Mauve's Survival Guide for the Mentally Exhausted

The name's Mauve Laudamilk. Barely twenty, and already feel as if I've hit rock bottom. God. If you would've told five year old me that my mom's new boyfriend would've turned me into who I became today, she would have probably just been so disappointed. That young girl had so much hope for our future. She'd be so upset knowing I blew it all away for a one way ticket down to hell.

All of this started when I turned the ripe age of eight years old. Just three years after mom met the man of her dreams. This was the year that man officially earned himself the title of my stepfather. Before that, mom flip-flopped between him and other men; fighting the urges to go back to him, knowing damn well she'd always be back in his arms yet again. I wish I could tell you that he was a saint; that she felt she couldn't lose a man just as fantastic as this. No. She missed him. That's all. He never made a huge gesture to win her back. He never declared his love for her. She'd just come crawling on back like some wounded, lost puppy dog that had nowhere else to go. She missed him. His drama. She missed having the ability of blaming her daughter for trying to steal her man. Yes. That was exactly what I was trying to do at the ripe age of eight years old. Stealing a guy away from my mother. Eight years old and already mastering the con of breaking hearts.

Flash forward to a couple years. Now I'm ten. He had started to become a lot more aggressive now. A lot more aggressive. Not to my mother. Oh no. No. By now, he grown to hate her. Something about an age appropiate woman was boring to him. No. Ever so slowly, he began to prefer me rather her. Something inside my gut told me that he preferred the young girl's new ability to show out more than the already worn-out older woman.

Around this time of my life, I've already started figuring out different ways I could try and keep away from him. Hell. I even began getting myself into trouble at school for the detention because it meant I could avoid going home right away. I used to try and convince my friends to let me stay over for the night. Not to mention how many times I'd go out on late night walks, praying that he would have already been passed out by the time I snuck back into the house.

But, no matter what I did, he always managed to catch on. Whether it took him a few days or a couple weeks, he always managed to catch on. He started to pick me up from school, managing to convince my teachers that he just wanted to be sure I'd stayed out of trouble that day. Of course, they believed it. In their eyes, I was already a menace to society. He grew stricter of the hours I was allowed to spend out of his house; limiting the hours I would spend at the homes of friends, and even appearing at their doorways the second I went past the alleged curfew. None of my friends found it quite amusing, especially after their own parents began to joke about how they also should start doing that very thing to them. He also went as far as to drinking later in the nights, so that he'd remained awake by the time I got home after my nightly walks.

No matter what I tried to do next, he always managed to know of my next move. At some point, I had no other way around him. At some point, I had to eventually give in to exactly what he wanted me to do.

I gave in.

At just the ripe age of ten, I had to learn how to fight my own battles on my own. My mother was obviously no help. She was still so convinced that I wanted to steal her man that she eventually just gave up on being my parent. I was no longer her kid. I was that spawn of Satan who kept trying to take what was hers and claim it as my own. So... that's exactly what I did.

Boy, did that make him so happy.

By the time I turned eleven, he already preferred me to my mother. Of course, this angered her. She would constantly tell her friends, or those who hung around the same bar as she did every day and listen to her blab, about the whore who her man spent all of his time with. She even managed to convince the crowd of drunks at the bar to develop a severe hate towards this girl of his. Hmm. I wonder if they ever managed to figure out that this whore she spoke so highly about was actually just her eleven year old daughter? Or that she was only eleven years old at the time?

I became his muse.

By the time I was eleven, I had already known. Nobody was coming to rescue me. Nobody was coming to sweep me away. Nobody was going to fight for my safety; yank me out of his arms, fighting against the monster I'd been forced to call my stepfather.

By now, my mother had already erased me from existence. I wasn't her daughter. I wasn't her family. I was nothing. A nobody. She never even came home half the time, usually staying at the bar overnight. Mom would always tell him that she couldn't stand being in the same house he chose to sin, but I knew she was just sleeping with her favorite bartender. Spending the night at her favorite bar? After spending so many years drunkenly stumbling home after a late night? Honestly if her husband wasn't so infatuated with her daughter, he might have figured out for himself that she already found herself someone new.

The next few years went by in a flash. By the time I felt myself finally waking back up, I was fifteen. Mom had been coming and going, but she's really been gone for the last three years. She does come back every now and again, claiming she's back for good, but I already know about her new family she created with that favorite bartender of hers from way back. It was kind of hard not knowing about it. All of a sudden, she was starting to show and next thing you know... she stopped showing up as often as she did. Didn't really surprise me as much. Why should she stay with her husband and his new skank? I've always been pretty certain that her new bartender even knew me as the whore her husband spent all his time with. Not the daughter she abandoned. Nah. You can't abandon someone you refuse to acknowledged in the first place.

Eventually, I aged out.

I was seventeen. Too old for his liking. I knew it was mostly because my stepfather began to tire of me. Not that I was complaining. I was finally free of him. A part of me felt thankful that I seemed like old news to him; I could finally break away from him once and for all. Of course, that meant having to go out on my own. He tired of me. I was officially nothing to him. Mom filed for his divorce a year prior, and of course never came to reclaim me back. Boy, did he love throwing that in my face.

'So tiresome, even your own mother didn't want you back.'

'You should be thanking me. I could've dumped your ass the second your mother filed those papers.'

'You were never my responsibility.'

It wasn't until a few months after those papers had been filed that I learned my mother had remarried that bartender from before and had popped out a couple kids. I didn't know what possessed me to find out, but I guess a small part of me was hoping she'd want me back. Her new family didn't even know of my existence. To her children, my own half siblings, I was a stranger. To her husband, I was some random woman. Although it was everything I had expected for her to have done to me, that shit still hurt.

You never truly realize how unwanted you were by someone until the second you see them recreating a new life with someone else.

That was the final straw. If I hadn't already hated myself before that point, I hated myself by now. By the time I was eighteen years old, I had already made somewhat of a name for myself. I satisfied the men who couldn't get satisfied at home, for a price of course. It managed to pay the bills. I was able to find an apartment of my own and put food on the table. For a couple years, it worked. Really well, if you ask me. I gave men what I was expected to give since I was a child. No fighting. No arguing. Just gave them what they want and getting rewarded in the end. No questions asked.

It worked out quite well for me until now. Here I am. Now twenty years old. Leaned up against the sink in some run-down bathroom in the back of a sketchy bar. A pregnancy test laying in the sink, the answer still to be determined. Why'd I let this happen? Out of all the times I've done it, why'd this time have to be the time it happened? All for a stupid man who tried to cop a feel without paying for the price. Panic rushed through me as I anticipated the answer that was to come.

Is this how my mom had felt? The panic. The worry. The wondering how long it'll take you to fuck it up. Oh God. I'm alone. I'm all alone. There's nobody there to blame the fuck ups on the way my mom had done to me. I'm not ready for this. There's no way I'm ready for this. No. Stop it Mauve. You are not her. You are not your mother. Maybe this is your chance to change the past. Maybe this is your chance to prove that you are not her.

The test began to reveal it's answer. One line. No. One very faint line began to show up next to the other. My eyes scanned the box for confirmation. Shit.

Pregnant.