Dear Diary,
Today was a very bad day for Daddy. Lin was going to go to her flower shop, but Daddy wasn’t feeling well and he kept saying things that didn’t make sense. He’s very confused. He keeps asking for Uclepidies, but we don’t understand what he means. Lin asked him once who Uclepidies was and he said that he wanted Uclepidies inside of him, but he couldn’t explain much more than that. Lin was very upset to hear about this and she asked us to go out immediately, so I haven’t seen him since.
I hate this apartment. I know I shouldn’t because it’s warm and safe, but there’s nothing to do. I want to cook, but we don’t have that much food, so I don’t want to do anything with it because Lin likes cooking and she doesn’t like it when I cook. She says she doesn’t want me to do anything that a mommy should do. But I never had a mommy. Daddy showed Granid and me how to cook when we were very young, and it was never anything bad. I tried to explain this to her, but she didn’t listen and just gave me a big hug and told me not to worry. But I am not worried. I just want to do something. I am so bored.
I hate the book too. It is so mean. I read a story about this woman who was seduced by this man who wasn’t her husband at a party when she was very drunk. She got pregnant, and then her husband, who was away from war, came back and found out she was pregnant. So he killed her in this really awful way and tore out the baby in her belly and threw the baby in the flames.
I’ve heard this story before. The mayor told me it when I was a little girl. I didn’t think it was bad at the time, but when I told it to Daddy, he got so mad that his face turned bright red. He asked me who told him the story and then, when I told him it was the mayor, he went to the mayor at once and gave him a long talk. The mayor never tried to tell us a story after that.
But afterwards when Daddy came home, he gave me a big hug and kiss and told me that those stories were bad stories that were made to frighten people into submission. He said that I should not have to worry about stories like those because they weren’t true. He said that there was so much pain in the world that it was unnecessary for these lies to exist and, instead of trying to scare people onto a good path, we should focus on helping each other out so that we can go together on that good path.
I miss Daddy so much. I know he is here and I am so grateful for that. But, I feel like I can’t be with him as much as I want to. I feel so lost and confused. Daddy always had a way with words and he could always explain something, even if it was very hard. He was always kind. Lin is nice, but she seems as lost and confused as I am. She keeps on saying that she will be there for me, but when I ask her questions, she just looks frustrated.
Diamea, please. I can’t burn a candle or worship you in the temple, but they say you know everything, so if you can read this, please give me back my daddy and keep him safe. I know that it is a lot to ask and I know I am just one person out of the world, but please. My daddy is so, so special to me and I love him so much. I am so afraid right now of everything because he used to guide me and now he’s slipping away. He’s the only family I have left. Please don’t let me lose him too.
Love always,
Solea
~
Dear Diary,
Things are still going badly. Daddy was still very confused, so he couldn't do anything. Lin asked me if Daddy had any friends that he liked to spend time alone with, but I said no. Daddy usually stayed in the store with Temas or with us. Lin asked me more questions about Temas, but I don’t understand why. I wish she would stop asking. Nobody wants to spend time with us anymore, so they weren’t real friends in the first place.
~
Dear Diary,
Lin spent her day in the flower shop. I wish I could go with her. I hate this apartment. Daddy is still confused.
~
Dear Diary,
I burnt the storybook. I am glad I burnt it. It was an evil thing. Lin was very mad at me when she found out, but I don’t care at all.
~
Dear Diary,
Lin is making me cook dinner for the next week because I burnt the book. I should have burnt it sooner.
We don’t have much food in the house, but I will make a stir-fry with chicken and rice with whatever vegetables we have, and then we will have fresh fruit with cream for dessert. Tomorrow, I will make broth out of the chicken bones and serve it with rice as a porridge. I am still not sure of the spices I will use, but I will decide that for tomorrow. For that dessert, since we are having such a light dinner, I will make a cake. I am still not sure what I will do for the next couple of days, but I will see what Lin brings home for food.
I hope Daddy will like it!
