Title: Beauty from Pain
Summary: A girl is pushed to the very edge of her emotional limits and needs to find a way to escape, only to find every outlet barred. Deep, very emotional, and a true story.

A few more steps and Darci was at the top of the staircase. She reached out and grabbed the doorknob in one shaking hand, opening the door slowly while trying to quiet her tears. When she opened the door to an empty foyer, she knew stopped trying to be quiet; the front door, only a few feet away from the basement door, was unguarded.

Darci gave up trying to hold her emotions in—it was no use, anyway—and gasped as a new wave of tears forced their way out of her eyes and down her face, as if they too were trying to escape from all of the sadness, confusion, anger, frustration—everything that seemed to be surrounding her family for the past year. The tears shook Darci’s body, but somehow she still managed to find her way over to the front door.

The front door was open; even though it was late at night, Mom had left the door unlocked so that Darci’s father could come and pick up Darci and her brother and sister for the weekend. It seemed ironic that the door that had been open for the monster to enter was the same door that was now open for Darci to escape, once and for all.

With the opening of the door—when had it opened?—came a rush of cold air that seemed to slap the hysterical teen in the face, and for a moment Darci faltered. What was she doing, running away from home? Where was she going to go? How was she going to live?

With a hearty sniffle, Darci shoved those sensible thoughts into the back of her brain; this wasn’t about physical survival, it was about emotional escape.

Darci slammed the door behind her and walked down the front steps, and before she knew it, her bare feet were stomping down the street towards the front of the neighborhood.

As she walked, Darci couldn’t keep the memory of tonight’s argument from running through her head—over and over, as if it were running on fast-forward, and always skipping back to the beginning at some point or another. These memories—the overly warm greeting from her father; the discovery that tonight was going to be yet another night spent with Dad’s “girlfriend,” (although the true word for her was “mistress”) the one who had caused her parents to separate in the first place; the original argument with Dad over Darci’s selfishness for wanting to spend a night alone with her father, versus Dad’s selfishness for leaving Mom for another woman whom Darci had used to trust; locking herself in her bedroom to keep herself from slapping her father; telling her wanna-be mediator sister to get the fuck away from her door, sending Charlotte into an angry outburst of tears that added guilt to Darci’s growing whirlpool of emotions; waiting for the shouting voices to fade as the owners treaded angrily upstairs; and finally, Darci’s sudden decision to sneak out of the house and disappear forever—forced more tears to leak from her eyes and kept Darci walking from under the dim light of one streetlight to the next.

Two brighter, more garish lights appeared in the distance; a white Honda Accord drove slowly past. Darci was able to see well enough past the light to know that the driver and his passenger were looking at her, wondering why this barefoot girl in a princess’s costume was walking down the middle of the road and crying hard enough to actually cause the girl to walk bent over double.

As Darci watched the car disappear behind her, she half wished that it would turn around and stop, and the people inside would get out and ask her what was wrong; how they could help; if they could take her somewhere. But it seemed as if Darci was going to have to walk herself out of this mess alone, without the help of any sort of adult.

Or maybe she did have help…

Darci pulled out her cell phone, the only thing she had bothered to grab in her frenzied hurry to get out of that madhouse, and fumbled with the buttons. Her tears blurred her vision, but Liza’s phone number was on speed-dial after a year of car-pooling to school. Liza hadn’t been at Emilee’s costume party earlier that night—the reason why Darci was dressed in an old Halloween costume of a princess—but Darci knew that Liza was at home and, with her new driver’s license, would be able to pick Darci up and take her to Liza’s house, at least for a little while. Hopefully long enough for Darci to get herself together, with a new wall formed between herself and her emotions so that she could stand living for just a few more months. A few more months, or a few more weeks, or however long Darci would be able to last before her next break-down.

Ring…

Liza would probably let Darci sleep over…

Ring…

After all: she knew everything about Darci’s parents, and had been there to help Darci through all of her other break-downs.

Ring…

Liza was Darci’s best friend; if Liza couldn’t help, Darci didn’t know what else to do.

Ring…

Darci tried to compose herself so that Liza would be able to hear her when she picked up.

Hey, it’s Liza! Um, can’t really come to the phone right now—.

Darci quickly hung up, only to dial the number again… and again… and again, each time Liza’s voicemail greeting told her that Liza couldn’t really come to the phone. Darci never stopped redialing, even when her father’s small, white, Ford pick-up pulled up next to her with its passenger window rolled down.

“Darci!” Dad called angrily. “Get in the car!”

Darci kept walking, her cell phone pressed tightly against her ear. This time she knew Liza would pick up… Liza would have to pick up…

Hey, it’s Liza!

Darci hung up the phone, this time folding it into her fist. She folded her arms tightly across her chest and continued to walk, determined to ignore her father.

“Darci!”

Sharp rocks in the road poked Darci’s feet, but for some reason this external pain made her feel a little better; almost as if the pain was trying to force its way out through her feet instead of infest itself deep down in the pit of her stomach.

“Darci!”

Darci brought her left hand up to her mouth and, with her thumb and middle finger, searched for any dead skin on her lips that she could peel away. Both of her lips seemed to be just one big callous, so Darci unfolded her arms and studied her fingernails.

“DARCI!”

All of her fingernails were picked down as far as they could go. Darci examined the skin at the very tips of her fingers, even looking deep down underneath the tiny stubs of her fingernails for loose or dead skin that she could pick away to reveal the sensitive new skin underneath. If she could just get to that new layer of skin…

“DARCI!” This time Darci couldn’t ignore her father; even some of the neighbors were starting to wake up and stick their angry heads out of opened windows to see what was going on. “GET IN THE GODDAMN CAR!”

