CHAPTER : 1

Two years ago

When I was a small kid, I always wanted a perfect family where we would always be happy. We would go to parks, my parents would teach me how to ride a bicycle, we would have weekend plans, go to picnics and most importantly enjoy time with each other, but all my dreams and hopes shattered into pieces when I first saw my father beating my mother. For a five-year-old, such a moment shouldn't exist. It hit me hard like I was daydreaming and fell off the bed on the cold hard floor.

I don't know what happened that day, but from then on my heart started losing its pieces and I couldn't keep it together. As if subconsciously, an unbreakable wall was being built around me without my knowledge. Not to keep me safe, I suppose, but to push me farther away. I tried, and I tried my best to make our family really happy, make things alright, but it was not that simple.

The fights between my parents intensified as my elder brother Jason and I got older and the next thing I knew, I was pushing them away from me. It did not help when I came to know that my father never wanted me, he wanted another son in the Dawson family. So I started pushing him away from me. My mother wanted a girl alright but not exactly the person I was but still she was the one with whom I could at least talk without being shut down.

Lastly, my brother. He... you would expect that out of all the things that happened, he would at least be supportive but turns out he was more interested in the assets and the numbers. He never liked me and I don't know why, but he always tried to downcast me like I am a worthless "luggage".

The friends I had were not reliable and always temporary. No one seemed to stick around. Maybe because I am anti-social, or I never opened up to them. Never talked too much, didn't say anything when teased, and just smiled at every situation because that was the only mask that made everything in my life seem okay to others. The sufferer in silence kind. All those years of trauma have done left a mark. My father beats me, my brother beats me, and my father makes my brother beat me. That is why I suppose I turned out to be this way.

All these years they behaved like whatever they did to me was right, and I should be treated like that and all these years I asked God to take me first than to let me watch them go and I still wish for the same. I don't know whether I love them or not, but I can never bear the thought of them suffering. I always hoped that all through that hatred, somewhere in some corner of their heart, maybe they love me too.

Like a moment stuck in time, it was hard to ever forget the things that happened and the things that still happen. An eternal reminder of the things that churn like a vicious cycle coming back to me every time they did what I thought they can't do again, not worse than what I have been through before. Needless to say, the shock was never a surprise.

I was 16 when I had my first panic attack.

And they thought I had some kind of breathing problem.

Which does not require any medical care?

I am Rose Dawson and this is my tragedy.