Being a young girl, she didn’t understand hiding her emotions. Why would someone do it? Even when she did learn, she didn’t understand how to hide the emotions. When she was happy, she would show it. When she was sad, she would show it. Whatever it was, she was transparent to everyone around her. When she got older, her reactions got bigger. When I say older, I mean a few years.

At the age of seven, she got grounded for not cleaning up her room. Because she wasn’t one to hide, she showed how upset this made her. She screamed at her mom, telling her how rude she was. That just got her in more trouble, but she didn’t care. This doesn’t mean she was yelling all her childhood. For the majority, she was pretty docile, and silly, and loving. It was when something affected her that she really cared about was when she would have an outburst.

Because of her outbursts at times, she wasn’t always trusted when she was angry or upset. Trusted, as in, to not make a lie or a dramatic story of what had really happened.

It was when she turned nine that her father became a heavy drinker. He began to rely on alcohol as a way to escape when he got lowered a position. He wasn’t fired, but he didn’t make near as much money as he used to it. His wife, well, she picked up another job. She was a counselor and had an office at her main job. She was able to stay after and do her clients through zoom as a way to do her work with no disruptions from home. Because she had several clients a day and was an authorizer to people who needed help, she was an asset from her years of experience.

While the wife was gone, the husband would drink. He never beat the child with a bat, nor raped her. What he did do, was something if told to other parents would not be so suspicious from the child’s words. When upset, she would tell others how bad of a parent they were, or how mean they were, or how they abused her. The thing was, when it really happened, no one believed her. She had told lies before. She had said the same things before. It was like the boy who cried wolf. Only, in her eyes, much worse.

It was when she had kicked and screamed to not go back home after school that a case was opened. The mother divorced the father. The daughter lived with her mother. The father got twenty years in prison.

When she was I her early twenties, she realized how much she showed the world around her. Very little the world new. As a child, she was honest. She made everything very dramatic, making what she said sound like a lie, but not often was there a direct lie under her tongue.

From what her father had done, she changed. She was a fake. She was not real, but she would remember her past. Vulnerability is something that is precious to her. As a child, when something didn’t go her way, she thought it was an attack. Now, she knows that she isn’t the world. She learned to adapt to the world around her.

She still feels so much, but she now knows not everything is out to get her. She is only a small part in other people’s lives.