~
Dear Diary,
Dinner was delicious and Lin loved it. She said that if she knew I was such a good cook, she would have let me make food earlier. She has been struggling to make good food lately because I can’t eat any eggs. I told her that I would teach her some recipes, if she wanted. Iluve didn’t like it, but she has been sulky lately. Daddy once said that women had strange mood swings when they get older. Maybe she is having a strange mood swing.
Lin said that she had contacted Temas and she would be bringing him home for dinner in five days. I don’t know what to make yet, but I will make it very special. I am glad that Temas will come over. Maybe he doesn’t hate us after all.
I hope Daddy will remember him!
~
Dear Diary,
Iluve is stupid. She keeps hurting me and pretending it’s an accident. I don’t like it at all. I told her that I would tell Lin if she kept hurting me like that, and Iluve got really mad at me for saying that. She said that it was just an accident and I was being stupid. But I’m not being stupid. If she steps on my foot one more time, I am going to tell on her.
~
Dear Diary,
Today, Iluve tripped me and pretended that it was just an accident. If she does anything else, I am going to smack her.
Daddy is still not feeling well.
~
Dear Diary,
Today, Iluve dropped a plate and almost hit me on the head. I got really mad at her and I told her that if she tried to do anything else, I was going to tell. She said that it was an accident and I was over-reacting. I told Lin, but Lin told me that we should just clean up the plate and stop fighting. I think she’s trying to be nice to her daughter, but she should be nice to me as well since I am her daughter too. I know that if Daddy were awake, he would be nice to both of us.
~
Dear Diary,
Today, I told Iluve that if she hit me, I would hit her back and she got really mad at me. She said that I was an overly sensitive princess who didn’t even know the meaning of pain. As if she knows! She doesn’t do anything but sit inside and read all day. What does she know about pain? She is stupid and mean.
Then I told her that I didn’t care what she said about me, but she better not hurt me again or else she would regret it. She said it was just those things that happened were just accidents and I was stupid for thinking that it was anything else, but I’m not an idiot. Granid did the same thing. But Granid was my brother and Iluve isn’t even my sister. She shouldn’t do those things to me.
Then I called her an evil witch and she got really mad at me. She said I was a stuck up little brat who was only alive because of their mercy and I shouldn’t even think about insulting her in that way. So I said that if it weren’t for my daddy, she would still be with the matron hearing stories about how she should get her lungs ripped out. Then she hit me really hard in the face and ran away.
I don’t care. She was being mean and she shouldn’t have said those things. If she things that I am going to be nice to her when she keeps trying to be mean to me, then she is stupid.
~
Dear Diary,
Hi, I’m a stupid little girl who is an idiot. Look at me be melodramatic! Look at me! My life is so sad and pathetic. Or maybe I’m just so sad and pathetic. I think that may be a better description, actually. I am a completely pathetic person who loves to wallow in my own self-misery. My father is sick, my brother is in prison, and I am so alone! Never mind that my new mother is hiring the best doctors in the city to help him out and has spent more than half her life savings trying to help him when nobody else gives a damn. Or that my brother raped and then slit the throat of a young girl, just because he couldn’t keep his penis in his pants. No, that doesn’t count at all because I am just so self-centered and alone and so miserable.
You are an idiot, Solea. If you knew how lucky you were, then you would shut up and stop whining all the time. You say that you feel trapped because you have to stay inside all day long. Well, guess what? When your dad and my mom went to marry, that was the first time I was let out of the matron’s building in seven years. The time before, when I was six, was because I was very sick and I was allowed to sit outside in the sun, because I was so cold. I never got to play outside at all with any of the other children. They were afraid of us bastard children learning that we weren’t all evil. They wanted to keep us apart so that we would look at each other and be ashamed because we were so disgraced that we couldn’t even be with each other and offer support. We were forced to suffer alone. In the last two years, five of the bastards killed themselves. Their mothers were gone, forced to go to work and earn their keep, and while the bastards were alone they hung themselves. One was twelve, the other nine, another my age, and two others that were eleven. They killed themselves because they felt so alone and they hated themselves so much that they thought the only way out was through death.
