Sarah Prendergast

Tania

 
TANIA.
February 14th, 2010
Daggers, knives, razors, words.
They all come from the same place.
Anger, betrayal, hurt, cruelty.


Sharp tips that wear away who you are,
Chafing your soul,
Chipping, breaking, tiny little pieces.


Self esteem, self worth, self consciousness,
All these selfish things.
Fade, disappear, and hide.


Classmates, Bullies, Friends, no empathy.
People who use these weapons.
Hurt, create tears, kill dreams, slaugher self image.


Tears, not understanding, remorse, confusion.
The victim.
Cries, gives up, cuts, and wants to die.


I don’t care what you think,
Who are you to judge me?
Make me cry, lie, want to hurt myself?
How does it make sense to say something like that?


You’ve used your big knives,
You’ve cut deep.
Where I thought no one could reach.


You’ve taken something,
Things that can’t be retrieved.
With your daggers, knives, razors, and words
My confidence and my ignorance.


You sharpen your weapons,
And move on.
Like the empty person you are.












TANIA.
March 16th, 2010
Empty people, they are starting to be more and more common these days. They steal up to you, and take things from you that you’ll never get back. My lists above say it all. They rip things out of who you are, and then they’re gone. Never returning and you miss that part of yourself that they took. You cry, and you search for yourself. But you’re already gone, and it’s too late.


You hate yourself because of them. You hate every single freckle on your body, every single hair, every single thought that runs through your mind. You hate everything around you as well. You hate the grass, the sun, the neighbor’s dog. You are so full of this hate for everything and everyone; you end up with nothing except for it. This hatred consumes you, and you even hate the hate because it makes you an empty person, the type of person that made you like this in the first place. You cut yourself, sometimes on your inner thighs, because no one looks there, sometimes on your wrists. Eventually there’s no more room there, so you start on your stomach. You cut because it makes you feel something other than the hate. It makes you feel again. It gives you release from the burning bitterness that takes up all of your effort and days now.


Eventually the cutting stops working. You try burning yourself. You steal your mother’s cigarettes and start drilling little holes onto your forearms, and then you try matches. But those stop working too, and your mother is starting to notice the missing cigarettes and you get sick of having to buy matches. At this point, you’re sick of everything, especially yourself.


You see no point, you’re lifeless. Your mother harasses you to wash your hair, because you haven’t in three weeks at this point. What does she care anyways? It’s not like she’s ever been there for you between her 15 hour shifts. No one cares.


So you decide to finish your miserable life. After all, that’s what you are, miserable. Empty people did this to you. They just couldn’t leave you alone. Day after day, they followed you around. Day after day, they made you cry and hurt. Day after day, they took more and more away from you. Day after day, you started to hate yourself more and more, just like they did. Day after day, they drove you to this.


This is my story. This is why I am gone. I’m sorry Lauren. I just couldn’t hold on anymore. I love you. This is why I have hung myself early this morning of March 16th, 2010. That is all I have to say.




















LAUREN.
That was the suicide note my mother found when she came home on the morning of March 16th, 2010. She found Tania hanging from a rope in the attic, with a chair knocked over on the ground from our old house when we all lived together that had been used at the kitchen table. That we had all used numerous times. It’s funny how things have multiple uses that you would never think of.


When they did the autopsy, the horror of the self mutilation all over Tania’s body was truly that, horrific. There were 46 cuts in total all over her body, and 22 burns. How she managed to cover it all up, I will never understand. We couldn’t even bury her in her favorite dress. We had to bury her in long pants and a long sleeved shirt.


I’m Lauren, Tania’s sister. I live with our dad, two states over in California. Tania lived in Utah with my mom. Well, I shouldn’t say that. I haven’t talked to her in 2 years. It’s staying that way too, especially after how she couldn’t even take the time to notice the torture that Tania was dealing with on a daily basis. I hate her fucking guts, she’s not my mother. She’s dirt to me.


Tania only addressed the note to me. I think I was the only one who she cared to tell why she did what she did. I’m glad she left it for me, otherwise I think I would have spent the rest of my life wondering. I’m still going too. But this helps a bit, at least that’s what I like to tell myself.


The pain of what Tania did is inexplicable. Every time I think about her, it feels like someone has stabbed me and is still twisting the knife around in my stomach. I puke whenever she’s mentioned. I cry randomly, sometimes like a banshee, and sometimes just silently. I like the silent crying the best. My dad always catches me though, and then that sets him off. He never cried before Tania. Not even when he walked in on my mother and my homeroom teacher, and not when his mother died, and not when his father died a month after of a brain tumor that came out of nowhere, and not after even after all that, he walked in on my mother with his best friend. He used to be like a rock. I don’t think anyone could be after their child committed suicide though.


