A/N: Please read before continuing.

This chapter has content warnings for verbal/emotional abuse and suicidality. If you've every struggled with these (especially if you're trans) please check in with your mental health and evaluate if you can safely read that sort of content.

An alternative is skipping to the bottom where I'll have a very brief A/N that sums up the chapter's major plot points in far more generic terms.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline #: 800-273-8255

I can't seem to post a link to the above organization's website here but it's a ".org" URL with their name.

Chapter 4 Theme Song: Breakdown by Guns N' Roses

My eyes shot open as I gasped loudly. This turned out to be a terrible idea because not a moment later I was bombarded by the sense that my skull was caving in while my stomach was clawing itself out of my abdomen. Hangovers, as it turned out, were a decent enough deterrent to ever drinking again.

Groaning I closed my eyes and tried to lay back into bed to fall asleep. It didn't work. I briefly wondered just what on earth had happened to put me in this state. Last thing I remembered was starting to make those wretched drinks and….

Wait. Oh no.

For the second time this morning my eyes shot open, instead this time I fought to keep them open. I couldn't clearly remember anything, but I had flashes of screaming at my mother and…and…

I looked down. I was still dressed in my bra, tights, skirt, shirt, and flannel. My breathing sped up.

No.

Please no.

NO.

I turned to the alarm clock and saw that it read 10:21 AM. This was bad. This was beyond bad. This was horrible. I was going to be kicked out. She had seen me. She knew that I had been wearing those clothes and there was nothing I could do about it.

I lay there feeling paralyzed for a few moments until the urge to vomit from both the stress and overdrinking drove me to the bathroom. I stumbled down the hallway, threw open the door, and then dropped to my knees by the toilet. The resulting purge emptied my stomach, but it did nothing to rid me of the growing panic. If anything, the increased empty space in my body allowed it to grow and spread.

My eyes must have seen my stomach as having had set an example because they too began to purge themselves. I was the most pathetic I had ever been, kneeling there making noises that bordered on inhuman. Gagging, sobbing, vomiting, gasping, and hyperventilating all at once I felt the tunnel vision squeeze further and further shut.

It could have been minutes, hours, days before the vomiting stopped and having one less problem on the list gave me just enough clarity to realize that there was figure standing in the doorway. Through blurry eyes I could see my mother looking down at me with, from what I could only sort of tell, was a look of absolute hatred.

As it turned out, she had called off work which somehow made it all worse. She never called off work if she could help it. Partially for the money, partially to not be around me. In the past 12 hours or so I had managed to irrevocably destroy whatever sliver of tolerance she may have had left for me.

"So…" she began with a tone that was both quiet and harsh, "you've been up to a few things lately". I couldn't get a hold of myself enough to give an answer at first, so she waited another few minutes. She seemed determined to drag me across the coals as slowly as possible. "I-i-i'm sorry it…I didn't m-mean…please". I finally started to beg. "Shut your fucking mouth" she returned in that same tone. "I thought I made it quite clear what the expectations were when it came to that bullshit, or did your idiotic brain have trouble understanding? Do I need to use smaller words for you?".

I couldn't even stutter at this point. I was so locked up internally that it was taking every ounce of energy to just keep myself from collapsing even further, physically and emotionally. "Let me be clear. If it weren't for the fact that I'd have to put up with the rest of this piece of shit town talking about it you would be out of this house before you finished crying your tears out like a child. Out of the goodness of my heart you have one chance. One. Chance.".

It was better than I had thought it'd be. Almost too good to be true.

"Let me tell you what you're going to do. You're going to drag your pathetic ass back to your room, change into something normal, take all those disgusting clothes out back, and burn them in the firepit. I'm going to watch you the whole time so you don't try anything stupid. Don't even think about hiding whatever else you have. You're also going to chuck all of those precious CDs of yours into a garbage bag and burn them as well.".

Please.

No.

Those clothes were the only tenuous grasp I had on who I was inside, and those CDs gave me the only sense of emotional fulfillment I could find. The only safety. "Get up, or did you not even understand that?".

In a numb oblivion at having heard my punishment I complied with packing up the only things in my life I felt were worth living for and brought them to our backyard. She and I remained silent the entire time. My tears and noises had stopped entirely, whether I had finally run out of energy or that whatever sense of self I had held onto had finally disintegrated I didn't know.

