her new job. I knew the consequences I would have to pay if I so much as breathed in the wrong way. I had suffered the brutal beatings before, even as a small child of four, and I did not look forward to another night of my mother screaming how much she hated me and how I was such a burden to her, then to later experience the even worse "comforting" she gave me after she started to feel guilty. She would latch herself onto my as she silently sobbed "Oh baby, please forgive mommy, she didn't know what she was doing, please, I'll make it all better I promise." And then she would quietly kiss me all over until she had worn herself from all of her pleading and would silently go back to sleep. It was nights like this that I hated to love her, that I couldn't help but hope that she would still be this loving person in the morning, although she never was. I didn't know how good I had had it then.

A couple of years after Mom had begun her new "profession, when I was about six and a half years old, she found a new, more efficient way to get money for her addiction. One night when she had another one of her clients over, I began to feel a tingling sensation in my nose. I tried with all of my might to fight back the terrible force within me, but I couldn't help it, and out burst a powerful sneeze. I heard the ruckus in the room beside me cease for a moment before the man asked what it was that he had heard. I could imagine my mothers red eyes widen crazily as she whispered that it was probably nothing, her pipes made weird sounds sometimes, but even so I heard someone get slowly up from the bed and make his way swiftly to the door I had been concealed behind. A moment later the door flung open, but when the man saw me for what I was, a pathetic little boy interrupting his time with my mom, I did not see the revolting anger I had been expecting, but rather a sick grin making its way onto his face. He turned back to my mom, and asked her how much, and at first my mother didn't understand. I know I hadn't understood. How much for what? To get rid of me? To send me away? But after a few moments my mother came to the realization of what the man was asking, and drew in a deep breath, but only slightly hesitating before muttering that it would be double the price. The man quickly accepted and before I knew it, I was experiencing a worse type of abuse than I had ever suffered before. When the man was done, he quickly left, and my mother spent the rest of the night, latched onto me, begging for my forgiveness. I said I did, but really I hadn't. You can't forgive someone, not if they aren't truly sorry for the mistakes they had made. And she wasn't, proving this to me every time it happened again. She soon had more or less stopped prostituting herself altogether, finding that she could get much more money if she simply prostituted me. And that's when I came nothing more to her but a tool, a new way to get her fix every time she needed one. And as horrible as this pain I had to endure was, the truth was, at least I felt needed. Up until that point, my mom always had said that she would be better of without me, but now she couldn't because she knew that without me, she would have to go without her precious crack. No matter how pathetic this sounded, when I was a kid, the fact that she needed me was more than enough for me. So for the next four years I put up with the sexual abuse, the physical abuse, and worst of all the emotional abuse I endlessly endured. But as long as she had her drugs, which seemed to make her happy, I was happy. Sometimes she would even give me some of the drugs too. But these were rare occasions, only after she had run into a big spender. Normally she would save all of the crack for herself, but I surely but slowly became not only a crack addict, but an alcoholic also, and on the nights when I would be illin' for the drugs, or suffering for just one sip of vodka, were the nights that I found that if I took one of my mothers razor, and slowly slid the edges across my skin, I could make it all better. I didn't have to think about what was happening to me at all. I discovered this one night when one of the sickos who had paid my mother for a night with me brought a small pocket knife, and made a small cut wherever he kissed me at. I still have some of the scars, but I thank that man for giving me my new and present addiction, the only thing that got me through life. When that blood springs up after feeling the cool blade on your skin, you know that it is the one thing you have control over. The one thing that I could do myself.

I finally left my mother one time after she got shot by her drug dealer for not having enough cash on her. She was shot in the shoulder near the heart, and had to be rushed to the hospital. It was then, that my father was finally contacted, and told that he did in fact have a son. Of course my mother did survive, but in the next few weeks my father discovered what had been happening to me, and vowed that he would never let my mother harm me again. After a short custody battle, I was on a plane with my "new" father, onto a different life. And I was scared to death. I was relieved to be getting away from all those other people, but how could he take me away from my mother, the only person I cared about, the only person I loved? The only thing that I was sure of in life, was that adults were there to hurt me. What other ways could my life worsen, especially now as I was thrust into a new environment. I supposed I would just have to sit back and wait for the plane to land.

Please review, all criticisms are accepted, but keep in mind this is a work in progress! Theres more to come lol