LISA.
I’m a horrible person. I know it. I also knew that I was going to be a horrible mother, right from the start. But what does someone do when they don’t know that are going to be such a wrong fit for something, but when they realize it it’s already too late? Only I, Lisa Lonsberry, would make this mistake twice. Motherhood was not for me, hell, marriage was not for me. But I wanted it anyways, and what did I do? I messed all of those up. Everything good in my life, I screwed up. I didn’t even appreciate them.


Bill started to bother me as soon as I got pregnant the first time. He took this new interest in me that was surprising, seeing as he had stopped paying attention to me quite a while ago. When he started working at that new firm, he stopped caring. His job was my replacement in his life. He was so goddamn blind though; he didn’t even notice he was losing me bit by bit. I know cheating is horrible, but he pushed me to it. The girls never understood that though, and they never will. Well, Lauren never will. That’s why she left. The only reason Tania stayed was for Jake. But that’s a different story.


BILL.
I loved Lisa like I loved my own life. I loved her like I loved going for a run early in the morning and seeing the sun come up. I loved her like I loved a new case that I knew I could win right away. I loved her like there was nothing else to love in the world. But I forgot about that kind of love, and a new kind settled in. A love where I took her for granted. I regret that kind of love.


My career took off, I moved to a new firm, where I got paid about quadruple each case and hour I spent with a client. I felt important, it invigorated me to be able to go into work every day and actually feel like I meant something in the world, like I was important. I felt like I was handling cases that mattered, I felt like I was making a difference in the world. But I forgot about the thing in my life that mattered most, my Lisa, and when she told me she was pregnant, I remembered. It came back to me. My Lisa was going to have my child. She was more important than my job. The child was the most important thing that had ever happened to me. I was ready to be a father as soon as she uttered the words, “I’m pregnant, Bill.” I was ready.


LISA.
I was excited for Tania to come, don’t get me wrong, and at first the attention Bill was giving me made me feel loved again like how he used to make me feel. But then I realized he was using me for the baby, and as soon as it came it would go back to the way it had been. Then I got scared.


When I had Tania, I loved her more than anything else in this world, but I was also scared shitless. The first night was hell; actually the first year was hell. I loved her though, more then I had ever loved Bill. I would’ve died for Tania. I still wish I could take her spot.




LAUREN.
I came two years after Tania. I was a surprise. My guess was that I’m from make-up sex, because my parents didn’t give a flying fuck about their marriage anymore by then. They only cared about their baby girl, Tania. It was sickening cleaning out the boxes in my mother’s attic after she moved. Literally, half of them contained Tania memorabilia from when she was a baby. We had to help my mother move after she decided the house was just too hard of a place to live in. She lives in an apartment downtown Cali now. Not that it makes any difference.


As soon as I came along, my parents got tight again. Things were okay for a while, seeing as Dad felt the need to be around more with a new baby in the house and a two-year-old. After I hit three, and Tania was five, they stopped caring again. Living in a house where the parents don’t love each other, nor do they interact with each other is horrible. Notice how I call it a house and not home? It’s because it never was. It makes you wish and yearn for divorce. I still remember one thing I asked Tania when she was twelve and I was ten. “Tania, how come Mommy and Daddy never kiss each other?” Her answer was to look at me, and walk out of the room. I never got my answer.


LISA.
I had my first affair when Tania was eight. I had my last when she was sixteen. I had six in total with six different men in between those eight years. She walked in on me and Blaine when she was thirteen. She never talked to me or anyone about it. She went to her grave with that secret. She shouldn’t have had to keep that weight on her shoulders, on her mind. Seeing as I had been caught by Bill once and forgiven. We stayed together out of priority for the girls. Looking back now, I wonder if that just hurt them more then it helped them?


BILL.
I walked in on Lisa and George when Tania was nine and Lauren was seven. He was my best friend. I had told her I would be at the office until midnight finishing paperwork but I had come home early. Both of the girls had been staying at her mother’s for the weekend so she could have a break. She didn’t work you see? I had thought that it would be best for the girls to have a stay at home parent so they could be raised properly.


It was stupid of me; I should have been the one at home. Lisa is ignorant of children and their ways, even more so of teenagers, as we have all learned the hard way. That stupid woman should have never been a mother, but I don’t think I ever should have been a father either. I should’ve noticed the change in Tania. But how could I when I was two states over and only had weekly phone calls? The girls are the greatest things that have ever happened to me, but I don’t think I deserve them. Someone who doesn’t notice drastic changes like us don’t deserve blessings to happen to them like Tan and Lauren. We don’t deserve them. We never will.