I don’t want you to pity me. I don’t. If you do pity me, I am going to slap you so hard that everything before is going to seem like I was just playing lightly with you. But I want you to understand where I am coming from. You’re the first girl I’ve ever been allowed to talk to freely. But all you do is whine and complain about what you can’t do when you can do so much. Do you know how frustrating it is for me to finally be able to talk with someone else freely besides my own mother and to hear complaint after complaint about how miserable your life is? It’s awful.
I know I’m not the best person to talk to. I know I am quiet and shy and I don’t talk much. But I do watch you and I do listen to you, even if you don’t think I do. At your best, you are wonderful to be with, but at your worst, you are awful and everything that you say and do just hurts me deeper inside.
You whine on and on about how you think you’re losing your father. Well, guess what? Your precious daddy may die. Bad things happen. I’m sorry for you too. He sounds like a good man, one of the few that exist in this world. My father was a bad man. At a party, he got drunk, took my mother aside, and that was how I was born. When he found out that I was in my mom, he abandoned her. He’s dead now. He died in a fight in a bar, I hear. Then, when I was twelve, one of priests who came to scold us decided he wanted to “scold” me in private. He was a bad man too, but because he was a priest, there was nothing I could do. When I first heard about your father, I hated him because I thought he was just like every other man, but I have come to learn that this is not the case. And I wish I got to know him before he got so ill, really, I do. And I am sorry that you’re going to lose him.
But you know what? You have a mother now who loves you, probably more than she does me. After all, I’m the mistake. I’m the bastard child who has caused her to live in her own personal hell for the last thirteen years, fourteen if you count the time when she was pregnant with me. With you, you’re the precious little girl who has allowed her to have her freedom back, and so she’ll love you freely and cuddle and play with you. She loves you so much that you will never know, and yet you treat her distantly, as if you think she’s going to abandon you any minute. Well, let me tell you something. If you think she’s going to abandon you, you’re even more idiotic than I thought. You are her little darling, the little girl that she always hoped to have but never did. The little girl she thought would be impossible for her because she thought no man would ever marry her. And why would they, with such an ugly bastard child like me around, who can’t talk and can barely even breathe without worrying what’s going to happen next?
I admit everything: I tried to hurt you. I got mad. My mother never treated me as nicely as she treats you. She couldn’t. When the matrons found out that I was naughty, they would make my mother whip my hands until I had red marks all over them. It didn’t matter how bad the thing was. If I disobeyed even slightly, that was enough to get the whip. That’s why I have all those scars on my hands, though you never asked how I got them. She didn’t want to do it. They made her do that so they could better train her to be a “mother,” as if being a mother meant that she had to torture her children. She always apologized later, when the matrons weren’t looking. She said that if we weren’t in this position, things would be different. But I never realized how it could be until you came along.
That horrid book! The matron made me read a story every night ever since she found out I could read. I’ve practically memorized that damned book. At first, I didn’t realize that I was one of those bastards that should be killed. But then, as I got older, I realized the truth and I was horrified. But still, I had to read the book, and if the matron thought I hadn’t, I would be whipped. One time she made me recite the story of the bastard princess – I hated that story more than anything because of that. You don’t know what torture it is to be forced to be repeated to you over and over again how awful you are. If it weren’t for my mother and her strength, I might be one of those children who hanged themselves. I wanted to destroy the book so much that it hurt sometimes. When I saw you reading it too, it hurt so much because I thought you would hate me the more you read, since I was the bastard and you weren’t.
When you burned it, I was relieved, but I was scared too. If your father dies, we might have to go back to the matron’s, and if she found out that I didn’t have that book, she would hurt me so badly. My mother knew this. That’s why she tried to punish you. But you didn’t give a damn. To you, burning the book was just a stupid game. You didn’t like the book, you burnt it. But to me, if the matron finds out, I get beaten. I’m not a little girl anymore – I’m thirteen. When you’re thirteen, you don’t get your hands whipped. You either get thrown out or you get your back whipped, depending on the charge. But you didn’t understand and you didn’t care. I tried to tell you, but you just went off on how bad the book was. When I tried to motion you my hands, you just ignored me. When my mother told you to cook food as a punishment, since she didn’t want to hurt you, you just treated it as a damned game. When are you going to get rid of the notion that you can’t just do anything you want? You can hurt people.
