Shalimar Fox

I've handed out my fair share of second chances, and most times it ended up hurting me more than the first time around. I should learn my lesson by now I guess, but each time it comes up, there seems to be an entirely new set of circumstances that go along with it. Who am I to say who deserves it and who doesn't? I end up following through and seeing what comes of it in the end. There's no way that I'm going to say no right off the bat, because the one thing I've actually learned, is that help can come from the oddest places.

I gave my dad a second chance. It's a sore subject for me, because when you wake up and realize that you're not like the other girls, and your parents decide to lock you up for your own safety, there aren't many things they can do to deserve that do-over in life. My dad was still my dad though, no matter what.

I had kept myself seperate from him since the day I escaped that prison. I thought I was doing myself a favor just staying away from him, staying out of his life because I honestly knew that I wasn't a part of his life. He wanted the daughter that was born to him, he wanted the perfect girl that was normal. Well at least his definition of normal. He thought he could fix me, or cure me.

The big problem with thinking that way, is that if you think you can be cured, then you have to admit that there is something wrong with you. I am a firm believer in the thought that there is nothing wrong with me at all, I'm just a bit different.

When I went back to my dad it was just to make sure that he wasn't what everyone thought he was, that he wasn't dealing with people that he shouldn't be. I thought that maybe after everything he had put his past... he had put me behind him. He was still so set on that thought that he could fix me and make me his daughter again. I just knew that no matter how many chances I gave him, he was still going to end up thinking the same way. That I was the problem. That I was the one that was flawed.

Second chances are fine to hand out, but it just doesn't mean they're deserved, or that they'll actually be worth anything in the end.

See if this was the other way around? I'd have a hell of a lot more fun writing it. All those people that I could really do without in my life? The Mason's of the world, the people that write checks in the ten items or less aisle at the grocery store? All those parents that have the "My Kid Can Beat Up Your Honor Student" bumper stickers, and the ones with the Honor Student ones to match. I could do without the guy that sold me the Lucky Bamboo promising me that it wouldn't die unless someone actually tried to kill it, because that really worked out right?

However despite the Bamboo Incident of '06? Emma is my girl. I know that kind of sounds all gangser rapper-centric or something, but it's true. Let's discount all the times she's saved my ass, and focus on the other things. Like how she can make me crack up in a fit of laughter at the drop of a hat. That even if she borrows my iPod and forgets to charge it back, that I know there will be a few new songs on there once I get it up and running again.

Sure I could live without the little annoyances she brings my way, and I'll catch hell for most of the content in this, but? It's fine, cause I can handle her. I can handle the ups and downs of our friendship because I know that in the end? She's got my back as much as I have hers.

Plain and simple.

Parents are supposed to love their children. They are supposed to look into their eyes and see themselves reflected in the innocent expressions. They are supposed to accept them unconditionally, and be there for them no matter what. That's what parents are supposed to do, but mine never did.

Ten years old and I wasn't like the other kids in my class. I was stronger, and faster and I was considered 'out of control'. I was different, but it was who I was... or at least who I was becoming. My parents could have taken me into their arms and helped me. They could have tried to love me and make things better, or easier for me. They could have accepted me, but instead they looked to the thought that I wasn't normal, that there was something wrong with me.

I was ten years old and I was put in a psychiatric institution. They pushed enough sedatives into me to stop at least ten kids, but it couldn't keep me down. So when the drugs didn't work, they turned to beating me. Three to four grown men would come into my room and beat me until I was unconscious... at ten years old. My father, the one that should have loved me.. the one that should have told them to stop hurting me just told them to do whatever it took. To keep it up, that if beating me was the only way? Then that was the only way. I wasn't his daughter, because I wasn't normal. I was some thing to be dealt with. He wanted them to fix me... to make me normal, and for some reason he thought that they could beat me into normalcy.

I had no one, I had nothing. I'd cry myself to sleep some nights hoping that it was all a dream. That being locked up, having my own father look at me that way... that it wasn't real. I tried to imagine that the blows to my sides were just him trying to shake me awake from the horrors I was trapped in. I never woke up though. Each morning my eyes would flutter open and I'd still be in that place. Being looked at as a thing, instead of a daughter. I knew he'd never look at me the same way, I knew I wasn't going to just become normal for him. I knew that I was changing into what I was supposed to become. My powers were growing and one night? When the orderlys came for me? I saw my chance. I showed them what it was like to be scared... really scared that the end was coming.

That ten year old girl that was too fast, too strong and too wild? She showed them the definition of out of control. I ran from that place, and I never wanted to look back. I wanted to be able to look at myself and know that I was normal, just the way I was. The way he looked at me, how he looked right throught me... still creeps into my sleep at night. The difference is that when I wake up now, it is just a dream. I know that I'm safe and sound and that the eyes staring me back in the mirror are my own, and I'm not ashamed of what I am. I have no reason to be.