The backyard was normally a place I had found peaceful. It extended back into the surrounding forest with the long grass kept largely undisturbed and with wild plants growing. The firepit stood about 30 feet back and it wasn't much more than a large hole in the ground surrounded by a few feet of sand all around. My father had dug it years ago for some reason, maybe because he wanted a place to sit far away from my mother and me.

I dumped what had been packed into a few garbage bags into it and poured lighter fluid all over them. She stood 10 feet behind me, likely not wanting to be near the fumes or maybe just me. I suppose she thought I was contagious.

I hesitated to light the match because it would finally mean no turning back. There would be no saving any of it. "Did you hear me or not?". I squeezed my eyes shut and threw the lit match into the pit. It caught immediately, blinding in its intensity, and I couldn't bear to look at it. When I turned around she said "No. You're going to watch this". Her cruelty, it seemed, had reached new depths. I shuddered and turned back to the fire pit.

There it all was. Burning. Never coming back. Burning. Burning. Burning. In a moment of heartbreaking irony I felt a song come to mind, but I didn't dare even hum it. Its upbeat tempo and melody made it all feel worse.

We all come in from the cold,

We come down from the wire.

Everyone warms themselves,

To a different fire.

Nothing about this felt warm. It felt hot. Scalding. Caustic. Like the muscles and sinew and tendons and bones underneath my skin were melting down into a singular, toxic sludge.

Sometimes we get burned,

You'd think sometimes we'd learn.

The one you love,

Is the one that should take you higher.

You ain't got no one,

You better go back out and find her.

I had no one. No one to go out and find. No one to cry to. No one to hold me. No one to say that it'd be okay. It wouldn't be okay. It'd never be okay.

But if someone really cared,

Well they'd take the time to spare.

A moment to try and understand,

Another one's despair.

Remember in this game we call life,

That no one said it's fair.

I'd thought about killing myself in the past, but to completely honest the thought of one day realizing the tiny bit of hope of transitioning, but also the scary thought of never listening to music again, kept me around. That resolve was crumbling. I'd certainly not stayed around for the sake of anyone else. Especially not her. The cruel woman that I had called a mother. Now I didn't know what she was. A sort of thing, more "It" than "She". My own hell personified.

Breakdown.

I couldn't break down. I felt so empty that I wasn't able to by that point, nor did I think for a second that I'd be allowed to. If I could have let loose howls like that in the song I would have.

I've come to know the cold.

I think of it as home.

When there ain't enough of me to go around,

I'd rather be left alone.

I was alone. I had gotten used to it after years of trying to come to terms with it, or at least I had gotten to the point of convincing myself that I was used to it. I wondered if we were alone after death. At least I wouldn't be able to think about it, or much of anything, after I was gone.

The last beautiful free soul on this planet.

Neither of those two words described me. Beautiful. Free. Hell at this point I wasn't even sure there was enough of a soul left in me to say I had one. I'd shoved it into garbage bags, chucked it all into a firepit, and set it up in flames.

By this point the fire was dying down. Its contents were more or less all fused together in a mixture of melted plastic and fabric. The fumes were undoubtedly carcinogenic. I hadn't noticed the smell before, but it burned my nose and if I had any left it would have brought vomit up my wounded esophagus. I dared to turn around again and was met with It. "Shut up and get inside.". I'm not sure why It told me to shut up seeing as I hadn't spoken in several minutes.

I complied and walked slowly as we both entered through the back door into the kitchen. "Get the hell out of my sight and go to your room.". Coming from someone else being told to go to one's room when hungover may have been seen as a sign of mercy, but I didn't think It had any left.

Without even asking for any sort of over-the-counter pain medicine or water I headed up the stairs into my room. I stood in the center of my room staring blankly at the wall for a few minutes. I sat down on my bed and continued to stare. I was fully at a loss as to how to respond to any of this.

I had ruined everything. I had nothing. No music playing to keep me company and feel an emotional connection to. No clothes to help me feel connected to who I had always been. Nothing more than dull grey sweatpants sitting alone in silence.

Grey.

Alone.

Silent.

Breakdown.

A/N Chapter Summary: Violet's mother (now referred to as "It" by Violet) forces her to burn her clothes and CDs out in the backyard fire put as punishment. As a result, Violet emotionally falls apart and shuts down in her bedroom afterwards.

Chapter Theme Songs Used So Far:

The Passenger – Iggy Pop

Grinnin' In Your Face – Son House

Get It On (Bang a Gong) – T. Rex

Breakdown – Guns N' Roses