My father had always been the light of my life and I had been his. In my head he was on a pedestal, ready to be admired by everyone around him. He called me princess and Lilliputian and made me feel special and like I was the only girl that would ever matter to him. Every morning he would hold my hand and walk me to the Starbucks near our old house. My mom always told him not to buy me a donut, it was too much sugar for my little underweight body to handle, but he always did, and when we walked home, he would hoist me up onto his shoulder and show me off to everyone around him like he had just won the Olympics and I was his prize. He used to call me the brightest light in his life. Then I had sisters. I will love my baby sister, she will be great. The light that formerly shined solely on me was now divided into two. I will love my other baby sister, she will be just as great. The light was now three. I did love my baby sisters. We were close enough in age that we always relied on each other. We were close, and it stayed that way until the light that was my daddy got divided again.
One day, my daddy decided that he wanted a new wife without telling my mom. He got his new wife. She was the most grotesque woman I had laid my eyes on. She smelled of cigarettes. Shoulders of a quarterback. Hands that looked like they belonged on the body of a 6’5 male. Teeth that looked like chicklets. She looked as if she came straight out of a nightmare. She acted that way too. She was a vile woman, who believe that the world constantly owed her something more than she was given. She was cloying, showering my sisters and I with false affection with the hopes that she could show my daddy how “great” she was. She was a hypocrite who believed that she was the new Mother Teresa. She believed that she was selfless. She was deserving of a better life. A better life that my daddy could provide for her. I was just a dumb ten year old who didn’t understand the complications of marriage, of life and one day I would learn why my daddy did what he did. He did it for “love.” My sisters understood, although they were only younger by 2-4 years, they understood. They understood because they never challenged the pretty little life that our daddy had created when he wrecked a marriage, a family, a home, and decided to uproot our lives move everything up to Glenview. Maybe they understood because they were younger and they did not know the complications, and they were just naive enough to understand.
She was the first adult who was ever mean to me. She knew that I knew her motive, and that I was smart for a ten year old. Too smart. She knew that she had to get rid of me. She began to talk down to me. Asking me if I liked my appearance, commenting on whether or not I would eat and tell my daddy that we should take me to a doctor because she thought I had an eating disorder. She belittled me in every way she could think of. The final straw came when I was hospitalized with depression when I was in 8th grade.
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“You are faking it.”
I made it very clear that I did not like this heinous woman. So I finally told my dad about these comments and the way that this woman made me feel.
“If you try very hard to get along with her, and you still don’t like her by Christmas, I will break up with her. I promise.”
Christmas passed, then Easter, and in June my daddy had come home from his recent trip to Napa with a surprise. That surprise was an engagement ring. I threw a fit, cried, screamed, tried to run away. I was indignant in my mannerisms. I asked my daddy how could he do this to me, how could he ruin my life, how could bind me to this woman forever. He let me maunder on for quite some time, then he got angry, said that I was a selfish kid who needed to let him be happy. They told me together that I did not care about anyone except myself and I need to learn some manners. I was the only one of us to challenge our daddy, he began to resent me for questioning him. The light he used to shine on me got dim.
After that I shut my mouth. I humored them with my please’s and thank you’s. My yes sir’s and no ma’am’s. I was polite. I was not me. I was living life out of a bad TV sitcom. We had to be the Brady Bunch and if we did not act like it, hell would rain down on you like you had never seen before. I had not pushed that far yet.
“Me or her, it’s me or her. Who do you want to have in your life, because I can no longer live this lie with you and act like I love her in the ways you want me to. Do you want her in your life more than you want your own daughter?”
“I am not answering that, I love her.”
The way he spoke to me made the decision clear. Once sophomore year rolled around, the energy that I had to love a woman I hated diminished. I had grown weary. I was tired of fighting. I felt trapped, alone, scared. I felt like I did not have a daddy anymore.
It is all swept under the rug, not spoken about in the house. No one talks about the “Lilly Holmes incident” or how troubled I truly am. I ruined their lives, made their marriage hard, caused an immense about of stress to them that I should be ashamed of myself. I did not care though. The light is shattered.
