Fractured Glass

Chapter 1

It's been a while since I've cried.

Okay, that's a blatant lie. I'm not one of those tough, fierce heroines who hides their deep-seated sadness and personal issues and then breaks and trusts their male counterpart and confesses their internal struggles and then that trust strengthens their relationship.

Yeah... that's not me.

I cry on an almost daily basis - I'm not afraid of it. I think I used to be, but not anymore. Some people might say that I am too comfortable with crying, but I think that I'm just being... emotionally healthy? I don't know. Basically, I'm just an emotionally damaged 15 year old girl who has a dependency on the internet and Mountain Dew's caffeine.

Not the typical hero type.

Anyways, the reason for today's tears was that my sister - older than me by 7 years - had fought with my parents and eventually gotten told to leave, although she has nowhere else to go during her 2 month spring break.

And we were only a week in.

My parents are those parents. The ones who were sure that they would be amazing parents, weren't ready for the first kid, messed them up, and then were super uptight on me to try and prevent me from turning out the same way as Amanda.

Of course, Amanda didn't have as much internet access as I do, so if anything, I'm even worse.

I used to be homeschooled, but my parents gave up on that a while ago. I teach myself stuff, and then always pass the stupid necessary tests with flying colors. I'm fine, and my less than involved parents know that. They leave me to my own devices, which mostly involves me sitting up in my room on my laptop writing a draft of some story that no one will ever see.

I like to think that I'm kind of dispassionate about most things, but writing is definitely not one of those things. I sometimes spend hours laying there, plotting out the entire storyline, and then I jot it down, to be produced some other day. My google drive is full of folders and folders of just about a page of writing, the very beginnings of a novel. Many of them might make good books, but I abandon them just as soon as I write them down. Someday I might go through my drive and continue some of them, but that's kind of unlikely. It's too difficult to look back on my work, so I just keep plodding ahead, jotting down storyboards and skeletons and hoping that they will become something.

I once submitted the first chapter of a story to some contest or other, and the prize was some sort of gift card. I won, but I never collected the prize or acknowledged the win; the anxiousness about actual people seeing my work was too much for me, and I could never do anything like that again.

It's around 5:00 at night, and I'm scrolling through my Tumblr feed. It's no easy feat trying to scroll through Tumblr while your parents are screaming beneath you, so I put in headphones and block out the noise that has become so routine. My parents seem to despise eachother more and more every day, and it makes them despise me too. The child that they made, evidence that they once were in love - I think I make them sick.

The familiar feeling of guilt settles in around me, and i try to shake it off by distracting myself. Tumblr usually is a good distraction, or just binging Buzzfeed videos on YouTube. It's seriously a black hole, I'm not kidding - once you start with Buzzfeed, there's no turning back. That's why it's so good for distracting you from your reality. I'd much rather see 4 guys try doing various things than deal with my own guilt and family issues.

Anyways. Let's not even go there.

I'm exhausted by the time I hear mom's hoarse voice call up the stairs "Dinnertime!" Tumblr is a great distraction, but it's also only something you're supposed to do while thinking about something else. It's not good for purposefully replacing thoughts. Therefore, I have to focus on trying to distract myself. Which is tiring.