All I Want | ✓

20 | frozen

( ⚠ trigger warning: abuse and abandonment ⚠ )

I feel like I can't breathe.

I feel like I'm drowning in regret and entrapment.

I feel like I'm suffocating.

I...

Her eyes are wide as if she didn't expect me to be the one at the door. "Eliana..." Just her saying my name is enough for the tears to start flowing. My hand shakes as I try to find some sort of stability.

My knees are weak, my palms are sweaty, arms are heavy, and there's not even energy for me to try to make myself feel better with an inner joke about Eminem.

I'm just... frozen.

I'm shocked that he's here. I'm shocked that she invited him here.

And she knows the turmoil he's put me through. She knows... and yet, she's still standing here, comfortable as he rests a hand on her back.

I turn around, ignoring as she calls my name again. My legs carry me back down the steps, to somewhere... anywhere that's far enough away from this place. I don't even have time to call an Uber to make my getaway.

Turns out I can't walk far enough before I'm overtaken with the urge to throw up in disgust.

I'm reminded of his hands on me — a ten year old girl — as he shushed me in the middle of the night and squeezed my face so hard, I got nosebleeds.

And I think about all the times I told my mother, hoping that she would do something... anything to stop him. And all the times she didn't.

He hurt me, and the one person I relied on to rescue me just stood by and watched.

And I actually decided to see her again. What the fuck is wrong with me?

I brought all these locked away memories back up because I stupidly thought we could talk.

And the longer I think about it, what the fuck is there for us to even talk about? How she's dying from cancer yet didn't have the decency to clear her ledger?

For the longest time, I couldn't even sleep in the dark without having a panic attack. But, I went to therapy and I got better.

For eleven years, I was fine.

And now...