dancing in the stars (ballerina x singer wlw romance)

chapter thirty-eight

WILLOW

People deal differently to trauma. There are people who lean on their family and friends. There are people who fight so they can smile again. And there are a group of people who close in on themselves and eventually get out of control.
Then, there's me.
I never spiraled out of control. I didn't drink, do drugs, or even smoke. I just stopped feeling. I was always a good girl, trying to please my mother in every possible way. Trying to get her attention, trying to get her to like me.

There's a little girl inside of me, a small kid no older than seven who screamed for help and no one heard her. There's a seven-year-old inside of my mind that hates her mother more than anything, a feeling no child should feel towards her own birth mother. I remember those days like it was yesterday, I relive those days in my nightmares.

I was seven when my mom left for the week with my brother for the first time. Leo didn't want to leave me alone, but Delilah dragged him with her, and left me completely alone in that cold house. She'd left me fifteen dollars, and some food in the fridge. I was seven. I didn't know how to cook, I didn't even reach the kitchen table. The week went by, then another, then another. The feeling of hunger, and feeling helpless and alone is still with me to this day. I used to wake up alone, after passing out from crying and screaming for help. I'd get up, change my clothes, and walk to school alone. I'd eat there, whatever I could find.
By the third week, I was so hungry that I couldn't stop crying, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't breathe. I screamed so loud but no one heard me. Our neighbors had a little garden, connected to our house— I went over there in the middle of the night, and I stole some tomatoes. I took them home, and I ate them for days. I ate so much they made me sick to the point where I felt I was dying. I passed out at school, they called 911, and I almost ended up in foster care— but my mother had come back that day, with my brother, and they found me in the hospital. Mom lied that she's been with me the entire time, Leo didn't say anything but hugged me so hard I almost ran out of air. And they let me go with her again, even though I begged them not to.

That little girl suffered from so much trauma, so many nights where my mom did anything for money. Even if it meant hurting us. You're so pretty, she'd say, You'd make good money. She would repeat that every night before bed, until I turned eleven and I knew what was happening to me, she stopped because she knew we were getting older and wiser. All our Mom cares about is drugs and money, that's all.
There's a little girl with big shiny green eyes, pigtails, old clothes, that only wanted love— That only wanted to escape her mother, and even to this day, she can't.

It's been five days since Delilah showed up at the parking lot of the club. Five days since Summer met her. Five days since Delilah embarrassed me in front of her. Five days since I cried like a little girl in her arms. Five days since I went radio silent on her.
Delilah asked for money at least five more times since that day, and I sent her everything I had, because I'm not strong enough to fight her. I'm not strong enough to handle her. I've never been. I'm still that little girl who let her mother control her life, that little girl scared of saying no.
That little girl who was so innocent, that she pretend to be asleep as a stranger was in the room with her, making weird noises, and she was too scared to run. Too scared to breathe. Too scared to cry.

I haven't left the dorm in those days, I called sick on the diner, and I'm missing all my classes, but I can't move. I don't want to. I just want to die in this bed. Maya's been way too busy to check on me, but she does from time to time. She brings me food, water, tries to talk to me— also tells me Summer is worried about me, which I know. I have a lot of messages from her, a lot of missed calls, and she even showed up at the dorm, but I didn't see her. I can't face her. I can't see her.
I'm way too embarrassed for that, and that day was just a hit in my face reminding me that she deserves better than someone broken and with a terrible past.
I miss her so terribly much, that everything in my body hurts, but it'll pass. I know it will. Summer deserves something better, and I have to get away from her.
Maybe in another universe, we would've made sense.