LAUREN.
The last straw for Dad was when he walked in on my mother and my homeroom teacher, Mr. Jay. I left with him when he left her. He wanted to be rid of her, as did I. After all, what kind of mother betrays her husband by cheating on him but her daughter as well by sleeping with her teacher? One that should have never been a mother, that’s who.


I left because there was no way in hell I was going back to that school day after day and looking at Mr. Jay and listening to the rumors floating around the school. There was no way I was going home to look at that monster of a woman and dealing with fresh pain all the time because of her home wrecking skills. It killed me to leave Tania, because she was the only thing I loved about my life in Utah. But if I had stayed, I probably would have gone crazy. So when Dad offered the move to California, I gladly accepted and Tania even understood my decision. She let me go. I wish I could do the same with her now. I will always remember her as my angel.


She kept me sane when we were all a “family.” Tania was my guardian; she hid me when they were yelling so loud, one time the neighbor called the cops because she thought someone was getting beaten up. She kept the dinner table conversation going, so I could feel like I lived in a house where at least someone cared. She took me trick or treating every year and made my costumes after teaching herself how to sew for that sole purpose. She bought me a kitten for Christmas one year with her own money when she was only eleven. Tania was the type of person that only comes along once in a lifetime, because she would go out of her way to make my days better, every single day. I will always love her and cherish her memories for that, even though she became a different person before she left me.


LISA.
Tania wouldn’t leave with Bill because of her boyfriend, Jake. He was the only reason she stayed. She made sure I knew that, too. They were freakishly serious for a teenage romance, and I always got the vibe that they were going to grow old together. They could complete each other’s sentences, they did everything together, and I’m pretty sure Tan lost her virginity to him.


They were together up until about the June of her junior year. I think that’s when she started to really fall apart. It had been happening for a while by then, but that’s when it really started to become serious, I believe.


I am a repulsive person for not knowing exactly when she started to need help. I disgust myself.




BILL.
Tania was an overachiever. She got straight As, she was captain of the varsity volleyball team, and she was nationally known as an amazing tennis player. She was going to get a scholarship. Not only that, but she was on the debate team and she was on the public speaking committee as well as the student council. She did everything. She could’ve been valedictorian for god’s sake.


Tania was not only over excelled in school and in her extracurricular activities, she was a genuinely good person too. She was kind, she was pretty, and she was funny. She could have been somebody, she could have been anything or anyone she wanted too.


LAUREN.
I found Tan’s diary when I cleaned out her room. The things those girls did too her as soon as dad and I left. That’s when it started. They must have known Lisa didn’t give a shit, and they needed a new target. They had just driven their most recent one out of the school. I knew about them. Everyone at my old school did. You didn’t mess with them unless you wanted to be in a living hell. Tania never did bother them though. That’s what I don’t understand. She did nothing to them. Tania never did anything hurtful to anyone. She didn’t have it in her.


It started with her friends. They talked to them one by one, and told them about how Tania had told them about how she thought they were all sluts. That she thought that they dressed like whores, and gave themselves up easily to any guy who showed any interest who came along. They told them that Tania thought that they were stupid skanks, and then forwarded them a fake email so they could prove that they were telling the truth. In the email, it also had fake things that these girls had made up that Tania had told them, none of them were true. They made up rumors about Tania’s friends and spread them around the school, and then told them that Tania had started them and showed them more fake emails. They stopped talking to her. None of her volleyball, tennis, student council, debate or speaking friends would talk to her. They were afraid. They thought Tania was like those girls that were creating the problems in the first place. After all, who wants to be friends with a bitch? She lost everyone except for Jake.


She never knew why they stopped talking to her. They just shut her out completely. They wouldn’t return any calls, any texts, any phone calls, any desperate pleading she tried after practices and after classes in the hallway. Not once did any of them stop to ask her why she was supposedly doing what she was. None of them gave her a chance. That’s when she started on her inner thighs.


BILL.
Since I wasn’t around, I couldn’t notice exactly that Tania’s friends shut her out. I did notice when I called and she would always start to be home more often. When I asked about Gemma and Bobby, who were her two closest friends, she would mumble that they were fine and then ask about the case I was working on or talk about her history test or something as equally unimportant. I just thought they were being teenage girls, having a little spat. I never thought that it was a cold treatment from them.


