That night, as Charlotte laid awake in bed, she could hear the shouts, getting louder and louder every passing second. She could not control the tears that rolled down her cheeks, falling onto her already soaked pillow. She knew that this was the end. The end of her parent's marriage and the end of her family.
Her mind drifted back to the previous nights, when she thought things could not get any worse. At the beginning, they waited for her to go to bed, when they talked about their issues, which led to endless heated arguments.
None of them realized that she was crying her eyes out, unable to find any sleep. The loving parents that she
knew all her life were breaking apart. She learnt that the father whom she looked up to all her life turned out to be a cheater. It all made sense why he was barely at home. This destroyed her mother.
The woman who was so full of life once had become a completely different person. She put up a smile to hide her pain, pretending that everything was fine. Day by day, she was getting thinner and thinner. She used to be so healthy, never skipping meals, going outside, but now she was just skin and bone. The way her bones jutted out each and every way, was scaring Charlotte.
She was watching her mother slowly kill herself and she could not do anything to help her. She felt so helpless and guilty. Although she knew that it was not completely her fault, she could only blame herself for the current situation.
The guilt was building up inside her. Every single day, she thought that if she had made an effort to have a good relationship with her father, he would never have deceived her mother.
She had never been a good daughter, and neither did she ever try as hard to be one. If only she had not been such a disappointment, perhaps her father would have loved her. Perhaps they would have had a good relationship and her parents would still be a happy married couple.
Would it have made things different? Would it have been like the good old days, when they would have dinner together, watch movies and just spend time with each other? Thinking about these days just rubbed salt into the wound.
Her family was broken, her mother was depressed and her dad probably hated them both. This was all she could think of all the time. She sobbed into her pillow unceasingly. Her muffled sobs wracked against her chest. The world turned into a blur, and so did all the shouts. Everything darkened into nothingness as she passed into the oblivion of unconsciousness.
(457 words)
