analyze the words or make changes to anything. I write and I move on. I don’t want to go down those roads again. I don’t want to relive the things I felt when I wrote them.
Every single page is filled with lyrics to songs. Songs I’ll never have the courage to sing in front of anyone because they are too personal. Songs that my mother will never let me sing because then everyone would know the truth. I don’t want them on display; I don’t want him to read them and judge me for the choices I’ve made.
“Please…don’t,” I whisper, my voice choked with tears I don’t even realize are pooling in my eyes.
He either doesn’t hear me or doesn’t care. His need to get inside my soul is too great. His deep, resonating voice fills the room with the words that have filled my heart with so much darkness for such a long time.
“Every day is another step closer,
to where I don’t want to be.
Another smile, another laugh, another moment
of this fake reality.
Because of you
I see clearer than I ever have.
Because of you
I can’t let anyone inside.
Because of you
I learned how to be alone.
Because of you
I am ashamed.
Just for a moment, I was back in time,
to a place where I belong.
Where dreams could lead you everywhere
and wishes could make you strong.
But then I wake up and my eyes are open wide.
Because of you
I see clearer than I ever have.
Because of you
I can’t let anyone inside.
Because of you
I learned how to be alone.
Because of you
I am ashamed.
Every day I lose
more of who I am.
Afraid to cry, afraid to hurt because
you taught me it was wrong.
Someday there’ll be nothing left,
just a shadow of who I was.
Because of you
I see clearer than I ever have.
Because of you
I can’t let anyone inside.
Because of you
I learned how to be alone.
Because of you
I am ashamed.”
The silence in the room is deafening as Brady finishes up the last line of the song and slowly closes the leather book. I can feel his eyes on me, but I can't do anything except stare in horror at my feet.
I wrote that song when I was in rehab for trying to overdose on sleeping pills. It was my twenty-first birthday and I had just found out that even though I was legal in the eyes of the law, everything I had and everything I was, belonged to my mother.
It was childish and immature, and I regretted my actions as soon as the last pill made its way down my throat. I immediately forced myself to throw up. By the time I had managed to purge some of the pills back up, the rest had already started to do their thing, and I could feel my body shutting down as I sunk to the floor of the bathroom.
Before I passed out, I managed a slurred, confusing call to Finn. After having my stomach pumped and my name splashed across the tabloids, courtesy of my mother (“All publicity is good publicity”), I woke up two days later in an exclusive rehab center in southern California where all of the stars go for some “rest and relaxation.”
I wrote those words in the quiet of my room, alone. Words that I knew would never see the light of day because my mother most likely slept her way through the Hummingbird legal team to make sure my contracts were ironclad. I would never have a say in the songs I sang and I would never get to choose the lyrics I produced.
As much as I initially hated the idea that Brady was just here as my mother’s lapdog hired to do her bidding, I am painfully reminded by the words of that song that I am the quintessential puppet for my mother. I do what she says when she says it, and I do it with a smile on my face. I take her criticisms and her threats and I let them mold me into the person I am today.
It doesn’t matter if I really have a stalker or if his threats against me are real or just contrived by my mother for publicity. It doesn’t matter if Brady really wants me or he just wants to protect me because that’s the type of person he is.
As long as my mother has a say in it, I’ll always be the poor, little rich girl who had it all and tried to throw it away. I'm scared to death that Brady will read those words