So I was stupid, I admit it. You treated everything like a damned game, I figured I would treat it like a damned game as well. You wanted to hurt me? I would hurt you too. We would be even.
But we’re not and we’ll never be. You’re right – I am the bastard child. I’ve ruined my mother and I am disgraced beyond any possibility. I am thirteen years old and yet I can’t marry, even in a bad marriage, because they won’t let me into church since Diamea hates me. The only hope for me is to be either adopted by your father – which is unlikely, considering everything that has happened so far – or become a whore. That’s what usually what happens to us bastard girls.
There was a chance that perhaps I could get a servant’s job – the matron was looking for something for me before my mother married your father. But now that’s over and, with the book destroyed, it’s unlikely that she’ll find something for me now. I am utterly ruined. With your father like this, he’ll never adopt me as his daughter, and the only little hope that I had to become even a lowly servant has disappeared with you burning that horrid book. My mother has spent half of her life’s savings to help your father out, and even with all of that it looks likely that he will die. She doesn’t even know if she’ll be able to keep her flower shop at this rate. She may lose everything by the time this has passed. When we go back to the matron’s, the matron will love you because you are a true child, but she will hate me because I am the bastard and she will tell me that, as an adult now, I will have to pay for boarding, or else she will throw me out. She will not allow me to serve her, since I have treated her book with such contempt, so either I will have to go out into the streets and beg, and you know personally how hard that is, or go to the whorehouses and work my way there. And, if that’s what happens, I’ll never be able to see my mother again, unless she were to abandon you. And she’ll never do that because you will be an orphan and she loves you dearly.
I don’t want you to pity me. I told you before that if you pity me, I will hurt you more than you ever thought possible, and I mean it more than ever now. But I want you to understand. Yes, I know that from your perspective, it must look like I had it so easy, but don’t be so naïve. Everyone has their own shares of hardships and everybody has their own struggles. Just because yours is more obvious than most doesn’t mean you’re the only who has had to struggle, nor will you be the last to struggle. You think you’re alone because you’re in pain, but what you don’t realize that is that you’re not alone – you’re part of the majority. Life is pain.
I don’t want to keep fighting you. You’re better than me in so many different ways, and it wears me down. I’m tired of having battles everywhere I turn. You were right when you said this whole thing was stupid. It is. I shouldn’t have started it in the first place. I was just so angry and upset because there was a small chance, albeit a small one, that I wouldn’t have to have to whore myself out to other men, but I suppose that was just a stupid dream that I created for myself.
I shouldn’t have let a stupid dream get in between you and me, and I’m sorry for that. I know that we won’t have much time together, and I don’t want you to remember me as a witch. You are the only person I have ever known, besides my mother, who has given a damn about me, and I should have appreciated you a lot more. It was my own pride that got in the way, and my own belief that I was better than I was, and I am sorry for that. I will try to be better to you from now on and, if you want, we can try to be friends again, though if you don’t want to be friends, I can understand. I was a beast to you and didn’t treat you with the due respect, which you deserve. Again, I am sorry.
I’m not sure what more to say. The sun’s coming up and soon you’ll be awake and you’ll see this vandalization of your diary. Please don’t be mad about it. There isn’t any paper in the apartment and I didn’t know what else to do. You know how awfully I speak and how much I stutter. I don’t know how else I would be able to say this to you, especially not after yesterday. Again, I am so sorry for everything. It was all my fault, and I shouldn’t have hurt you. You have shown me nothing but love, and I have been so evil to you. If I can do anything to gain your forgiveness, please let me know and I will do everything that I can.
Forever your servant,
Iluve
It was nice to have her take on things. And to understand why she started hurting Solea. Poor Solea, she's still too innocent for this cruel world....
