I sat in my spot, staring at my computer screen. I had been looking at the same word for the last five minutes. It had been a week since I Willow had made the comment about my wedding, but it had bothered me. Wedding? The word was strange. I had accepted long ago that no one would love me, that I wouldn't get married, that I would bury myself in work and not have to worry about all those little things. I shook my head in hopes of dropping the worry, but it clung in the back of my mind. It pulled me back to when I was 15, crying in my room.
"Charlotte?" Ulga, my nanny, knocked on the door. I buried my face further in my pillow to stifle the sobs that were escaping from my throat. "Miss Charlotte, come here and talk to Ulga." I didn't hear the door open over the yelling coming from downstairs. I turned away and didn't move. "Charlotte, please talk to me. I can not help if I do not know the problem." I inched away when I felt the bed shift.
"Go away." I tried to keep my voice even. Ulga put a comforting hand on my shoulder, but I shyer away. "I said go away." I bit my lip hard to control my tears, but they still burned like fire on my cheeks. Ulga got up and closed the door quietly behind her.
I rolled over onto my back to stare at the ceiling. It was almost dinner time, so the sun was shining directly in through my window. I took a deep breath and tried to ignore the fight going on downstairs. I walked over to my bookshelf, in hopes of finding a book that could distract me. 'Pride and Prejudice', 'Wuthering Heights', 'Jane Eyre'. All of them were filled with lies, filled with tales of love, filled with happy ideas that make little naive girls believe everyone lives happily ever after. I threw each book off the bookshelf, ripping out the pages and scattering them around the room.
"Lies!" I screamed, my eyes tearing up again. "Its all lies. No one lives happily ever after, it's all lies!" I chucked the last book across the room, breaking the lamp next to my bed.
"Charlotte!" The yelling downstairs stopped to be replaced with loud footsteps and my mother pounding on my door. "Charlotte, you open this door this instant!" She screamed. I turned to look at the door, my eyes blurry with tears.
"Your just going to yell at me. That's all you ever do, yell at me, yell at dad, yell at anyone who ever does anything to make you look bad." I screamed in reply, my throat raw from crying.
"Charlotte Harris, if you do not open this door right this moment-"
"You'll what? I already live in my own personal hell." I collapsed into a pile of tears, my face buried in my knees. I heard the door hit the wall as it flew open.
"Quit being so melodramatic and act your age! I don't have time for this anymore." My mothers bony hands wrapped tightly around my arm and ripped me up into a standing position. "You are a pain in my ass that i am sick of dealing with. Go play with your chemistry set or whatever the hell it is you do and keep your trap shut." My mother gave me the only facial expression I had ever seen on her face. Annoyed and angry. I stared her right back and kept my trap shut, biting the inside of my cheek so hard it bled to keep from crying. If I cried in front of her, it was just another thing wrong. I was weak if I cried, annoying if I spoke and arrogant is I talked about myself. I was always wrong.
The door closed behind her, but I stayed still. I heard the yelling again downstairs. It echoed through the house. I used to be able to ignore it, but these days it was louder and more violent.
"William, you do not have a meeting tonight. I talked to your new assistant. Are you sleeping with her now too? If you are, you may want to educate her on how to lie." It was a fight that I had heard for years, on repeat. My father cheated, my mother is a bitch, 'your daughter is trouble', 'your daughter is a freak', 'she's not my daughter', 'she's not MY daughter', door slams, end fight. My parents marriage had gone downhill fast, and kept going until it drags us all into the depths of Hell. It was then I made the final decision to never get married.
Every marriage I had ever seen fell apart, ended in divorce, which came for my parents the day of my 16th birthday. I knew every fight, backwards and forwards and then suddenly, it stopped. My dad moved out and it was silent. I was old enough to take care of myself, so my nanny was fired. My mother worked all day, didn't even eat dinner with me. When we saw each other, she would comment on how horrible I looked before going back to work. I fell into a routine that tore me apart.
Six months into my parents divorce, I was sitting in my bedroom, alone, like always. My backpack was in front of me and I was cramming a tshirt into a side pocket. I had just finished getting my PhD, so there was no point in me staying any longer. I packed up my backpack and after eating a quick dinner, I walked out my front door. And never turned back.