TANIA.
March 31st, 2009
It’s killing me. No one will talk to me anymore. It’s like I’ve suddenly acquired some contagious disease and no one will come near me anymore except for Jake. Not even Gemma or Bobby. What the hell did I do!?


I can’t figure it out. It’s starting to take a toll on me. I need my friends. They’re like my second family since my real blood family doesn’t really count, except for Lauren and she’s not even here.


They were the ones who got me on birth control for Jake and I, and they were the ones who talked me out of beating up my mother constantly and moving out. They were the ones who helped me buy condoms and didn’t let me freak out when I failed a chemistry test. They were my life. I feel like I’ve lost myself.


Not to mention that group of three girls will not leave me alone. It’s so weird. They haven’t said anything to me yet, but they knock the books out of my arms and the shove me sometimes, and they just follow me around in between classes. The only people who I would talk to about them, just have suddenly stone walled me.


I feel so lost.


LAUREN.
Next they moved on to Jake. Jake was someone I thought would always stand by Tania; that was the type of person he was. It was also the type of relationship they had. Through the thick and thin, he was always there. He was around so much by the time I was thirteen I began to consider him as family. He was the fifth Langdon. That’s why I can’t believe he fell for this BS, and let Tania go. That he treated her so cruelly is hard to wrap my head around. I still can’t do it to this day. It just doesn’t make sense to me.


Jake stuck around evidently after Tan was abandoned by everyone else. He was the One for her. Obviously, even though she was being shunned by everyone else for reasons unknown to her, he was still there. He was her brick wall, he was something that kept her going and as it says in her diary, kept her somewhat sane and from falling into a deeper depression for a while. But when he left, nothing kept her from spiraling down, down.


They told Jake that Tania was going around saying he had a tiny dick, that he was horrible in bed, and that she was cheating on him with the young history teacher, Mr. Smite because he didn’t satisfy her. They showed him supposed IM’s they got from her, they then proceeded to spread rumors like the above. They told him that Tania didn’t really love him, that it was all just a lie so she could say that she had a boyfriend. He believed them. Tania wrote this about him though, and it honestly makes no sense to me that someone who she cared about so deeply could believe those empty peoples lies.


June 22nd, 2008
You affect me so much
You make my world
Technicolor
Even when all I want
Is the clarity of black and white?


You make me wake up
Feel life
Enjoy reality
Be myself.
And you make me love you for you
Because it’s who you are.


Revitalization
Is the only
Word that comes to mind
Because you splash
Slap my face
With your being.


And I love it.
It makes me real
In sync
Sympathetic
Empathetic


To realize
How I should be
When I’m with you.


She never got over him, and I only hope when he reaches heaven so many years later, he’s ready to be hers again, because she deserves that peace. She left the world with this bitter poem balled under her pillow.


June 13th, 2009
Don’t ask me to pretend,
don’t ask me to lie.
Don’t ask me to walk away,
just let me hide.


I don’t want to see,
I don’t want to believe,
I don’t want to watch,
just let me fade.


Just let me run,
just let me fake,
just let me be,
don’t even try.


I want to care,
I want it to go away,
I want it to be okay,
but it won’t ever be.




But you were my best friend,
but you were my world,
but you were who I lived for,
it was who I was.


Now I don’t know.
I just don’t.


TANIA.
July 1st, 2009
Jake is gone.
I’m all gone now too.


LISA.
When Jake stopped coming around I should have noticed something was off. My logic was teenage couples break up all the time, even thought that was something I wasn’t expecting from Tania and Jake. I thought of him as my son. I still do. He’s just another piece in the puzzle that Tan left behind for us to solve. That’s when I started to notice my cigarettes kept on going missing.


LAUREN.
THESE STUPID GIRLS. IT’S THEIR FAULT. THEY HAD TO CHOOSE TANIA? MY SISTER TANIA OUT OF ALL THE PEOPLE! THEY ARE SO FUCKING INSECURE ABOUT THEIR LIVES; THEY HAD TO PUSH SOMEONE ELSE TO TAKE THEIR OWN? WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE FUCKED UP PEOPLE. I DON’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT HOW GUILTY THEY FEEL. I DON’T GIVE A DAMN IF THEY’RE GOING TO CHANGE AND TRY TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE NOW. IT’S TOO LATE. IT’S TOO LATE AND TANIA WILL NEVER BE BACK.


BILL.
Lisa called me for the first time when she found Tania’s report card in the fireplace. Our baby girl was failing every class. Even history, her all time favorite. She wanted to be a history teacher, did you know that? Tan was going to be a history teacher.


