'Dysfunctional: not operating normally or properly'
That was one way to describe Clara Campbells family. Dysfunctional; not operating properly. That was just what happened when your older siblings leave you.
Or that's what Clara had always believed...
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| Clara Campbell |
After waking up for what felt like the 100th time today, I was eventually convinced to have a shower, but I didn't want to be left alone. That was how Elias had been convinced to sit with me in one of the upstairs bathrooms.
He was too focused on his phone, so I stood in the corner, with the mirror still being able to see me, as I slowly pulled my shirt off. I knew that all of my new scars from the girls at school were all still there, the same as the ones that my parents had been giving me for years. I dropped my shirt on the ground, but my eyes never once left the girl in the mirror.
The same girl that still had bruises forming on her chest and stomach from where her mother had chosen to hurt her, before demanding her of money that she didn't have, while she knew her father was standing in a corner, waiting for it all to end, but forgetting that the same girl had been hurt by her mother was the same girl that had once sat in his lap, reading the morning paper before the sun had risen.
I hadn't seen that someone had opened the bathroom door, needing Elias, or that Elias had looked up from his phone and at me, where no one could draw there eyes away from the hurt that was scattered across my body.
Even I couldn't look away from it all, knowing that the worst was on my back, but I couldn't find it in me to turn around and have a look at everything that my life had become. Between the bullying at my old school, to the bullying at my new school all coupled with the way that my mother had treated me all of my life, had really shown up after so long.
But there was no way that I could tell anyone. No one could ever know, so I quickly jumped into the shower, already feeling the eyes on me, as I kept my back to the wall, and only showed the front. Elias had looked to the person that had opened the door, and they were conversing quietly, as I ever so quickly washed my body and my hair.
There was nothing that I could do to remove whatever was covering my body, so I just had to almost pretend like none of it happened, when I knew that it had. It had happened to me, and no one else, which I was grateful for. That was how it was supposed to be, I was the one that had to get hurt in the end, so that everyone else around me could continue to smile brightly.
Climbing out of the shower, I was thrown a towel, while Elias walked out, allowing me to change as quickly as I possibly could. I could barely look at myself, and now knowing that my brothers could have seen what I had been hiding for so long, hurt me more than it should have. They were not supposed to find out; they couldn't ever know.
If they knew, they wouldn't ever want to be my brothers and sister ever again. I was even disgusted in my self, and knowing that they knew, would make it all worse. That was why I had never wanted them to come and find me ever again. None of this should ever have happened, and now I have no way back home, to where I knew everything like the back of my hand.
Slowly but surely, I worked up the courage to open the bathroom door, not knowing whether someone would be out there, waiting to tell me that I was no longer welcomed here anymore. That I didn't deserve to be here, and I knew that. They had all been too nice to me for way too long, and these people had grown up with the same mother I had, so it was bound for one of us to become like her sooner or later.
