Chapter Twelve: You Are Not the Only One

This was the only time in the history of Olivia's life that she felt she was listening to herself as a young girl. First it was the Eldridge case, but she never did exactly what Carried Eldridge did. There had been other cases where she could relate to the victim, and once in a while the perp, but this was the most analogous story she'd ever heard her entire lifetime. It was almost like she was looking through the mirror since she met Kelly.

Olivia was hesitant of what to say. The first time she talked to Kelly, she had this great sensation that she had lived through the same awful experiences that she had gone through. But then she didn't feel that it was the right time to Kelly about her past, and why she wasn't alone. Olivia knew that for her own self it wasn't going to be easy to tell Kelly about her past, because each time she told someone about it, it was still painful to remember all that happened. But at this moment Olivia knew that it was the right time to tell her, and that Kelly might realize that she wasn't the only girl who had gone through having a mother that was raped and never knowing her father, being a slave for her mom, having a mother that could care less about what happens to her own daughter and treats her like jerk, and living with an alcoholic and abusive mother.

"Kelly, there's something that I wanted to tell you." Began Olivia calmly and it didn't take her very long to open up. Most of the time it took one her colleagues to get her to talk about it, although then she had no choice but to speak up.

"Yeah?" Kelly said in a soft tone. Every time Olivia had come to talk to her while she was in the hospital, there was always some bad news that followed the reason she came, so this time Kelly knew that she didn't hear all of the "bad" news instantaneously.

"I know that right know you're probably feeling that you are the only one."

"What do you mean by the only one?"

"The only one who has lived through what you've been through."

"Oh."

There was a pause between what Kelly had just said, until she spoke up once again. "That's what everyone says. I am the only one that's been through that."

"Kelly, believe me; you're not."

"Sure. People say that just to make me feel better. But then again you're the only one that really knows the real truth."

"Kelly, when I was a young girl like you, I never knew my dad either."

"Really; you never did?"

"No. When my mom was in her twenties, she was raped, and I never knew him just like you never did."

"But how did you live through it?"

"The same way you did. I just kept it to myself because I was better off living a life where no one really knew about it, and the fact that my mother was an alcoholic. I was like her slave to her; getting her what she wanted, when and how she wanted it."

"So you know what it's like?"

"Yeah. Most of my time through junior and senior high school, I barely had any friends. I knew that if I did, they would begin to know about my father and my mother. I just wanted to kind of keep it all a secret."

"That's what I do."

"It's just much easier to keep quiet because that way there you can pretend that nothing ever happened."

"I never talked about it either, but sometimes the more it was in my head; the more it wanted to escape from it and tell everyone. I just couldn't, though."

"And for me, the only way I would actually feel comfortable talking about it is telling someone who's been through the same pain that I had; someone like you, Kelly."

"But you've never been raped and ended up pregnant." Right after Kelly said that, you could tell that she was about to cry.

"No, I haven't. Even though I never was, I know what it's like, because that's what had happened to my mom. Kelly, sometimes in life things don't necessarily have to happen to you in particular to actually feel the pain that someone's been through."

"It still hurts though. It hurts that you have to remember every day that you have someone living inside of you when you're only thirteen."

"There's one thing that you have to remember, though."

"What would that be?"

"That you aren't just a victim. You're a survivor."

"It doesn't matter if I survived it or not! I still have to live through it. I can't keep the baby because I'm putting her up for adoption." Tears came down from her eyes this time, flooding her cheeks. Although this time, Olivia cried with her.

"Why are you crying, Olivia?"

"Because, because I know that you've been through so much, and I know what it's like. You're one of the only girls I've met who actually understand what it's like to go through that and how hard it is to talk about it."

"You don't need to cry for me, though."

"But I am." More tears flooded Olivia's face, and although Kelly thought that she was just crying for her, Olivia was also crying because of all the things that she had been through herself, although she didn't want to admit the whole truth. Olivia went up to Kelly and hugged her, and they both were crying, remembering all the horrible things they went through in life. There was no way of erasing it; they had to live through it forever.