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PROMPT: Lonely

Lonely

I was that girl. The one with the idyllic childhood. You would see me through the white picket fence of my house, playing with my dolls and my tea set in the garden. My blonde hair was pulled into two little pigtails, and my light pink dress was pristine. Behind me, the house was tall, obnoxiously so, with clean white walls and a brand new Mercedes in the driveway. You'd probably hear my nanny calling me in for dinner "Rosalie! Rosalie!". It looked perfect. On the outside.

But you missed it. You couldn't see the cracks that were forming in this picture-perfect life I had. My parents were rarely around; my father desperate to always make more money, and my mother desperate for those little white pills. I was left alone. You saw a little girl playing happily; I wasn't. I was outside, hiding away from my mother's moans as she was once again confined to the bed. My father's voice was loud as he bellowed down the phone, pissed off that another deal went sour, that he didn't make as much money as he hoped.

You didn't see the forgotten birthdays or missed Christmases. Why would you?

Up until I was 16, my only friend was our maid Jessica. She took pity on me. When she was around, I didn't feel too alone. The irony that loneliness had been my constant companion wasn't lost on me - that it was the only thing I could count on.

Eventually, I managed to convince my parents to send me to school. I'd been homeschooled - a privilege some would call it. Not for me. My tutors were all lovely. But I needed to get out of the house. The walls were suffocating me.

My first day was lonely, as were my second and my third. But not the fourth. That's when I met them.

They'd sat down next to me, opening their packed lunches and chatting away. Rachel and Bella, they were called. They were both here on scholarships, and so the other students didn't care much for them. Financial elite and all that bullshit.

I got a lot less lonely then. I had two people to talk to, to share my dreams and fears with. For the first time in my life, I had friends. I went to sleepovers, parties, BBQ's. They became my sisters, and I became theirs.

But there was still something missing. The love that someone else could give you. Not platonic love. Not the love Rachel and Bella so freely gave to me. Something different.

I never thought I would find it. I thought the loneliness I felt daily was normal. I thought I would feel it forever, a deep longing inside me, rearing its ugly head as jealousy whenever I saw what other people had.

When I was twenty, I got a cat - Simon. He was black, a grumpy old thing, given to me by Rachel's neighbour. He hated everyone, me included. He helped fill in the cracks in my heart. He'd curl up on the bed with me, warming my toes on the cold nights and sit with me when I studied for my exams.

Three years later, Pogo came to me. A black lab who was basically a walking slab of fat. This time, it was Bella's father who found him. He'd been left outside the police station, tied to the railings, his wet tongue lolling out of his head. Bella didn't want him - she wasn't a pet person. And Rachel had more than enough with her three little hooligans.

So, Pogo came to me, and I spent six months getting him down to a healthy weight. Surprisingly, Simon didn't hate him. I was convinced it was more a pity thing, though. One look at the massive lump of lard that was Pogo, and Simon seemed to look at me with exasperation before accepting that we had a new roommate.

Again, Pogo helped with the loneliness. He came everywhere with me. The garage I worked at loved him. Customers adored him, and the guys had even begun to train him to bring tools to them, for a treat, of course.

But it wasn't until I met Emmett that I finally felt the loneliness ebb away. That the pain inside me felt like it had evaporated. He was kind and funny and intelligent and handsome to boot. With Emmett, I felt whole. Or I thought I did.

No. The day I finally felt whole, like I was complete, was when I looked down at the little plus sign on the pregnancy test I was holding.

We were having a baby. And I knew, instantly, that I would never be lonely again. I would surround myself with the family I'd created, Simon and Pogo included. I vowed that my child would never feel the crippling sense of aloneness that I did. The cold sensation of being by myself that would stick in my throat, twine itself around my heart, and squeeze tightly. My children would always have me. Emmett would always have me. We would always have each other.

Loneliness was a thing of my past.

Thoughts? I'm not convinced this is all that good, but I can't figure out why.