TANIA.
October 8th, 2009
My classes are pointless. I’ve given up. They follow me in the hallways and kick my legs as I walk. If I walk by a teacher they let up, but as soon as I’m away from one, they start up again. They call me names. They call my mother names. They call Lauren names. I can’t listen to it; otherwise it’s a never-ending reel in my head for the rest of the day. I hear it over and over again. I’ve taken to listening to heavy metal through ear buds so I can’t hear them. At least I used to until they grabbed them and my iPod last week and stomped on both until they shattered into little tiny pieces that are irreparable, just like the rest of my life. I can’t escape them. No matter where I go, they’re there. They’re in my head, they’re in my blood, they’re in my body. I can’t get them out. I’m so tired. I’m always so tired.




LAUREN.
They planted steroids in her gym bag. When the drug dogs came around, they found them. They accused Tania, and they refused to believe that they weren’t hers. At this point, she had 40 cuts on her body, and 18 burns. She kept a tally in the back of her diary. How disturbing is that?


She lost her status in the tennis world and was banned from playing, and she lost her privileges to play any school sport. They called the house and told Mom, and Mom believed them right away. After all, it made sense didn’t it? That would explain the mood change and the loss of concentration in school. She took the easy out and believed them. The school suspended her for 10 days. In her senior year, having that on her record pretty much destroyed her chances for a scholarship of any kind, let alone going to university. That was on Monday, March 15th, 2010.


She finished off her other six cuts, this time all on her stomach, and added four more burns with matches, two to her feet and two to her forearms. She was done.


TANIA.
March 15th, 2010
I’m miserable.
I can’t feel anything anymore.
Everything I have ever lived for has been taken away from me.
The cuts and burns don’t work anymore.
Nothing does.
I’m finished. I’m leaving tomorrow.
And I’m not sorry at all.


LISA.
Things like this aren’t supposed to happen to me. They’re supposed to happen in movies, not in real life. My child is not supposed to be so depressed that they self mutilate constantly for almost a year and me not notice. These are things you see on Oprah that happen to some random woman that you will never meet. You are supposed to notice your child scarring their body. Why couldn’t I?


If I could tell Tania, my dear sweet baby girl Tania, one thing, it would be that she was the most beautiful thing I have ever created. She was beautiful in every way, inside and out, and I wish that I had told her that more. Tan, I love you to the end of the world and back, and I’m sorry that I wasn’t the person that you needed me to be.


BILL.
I hate myself everyday for not being there. I should have made it work with Lisa. I should’ve made it happen. I should’ve stuck around for Tania. Should’ve and did are two different things though. Every day, I wish they weren’t.


If I could tell Tania one thing, it would be that I always knew that she was destined for greatness. The way she could read Green Eggs and Ham by the time she was 4, how she knew how to do multiplication by the end of grade two, how she played tennis and beat me by the time she was thirteen. The only thing I didn’t know was the way her brilliance would be used would be for awareness. I’m starting an awareness mission. Bullying and suicide both. Her short but sweet life taught me many things. The main one, don’t take love for granted. Tan, I love you like the way I love nothing else. I love you with every fibre of my being until I die and get to meet up with you again in heaven. Until then, I’ll just miss you.


LAUREN.
A day doesn’t go by when I don’t think about her. Am I horrible for just wanting for this whole ordeal to be over with? But it never will be. Those girls need to pay, and they will when I ruin their miserable lives when I expose them for who they really are to the press. I want to stop silent crying every time I see tennis is on TV, or I see the presidential debate. I want to be able to watch the volleyball in the Olympics without having these horrible sobs that tear through my body and make me throw up. It’s so hard, and it’s starting to make me tired. I’ll keep going for Tania though.


If I could tell Tania one thing, it would be that she was my idol, and that I’m sorry that she couldn’t tell me how much she was suffering. I just wanted to be you, Tan. I wanted to be just like you. Although volleyball and tennis weren’t my thing, I loved soccer and pushed myself at it because I knew that’s how you succeeded in your sports. I dressed the way I thought you would like; I pushed myself to earn my grades as high as yours. I wanted to grow up to be you. The way you were so amazing, inside and out, astounded me. Your grace and poise made me jealous, and the way you always seemed to know how to handle a situation. You were my best friend, and you will never be replaced in my life. I will love you forever: my idol, my mentor, my best friend, my sister. You will never be forgotten.

Alle Rechte an diesem Beitrag liegen beim Autoren. Der Beitrag wurde auf e-Stories.org vom Autor eingeschickt Sarah Prendergast.
Veröffentlicht auf e-Stories.org am 24.08.2010.

 
 

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