17| denial

                                    

                                          
•Third Person POV•
(TW: a LOT of trauma w/ her emotional abuse, miscarriage, rape, body image issues, etc. Read at your own risk, if you want to skip ahead to the scenes which do not include this, skip ahead to the text that looks like THIS and read from then on. )
        Aria never really hated her life. At least that's what she liked telling herself. If there was anything in life that she was good at, it had to be lying to herself. Although maybe it wasn't lying to herself so much as lying to other people. 
        She knew how her life was and what it consisted of. No one else knew. Not even Laura. And maybe that's why she is the way she is now. In denial of her true feelings and what she really wants. Because she's dedicated her entire life to protecting Laura and making her feel loved. Not that she hated it, Laura is her best friend. Always has been.
        But as she cried silently alone, she always wondered if the truth would ever come out. A secret only her mother and herself shared. The secret that taught her how cruel the world was, even coming front he people she knew should have been there for her. But never were.
       The flashbacks were brutal, something no one knew about, and something she didn't even like admitting to herself . Every night having to relive the life she wanted to work so hard to forget. It had never been easy.
        But even with the denial and the lies, there were several things she knew for sure. The one that everyone knew was that she hated her job. It wasn't even impressive, it was just a good paying government job where she worked a lot and had an opportunity to escape. She would do anything to escape.
        Even work in a job where she knew that even no matter how hard she worked, she would never make a large difference. It was the people in her exact position many years ago that even though they had sufficient evidence, they could not arrest someone who had done her so wrong. 
        They eventually did although it took them a while. That whole was a while that she lived in terror. That one day she would turn a corner and he would be there. Whether that be by accident or he had been sitting there waiting for her was something that never crossed her mind, the point would be that he was there and she was there but she didn't want to be.
        And even after he was locked up she knew she had to run sometime in the future. Only seven years in prison for what he had done.
        She needed therapy. But she never even wanted to try it. She never needed anybody to lay her problems on so why should she pay someone for that. She never needed anybody. She really did, but she preferred to deal with it all alone. No one would judge her, it was just her alone with her thoughts.
        But then that never worked when she realized she would judge herself. Maybe she did talk a lot and she knew that which is why it was a problem. She listened to everyone else talk, telling their stories all the time. But when she tried telling hers, she was shushed and told that all she did was talk.
        She couldn't be sad about it. That word did not exist in her household. There was no such thing as being upset, only angry, and she couldn't even be angry because according to her family she had no reason to be. According to her grandmother, she should just stop being angry because she looked ugly when she was. That one hurt a lot.
        And maybe what everyone had been saying was true, that she had been gaining weight, although the scale said the opposite, the mirror seemed to agree with them. No matter how much the number on the scale went down, every time she looked in the mirror she only hated herself. 
        She was tired. She didn't know of what, but everyone else did. Not everyone, but the people who noticed. She took care of everyone but herself, even when she knew she needed it most. She was tired of letting people down, no matter how hard she tried it was never enough, not even for herself.
        She just wanted to be enough for someone. Whether that be for a friend or for Laura, she wanted someone to see how much she tried and she wanted them to care. But every time she heard her mothers voice telling her that she was "Too lazy." Or "Too ugly." and even the worst one. "Just a useless whore who didn't know what to do with herself." 
        She always pretended it never happened. And it's not like she could even bring it up. Her mother would deny it even if she tried. So tonight as she heard Laura's footsteps approaching her room, she smiled through the tears and the pain. Just like every night. 
        She didn't want her to know that she was barely holding it together as it was and this visit from their mother was just another slap to the face. 
        Her nightlight was on. It was a purple light that could light up the entire room. It was still dark but if she happened to wake up in the middle of the night again, like she did every night, she didn't have to be scared. It was just enough to see the room and walk across it without tripping on anything. 
        She held her breath, a sob lodged in her throat as the door opened, the purple light illuminating the hallway of their apartment. A single tear rolled down her cheek and she wouldn't move. "Goodnight Aria." she heard Laura's voice.
        "Goodnight Laura. I love you." She liked reminding her sister how much she loved her. Because she wanted her to know that even if what she was doing wasn't enough, she was still trying. She was trying so hard. At this point she didn't know if she had enough energy to make it even another day, so she needed someone to know. That she was capable of loving.
        "I love you too." Laura said. And that was all she needed. Someone loved her. It gave her just enough to go to sleep and wake up the next morning, make herself a coffee and look forward to getting home.
        Even then, she needed something to change. She didn't know what it was, but she knew she needed it. It could be her job but she couldn't do that to Laura. They moved here just because she got a job here, and Laura moved here with her. She didn't want to move to another continent and have her sister move with her just to switch jobs like that, it didn't seem fair to Laura.
        Now she was faced with another obstacle. Sleep. She put her airpods in and played some music, a playlist with her top five artists of course. She took the sleeping pills and decided that it had been enough for tonight, the tears would stop when the thoughts did.