Down For The Count

My Depressing Life

Paisley's POV

I thought everything was going to be fine. When my mom got remarried, I thought everything was going to be joyful and I would have my old life back. Technically, it was. For the first nine months. Then everything went downhill.

Let's go back a bit, shall we? I live on the outskirts of New York City. A great city. Just a really noisy, unsafe, great city. My family was...perfect. I had a loving dad and a loving mom. Until when I was seven and my dad decided he was tired with his perfect life. He left for California.

He's probably in a bar right now doing it with some 21-year-old who's barely old enough to drink and thinks she's all that. They probably live right on the beach and he's gonna get her pregnant. They'll probably do it again in...three, two, one...yup. It's happening right now. I can feel it.

OKAY PAISLEY KEEP IT PG HERE.

I get carried away sometimes...I hope bad things are coming his way. My mom was a great woman. He made a huge mistake. He had everything.

He had me. I thought I was good enough. Apparently I was very wrong. Apparently I wasn't good enough. Not that I didn't already know that, but him leaving confirmed it.

Anyway, basically through years 7-10, my mom was single. A single mom. She was basically Superwoman. Until she met Dustin a few months after my tenth birthday. My current father. He's more of a dad to me than my birth dad.

So many kids made fun of me at school for several reasons. My name was Paisley (Yeah, apparently having a unique name is bad. It sucks), my parents were divorced, I was an only child (Everyone made fun of me because apparently only children are "spoiled" and I was a "brat"), and I loved reading.

Why does everyone judge me though? Isn't reading a good thing? Reading allows me to take myself out of the sucky world I'm in and lose myself in another one.

The only person who's really had my back through everything is Katherine, my absolute best friend.

Anyways, back to Dustin. Dustin was amazing. To me too. Not just one of those guys who are just nice to the kid because of the girl, if that makes sense. He genuinely loved me. And I loved him. Things moved really fast and eventually, they got married on New Year's Eve, almost two months after my thirteenth birthday.

Apparently everything here happens around my birthday.

He moved into our house and we were a family again. For nine months, then it all happened.

My mom got sick. Really really sick. Two months later, she died. Two weeks shy of my fourteenth birthday.

And here we are. Dustin and I sitting in a funeral home, making arrangements for my dead mom.

"Paisley?" I felt my dad tapping me as the dark haired woman making the arrangements left the room.

"Yeah?" I asked, looking up at him.

"Come here, kiddo." He said pulling me into a hug. I could feel the tears streaming down my face.

This was like a nightmare that I couldn't escape. A nightmare that would haunt me until my last days.

I wanted to wake up from whatever this was.

I wanted my mom back.

"I promise it'll be okay. I'm here for you."

But how could he promise something like that? Especially when it's not true? I don't think anything will ever be okay without Mom.

I was a tiny bit angry. He had lost his wife of nine months, his partner of no more than a couple years.