(Book 2 in If I Could series)
"What do you want, Lily!?" he yelled, his patience on the verge of snapping. "You keep telling me you hate me but clearly you don't, you want me but you won't accept it either. You're stubborn and crazy and I- just tell...
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“What home?”
“One where your mother doesn’t like or want you?”
“Oh, or one where your dad is too blind to see your sufferings?”
“Ah, you couldn’t possibly be talking about the home where your own brother treats you less and dictates his decisions on you.”
His words played in my head like a broken record, a chant all through the morning as I got up and readied myself. I’d never been as raged and as confused as I’d been last night when I had asked him to get out and he had, leaving me alone with my empty head and the few strands of hair slipping from my fingers.
That sort of anger was something I had thought I’d never feel again in my life. It wasn’t something I liked or made me feel good about myself; it was all wrong. And bad. And pathetic.
I’d developed the habit of ripping my hair at a very young age when my mother would miss my dance performances or annual days at school. Initially, it had started with clenching my teeth very hard to forget the pain as everyone’s mothers hugged their kids and I stood alone, just looking at them, staring at the doors for my mother to walk in.
The intensity to hurt myself only grew as I got older and started my period but had no one to talk to except for a nurse at school who had helped me out. I had no one who’d go prom shopping with me so I had gone alone, bought a dark red dress to camouflage what I had felt inside my heart; loneliness and blinding rage. I think the night of my prom had been the first and the last day I had cut myself because the next day, my brother had caught me and I had realised that it was damn impossible to get away from prying eyes and a million questions.
That was when my torture on my hair had started. It didn’t matter where I had been or what the issue was, if it was something I couldn’t handle or bear, my hands would get lost in my hair until the mental weight bearing down on me would become physical and I felt the sting of hair being pulled out of my scalp, calming me.
I looked at myself in the mirror and took a deep breath. “You’re strong,” I said to myself. These were the words Ken would tell me to tell to myself every morning. The memories of him holding me through my worst times and helping me overcome this urge to hurt myself hit me straight in my chest and I blinked back my tears. “You’re beautiful and you deserve to become more beautiful everyday.” And as I recited my words, a memory from all those years suddenly flashed in my head and all I wanted to do was close my eyes and relive it.
“You’re strong,” Ken was saying. His beautiful, blonde hair slicked back like he was some hero as he stood behind me, his incredible torso stuck to my back.
This morning, when he had come at my dorm to pick me up for class, I had been on the phone with mom and just like every time with her, it had only taken a couple comments at me for my hand to run through my hair. I hadn’t wanted Ken to find out about this habit because this was something that made me ugly but he had sat down with me while we ordered pizza and listened to me rant before promising he would help me overcome it.
