Chapter Thirty-Four:

Twelve minutes and seventeen seconds till the day we have all been waiting for all month, everyone has. Children are probably getting ready to open gifts from their parents or being tucked into bed waiting for "Santa" to come the next morning... it's adorable actually. That children are so attached to this made up magical person. It's hard to believe I was one of those children, waiting to open my presents the next morning. Now I'm honestly just excited for the day to be over. It's Christmas Eve, twelve fucking minutes til Christmas and we're all sitting on the couch watching 'Home Alone' and eating cookies like fat asses. Is it bad that I wish I was with Gabriel? Snuggling up in front of the fireplace? This should have been our first Christmas and that thought makes this Christmas so much less enjoyable. I just expected more excitement, more thrill. Christmas was always good back home, fun even. Now everything is so dried out like a desert. My parent's marriage is falling apart... it always has been, since I was born but they always put on a front that they loved each other, public affection. If I wasn't part of this family I would truly think they were happy and nothing was going on behind closed doors but now they have just given up. My Mother is tired... tired of living this way and it's sad. It's sad how a strong independent women is so tired at age of forty-one. She isn't even close to being fifty yet. She shouldn't be so tired, she sleeps in most days but still I see eye bags and exhaustion cover her face. It's Christmas and she is still so sad... and he acts like it doesn't matter and makes her feel like she's nothing.

"Can I go on a walk?" I ask and all their facial expressions are the same - shocked.

I get up and start running outside unexpectedly. I hear my Grandmother and Mother call after me but I don't listen, instead I continue to run in just a pair of pyjamas and house slippers. I feel myself sweating like a pig and hyper ventilating. The wind dries up my tears fast and without thinking, I run to under the bridge where Ethan and I went searching for my phone when we first arrived. I don't get why the world works like this. It's so fucked up. My Mother is depressed and suicidal, I can tell. She is a stick; skinner than me, and my Father is a piece of shit that lets her starve herself. She is killing herself and he doesn't fucking care!

I come to a stop at the end of the river stream, into the deep dark forest and start screaming... screaming at absolutely nothing. It's the fucking holiday's and I am screaming, worried about my Mother. I can't help but being so worried about this because she is slowly dying and there is nothing I can do and sitting in my living room, acting like nothing happened hurts me, it hurts. My Grandmother won't even help her. She knows what my Father is doing, she's the only women he is probably scared of but still all she does is look the other way, sitting in that living room and hating my Father but still doesn't say a damn thing. I'm the only one who ever calls my Mother out for it and I know that hurts her. I don't understand how it's the end of a new year where things should be changing yet everything is still the same. All my dreams are about my Family, memories of when times were good but also memories of me always having to clean my Mother up when she had "accidents" that's what she would call them when I was a kid. I've been taking care of her and cleaning up her fucking "accidents" since I was six fucking years old. Eleven years I have been doing this shit, that's a lifetime for some people. A decade she has been dealing with this, I can never forget the first time it happened, She was just pregnant with Ethan, I was about to turn seven. He abused a pregnant women... I'm fucked up because of them, thank God I actually turned out decent, not in therapy or in a psychiatric facility and thank God Ethan has never had to deal with that because I'm always here... picking up the pieces and I fucking hate it.