Chapter 31

Final Year of High School

(5 Years Ago)

Leila's POV

DIARY ENTRY 

August 17, 2010 

Dear Diary,

Okay, I know it's weird. I never wanted, liked the baby, or even knew when it started growing inside me. But I still felt bad. I had ended a life, no matter what anyone would call it. It was still a child my first child. I didn't even wait to ask the father if he wanted to keep it before I selfishly ended its life.

I knew I had made a mistake when I asked for an ultrasound, but I couldn't help it. I wanted to see what it looked like one more time, and I even made the mistake of asking for the sex. It was a baby girl a beautiful, perfectly formed baby, although smaller than usual.

Thinking about it made me a little crazy each day. Guys don't know what they have after the deed is donethey are able to walk away scot-free while the female counterpart has to live with the guilt and pain of an abortion.

Sometimes, they can be insensitive or annoyingly pathetic, completely unable to take responsibility. That word "abortion" became a terrible word for me. It seemed to bring up a lot of painful and horrible memories.

There were some cringe-worthy posts I read online about it, and it was just horrible. If I had seen them earlier, I would never have gone through with the abortion, but those were all excuses. Deep down, I knew my dignity and the benefits I was enjoying were too much to give up because of a child I couldn't even care for.

The fact is, I knew that without my parents, the world is a big, scary place, full of people that don't give a hoot about others. In such a world, I was too soft and too much of a coward to survive. I couldn't even accept responsibility for my own actions I would rather blame it on someone else than myself.

A mother who couldn't accept responsibility and apologize to her dead child for killing it doesn't deserve to be a mother at all. Fetus, really, was just an excuse monsters like me use to exonerate ourselves.

Those supposed fetuses can feel; they can feel the pain of being torn to shreds. That is the worst form of murder. We were murderers to those defenseless creatures we were supposed to nurture.

I became excessively withdrawn. My whole being was at war with itself a part of me telling me I did the right thing, that I would have only brought forth my child into this world to suffer. Although trying to convince myself didn't work, I began staying away from my friends for real this time, and I started reading like my life depended on it. I hardly partied anymore.

That didn't mean I didn't need my fix. I needed it to escape my pathetic life. I was always high so I wouldn't feel the pain and guilt of ending an innocent life due to my lack of morals. It was my way of escaping reality.

The drugs only helped as long as I was under their influence. Once they wore off, I would be in pain again. One time, I overdosed on the pills. Luckily, my friends found me in time, and I was rushed to the hospital under another false name. Again, the lies and the secrets continued piling up. After that, I found another way of getting relief when I wasn't high to avoid dying from an overdose.

I started cutting myself. The pain was in the deeper recesses of my mind. Cutting myself made the pain more physical sort of an atonement. I may have looked alright physically, but inside me, I was nursing this huge sense of guilt and insecurity.

I regretted everything dearly, but if I could go back in time, I would still do the same. I thought of my grandmother, who was always gentle and sweet with me, and I wondered if she was out there looking down on me how disappointed she would have been.

At least I could have had the child and given it up for adoption instead of ending its life so cruelly. Or I could have run away from home. It was just five months five months, and I would have saved a life. But it was all too late. Nothing I could do would bring back my child.

Anytime I see a baby that would be about the age of my own child, I want to pick the baby up. What if I could? Would I have chosen differently? This question comes to mind, but I always try to shake it off. A baby at my age would have been the ruin of me and, at the same time, the end of my obsession. I had gone back to denial again, giving more excuses, even though now, to my own ears, they sounded pathetic.

The only thing I had left was the copy of the scan. Sometimes, just sometimes, when I was alone, I would take it and look at it, apologizing to the child that would have been, "I'm so sorry, my little baby. Mommy can't even fend for herself. Supposing my parents decided to throw me out, what would I have done? It's for the best you wouldn't have survived the suffering. I hope you meet someone better than I was to you. Never forgive me."

And I meant every single word I uttered. I would cut deeper than ever, watching the blood flow just as I let my child bleed out, in a kind of trance. I would enjoy watching myself bleed it brought peace to that sick part of me, it felt like an atonement of some sort.

I would wish that I could just end it, sever a major artery or something, but I was too much of a coward to do it. So I did the next best thing: blasted my stereo, popped enough pills, and then swayed with the music until I dropped into the welcoming arms of the waiting darkness or was it sleep? I couldn't quite tell which one anymore, I was mentally and physically exhausted. I would dream of crying babies, their tiny hands reaching out for comfort that I was unable to give.

In those dreams, I would sometimes see her my little girl looking at me with those eyes that seemed to know too much for someone so small. She never spoke, but the silence was enough to shatter my heart into a million pieces. The dreams were haunting, but I felt like I deserved them. It was a punishment for what I had done, for the life I had taken.

No one knew the real reason behind my spiral. They saw the symptoms the cutting, the drug abuse, the constant partying but they didn't see the root cause. I couldn't bear to tell anyone, not even my closest friends. They wouldn't understand. How could they? I barely understood it myself.

I started missing school, not that anyone really noticed. I was smart enough to fake my way through tests and assignments, but my heart wasn't in it anymore. Nothing seemed to matter, and the future felt like a bleak, never-ending tunnel with no light at the end.

There were days when I wanted to tell my parents, to cry out for help, but the words would get stuck in my throat. How could I explain to them what I had done? How could I look them in the eyes and admit that their little girl wasn't the person they thought she was? I was too ashamed, too scared of their disappointment and anger.

So I kept it all inside, letting it fester and rot within me. The self-hate grew stronger with each passing day, and I welcomed it. I didn't deserve to be happy, not after what I had done. I deserved to suffer, to feel the pain of my actions, even if no one else knew the truth.

Every night, I would lie in bed staring at the ceiling , wishing for the darkness to take me , sometimes i wondered if it wou be easier if i just didn't wake up if I could just slip away quietly without anyone noticing , But that ,too , was a coward's way out , and I couldn't even muster the courage for that. 

Instead I would drag myself out of bed each morning put on my mask, and face the world with a smile that didn't reach my eyes, it was exhausting , but it was the only way I knee how to survive. Pretending to be okay , pretending that nothing was wrong , that was the only way I could keep going.

But deep down, I knew something had to give, I couldn't keep living like this trapped in a cycle of self-destruction and denial. One day , I would either have to face the truth and overcome it or let it consume me entirely. I just didn't know which would come faster.

Until then I would keep writing , keep pretending , and keep holding unto the last shred of my sanity. Because that's all I have left the hope that someday , I will find a way to forgive myself and move on. But for now , all I can do is survive, one day at a time, and try to keep the darkness at bay for just a little while longer, I could get through this, maybe.