Title: Shadows of a Shattered Life

Author Penname: Butterfly Betty

Rating: MA/NC-17

Summary: Life is just another step on the road. Sometimes, you manage not to fall, but when you do, the journey to stand is the hardest one to take.

Warnings: Dark subject matter. Tissues will be needed, at least they were for me, and I urge you to read with caution as this is a tale that is very close to my heart.

—SSL—

I never thought much about my life. To most, I was just an average girl, living an average life in an average home, but in reality, none of that was true. Everything people saw on the outside was a lie — a vicious lie to cover up the reality of what was going inside the small, white house on Maple Drive. Sounds like a movie, doesn't it? I called it Hell.

People referred to me as dramatic, and maybe I was, but when you've lived through what I had, you'd be on the dramatic side, too. Hell . . . that's what I called it. Others referred it to a childhood. They were wrong.

I suppose it all began — like it does for most — when my parents decided that getting a divorce was better than living with each other. Charlie and Renee were the definition of dysfunction. Yelling and screaming, crashing plates and broken windows; they might as well have been the shards of my life being shattered into millions of tiny pieces.

Honestly, the day my parents sat me down in the living room and told me they were splitting up was the best moment of my life — quickly followed by the worst. Instead of getting to live with my father, the man who I'd idolized as my hero since I was old enough to know what a hero was, I was being shuffled off to Arizona with my mother. Renee didn't want me, her hateful glares and harsh words told me everything I needed to know about how dear old mom felt about me. She just didn't want Charlie to be happy and being able to raise me would have brought him happiness. Her spitefulness would be my downfall.

The day she tore me out of his life, I remember screaming for her to let me stay with him, begging her to stop loving me. It didn't matter — nothing ever did. Charlie — in the middle of the street, on his knees with his hands reaching for Renee's car as she drove away with me — would be an image that would haunt me. It'd be almost ten years before I saw my father again. Ten years of living through one Hell after another. Ten years of living in the shadows.

A/N: This was my submission for the Fandom for Suicide Awareness compilation. It was a very personal cause to me for many reasons. When I sat down to begin this piece, I knew it would be an emotionally charge one for me, like they all are. There's a lot of myself in these words, and I would wager to bed, a lot of all of us. So I want to say now thank you for taking the time to read. I know the chapters are short, they won't be any longer than this, but the good news is that since this is complete, it will update daily. There are 29 chapters in total.