didnt get it finished but i may as well post some of what i did write. beginning of a story about a girl and her younger sister. though the younger one hasnt even come up yet, its just setup atm. maybe ill finish it at work tonight. no im not abandoning sarah i prommy
The first thing I did when I escaped was pierce my ear. Not the respectable kind of piercing, an unobtrusive glint pressed into my earlobe, but a long industrial bar, straight up and down through the cartilage. The kind my parents never would've permitted. Everyone always says getting your ears pierced doesn't hurt, and while I'd known that was a lie since the day they made me get them done respectably in middle school, this time I was expecting the pain, and I relished it. The first taste of freedom, of rebellion, of marring my perfect body, so meticulously prepared for someone else, and finally making it my own. I only cried a little when they jabbed me.
The second thing I did was change my name. Another act of reclamation, I'd love to say, but in reality I was just afraid of being found, of my father turning up at my doorstep, that vein pulsing in his forehead, and dragging me back into their twisted world to play the role I'd been forced into. "Abigail" sounded nice. A damn sight nicer than the simpering servitude of "Evangeline." Abigail… Renshaw, I picked at random from the obituaries of a local paper. As long as it wasn't my parents', any last name was better than his.
And the third thing I did was… stagnate, I guess? The last eight years had crawled by in an indistinct blur. Just me, going back and forth between my job and my run-down studio apartment on the edge of town, with an occasional stop at a drive-through when I got sick of the same rotation of frozen foods for dinner every night. On my twenty-fifth birthday, I celebrated with a slice of cake in a plastic box from the grocery store. I didn't celebrate my twenty-sixth.
That's not to say that nothing changed, of course. I cut my hair. I started wearing sports bras and men's clothes. I stopped hiding the freckles my mother hated behind a layer of makeup. I even pierced my ears a few more times. But no matter how much I carved away the beauty they'd grafted onto me, the girl in the mirror came no closer to resembling "me" than she'd done when she was all dolled up in a pretty dress, forcing a smile before her first date. She'd just become an empty vessel for blood and viscera, wreathed in oozing, amputated femininity. But I liked her better this way, at least.
I'd come to realize, over time, that freedom was not the sweet nectar I'd always seen on TV, nor was it the mouthwatering buffet my friends at school had daydreamed about. It was stale, melting like paper in my mouth, with the dry taste of the saltine crackers I kept in the cupboard to settle my stomach on bad days. I'd gotten lucky, finding this shitty apartment for cheap, my ancient station wagon for cheaper, and a job that paid enough to cover them both, but keeping myself alive was exhausting. I had no time or energy to cook proper meals, keep up with hobbies (not that I had any), or make any friends. It was an interminable cycle: wake up, breakfast, work, lunch, work, home, dinner, clean up just enough to avoid getting evicted, sleep. And I…
I loved it. I'd never felt quite so alive. No expectations, no performance, no dates spent fending off the entitled advances of a boy who already considered me his property, no breathing down my neck from my parents who couldn't wait to give me to him. I could be anything I wanted. I could be opinionated. I could be crass. I could be ugly. I could make myself blend so deeply into the background that no one would ever look at me with the same lust that he had. What blessed relief, to make oneself undesirable!
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