I was born Elizabeth Anderson on a stormy night in May. I came into this world like a flash of lightning ... or a roll of thunder according to my sister. Once again I'm getting ahead of myself. I grew up reasonably happy, well perhaps not reasonably. I had plenty of reasons to be unhappy, but I'm getting side tracked again.
I spent my whole life being Miss Responsibility, Miss Supportive, Miss Amazing. I was class president, a cheerleader, a straight A student. The picture of perfection ... on the outside. I did everything in my power to seem that way. But it wasn't genuine. Not even Dal knows the whole story... This is crazy, I can't believe I'm telling a tape recorder my deepest secrets....
*click*
My home life wasn't as peachy keen as everyone thought it was. It wasn't hard for everyone to believe that I came from the happiest of homes ... even when I was little I knew my home was different from all the other kids, so I lied, I listened hard to the happy kids tell stories about their families and saved every story in my mind for future reference. To this day I can't quite differentiate what really happened and what was just something I made up. My dad was an alcoholic and abusive. My Mom wasn't exactly pleasant herself, too many years with my dad I suppose. My sister ran away just to escape him ... but I'll come back to that later.
From what I hear, my parents used to be wonderful people. When I was born, my father even gave me my nickname Amber. He said my eyes were the most beautiful amber brown with speaks of gold he had ever seen ... and since that day I was called Amber.
Actually that's a lie. My dad spent the day I was born in a pub down in boondocks the day I was born. Amber is just my middle name.
It's a wonder I didn't turn out like Amanda, lost and alone. I think that can be accredited to Dal's parents next door. They were two of the best people I ever had the pleasure of meeting. They were so loving, so warm, I wanted to be just like them when I grew up. They treated me just like another member of the family. I'm sure they must have heard my father yelling or my mother crying thousands of times, but they never made me feel like I was worth any less because of it.
Amanda didn't have people like that in her life. She was so isolated from the world and so fragile that she ran off with the first person that told her they loved her. The cult swallowed her up completely. I hated her after she left. Not for being so stupid, but for leaving me alone ... with them. People wondered how I could possibly deal with the lonely times so well. They said I was at my peak, which I suppose was true. I was so used to being the adult, it just seemed natural.
Home. A simple four letter word, and yet it has so many meanings. Home is a word that many people take for granted. In our time, there are thousands of kids searching for a home. That statement can be taken two ways, they are literally searching for a home, as in a place to sleep, a place to go, a place to belong. The last one actually fits better into the second definition. Home is where you belong. With people who love and care about you. A place where you have your niche, where you know where you stand. There were so many kids who lost their "homes" when the adults died. Their physical house still stood in most cases, but they left them to come to the city because without their families, they were just another building.
I never had the second kind of home. That word home took a third connotation for me. Fear, loathing, pain. Those are the words that I associated with home for the longest time. People wondered why I joined so many clubs and played so many sports, it was because I just plain didn't want to go home. The only real refuge I had were school and my room. Lying in bed, I would dream about being somewhere else, being someone else ... running away from the pain. I do that a lot. As strong as I can be, I don't like confrontation if you can believe that. I can stand up for what I believe in without worry, that is something I learned from Dal's mom... but if I feel stuck in a situation, I become a crying, sniveling child.
Love. Another four letter word that people take for granted. People throw the word around like there's no tomorrow. Zandra loved her clothes, teenagers love popstars, so many people love ... but what is love? My mother and father loved me, or so they told me in a many drunken ravings. "I love you. I would die, for you. I gave up my life, for you," my mother would say, but I guess you wouldn't get sober, for me ... or leave my father, for me. My father would scream that he was doing this because he loved her as he beat my mother. That love he had for her drove him to take off his belt and beat her bloody ... now that was love.
Later on Sasha said he loved me. And said our love was strong enough for him to expect me to leave my home for him ... and yet he wasn't prepared to make the same sacrifice for me? I was reduced to a child after he left, looking back, I wasn't so upset because I missed him, but because another person who "loved" me burned me. I started to think, maybe it wasn't my parents ... maybe it was me. What was it about me that made me so unworthy of the type of love that they write about in books? What was it about me that made me unwanted by the few people I needed? I was Amber, everyone's best friend. Amber, Miss Survivor, everybody's transference Mother ... but I wasn't able to feel the unconditional love that came along with being a mother. I felt the burden, but not the hope.
Then came Bray, a love so pure, a love so strong ... pure and strong my ass.
Bray and I belong together. We're probably the two most fucked up people on the planet, I mean of course next to that bitch Ebony... oooo that girl needs a shrink like Lex needs a drink.
Bray loves me, I guess. But really I think that I'm just a place holder, interchangeable with another cute little thing around. I can live with that. He'll be a good dad, and it's not as though I don't treat him the same way. I'm cute. It doesn't get said much, but I'm cute as hell. I've got my blonde hair, pretty eyes, and I know how to work it without seeming like I'm working it. When you've been in the manipulating business as long as I have, you learn to take what you've got and exploit it until it's gone...all while making sure that it never runs out.
When I thought Bray had gone back to Ebony, it hurt. It hurt bad. It felt like someone had poured a whole salt shaker into this gaping wound inside of me. Bray loved me, he wanted me not her. I don't like to lose, my whole life I had done nothing but do my best to come out on top ... and I've been successful in every area but my heart. It wasn't so much Bray that I missed, it was the affection, the support, and he was just a provider of that.
Love is like a drug, especially when introduced to someone who hasn't built up a tolerance yet. I take a hit, and then am forced to detox right away. I went through a serious period of withdrawal ... which just wasn't very much fun.
1 a : the act of taking back or away something that has been granted or possessed b : removal from a place of deposit or investment c (1) : the discontinuance of administration or use of a drug (2) : the syndrome of often painful physical and psychological symptoms that follows discontinuance of an addicting drug
2 a : retreat or retirement especially into a more secluded or less exposed place or (1) : social or emotional detachment (2) : a pathological retreat from objective reality (as in some schizophrenic states)