Darci shook her head, only to have her father yell at her to get in the vehicle once again. This time, Darci stopped and looked at her father, the two identical pairs of brown eyes casting equally angry gazes at each other.

Darci was the first to look away when she started to walk once again. As she walked, she insisted in a wavering voice, “No.”

Dad continued to call out Darci’s name, until she couldn’t stand the fact that her father—the most hypocritical man in the world these days—was yelling at her for being a stubborn ass.

So once again, Darci stopped walking and waited for her father’s car to stop so that their eyes could meet once again.

“I’m not getting in the car unless you tell me the truth.”

Dad looked furious. Darci had never seen him this angry in all her life, and she had done a lot of stupid things as a child. “I’ve told you everything I can tell you.”

“You’ve told me lies!”

“I HAVE NOT!”

Darci took off running, her tears shaking her body even more than they ever had before. She could feel a headache starting just above her eyes, a warning that she was crying too much. Unfortunately, Darci couldn’t stop crying even if she wanted to.

This was just another of Dad’s lies. Darci couldn’t believe that Dad was lying about lying! It wasn’t enough that he wouldn’t tell Darci that he was romantically involved with Claudia (“she’s just a really good friend” Dad would always insist, even though Darci had actual evidence that he had slept with Claudia at least twice that she knew of); he had to go and deny that he was even lying at all. And this dance had been going on for the past couple of months.

Darci tripped and went flying. She came to a painful landing on the concrete edge of the road, her head scraping dangerously close to the curb. Darci didn’t feel any of it; she just kept crying, vaguely aware that her father had stopped the car and was coming to actually pick her up and dump her in the bed of the truck.

The ride back to the house was filled with tears. Darci just couldn’t stop crying into the dirty rubber flooring her dad had installed on the bottom of the truck.

How could her relationship with her father have deteriorated this far? Growing up, Darci had been Daddy’s Girl. She had been in love with her father, almost to the point of worshipping him. When she found out that her father’s childhood dream had been to grow up to become an astronaut, Darci had immediately decided that she wanted to be an astronaut—and every summer since, she had gone to Space Camp. Her father was the only other person in the family who had the same interests as Darci: politics, scary movies, roller coasters, and reading. Rather, he had shared Darci’s interests until Claudia changed them. Now Darci couldn’t listen to classic rock with her dad; Dad preferred country music now. Movies like The Ring and The Sixth Sense no longer seemed to keep Dad’s attention; now, it was all about movies like Dukes of Hazzard, where no one minded if you laughed obnoxiously right in the middle of the movie. If asked, Dad would now say that his favorite restaurants were those that served barbeque and had a bar at one side, with plenty of loud people to keep things interesting, when previously he would have hated the thought of such a noisy place and preferred somewhere quiet with a more sophisticated menu. And all of his new friends seemed to come from the same town as Claudia. Darci didn’t like the man her father had become; the man her father was now was selfish and rude.

Before she knew it, the car had stopped in Darci’s driveway, and her father was leaning over the side of the truck’s bed, commanding her to get out of the car.

Darci shook her head and cried into the rubber flooring, letting its stinging scent envelope her.

“Darci, get out of the car.”

Darci looked up at her father, trying to decide if her father could actually be any angrier than he was right now. If he couldn’t, then it wouldn’t really matter if Darci spat in his face, would it? But no, Darci’s father would only use that action as ammunition in a future argument.

“Darci, I don’t understand why you’re acting like an infant! Get out of the car!”

At this, Darci propped her head up to glare at her father. “I’ve told you why I’m upset!” she shrieked, the intensity of her voice surprising even herself. “Because you keep lying to me! Because you never tell me the truth! Because you’re always trying to confuse me! Because you never listen to me! Every time I try to talk to you to fix things between us, you pretend that you can’t hear or understand me, or you try to change the subject!”

For a moment, Darci and her father just glared at each other. Darci’s eyes swept over her father’s body, stopping at his grey hair. Her father had gone grey at an early age, and when Darci was little she had enjoyed having the color that his hair used to be because it meant that she was going to go grey early too, and she and Daddy would be even more alike. Now she dreaded the day she would look in the mirror and find her hair riddled with strands of silver.

Finally, Darci’s father said softly, “I can’t understand what you’re saying when you cry like that.”

That was it. Darci jumped up and slimbed out of the car, and before her father could catch her, she dashed into the house. She closed the door behind her, quickly turning the lock to keep her father out. But this would only last so long; Dad had a key to the house.

Darci ran back down to the basement, trying to get to her bedroom before her father could get to her. She flew through the living room to the first door on the right, sliding into her bedroom like it was home plate at a baseball game. She quickly slammed the door behind her, locking it to keep any invaders out. Unfortunately, she had discovered earlier that year that her door could be unlocked if someone used a quarter to turn the lock on the doorknob. Darci had to find another way to get herself out of all of this pain. She had to get away from her father.

On an impulse, Darci ran to her desk. She went through all of the drawers, trying to remember the last time she’d cleaned the thing out. Eventually, she found what she was looking for: a pair of silver scissors.

Darci heard a pounding on the door; her father was trying to get in. Quickly, Darci pressed one of the metal blades to her wrist and sliced…

Darci closed her eyes, expecting the feeling of blood surging down her wrist to provide her with the escape she needed desperately… but she didn’t feel anything. She still heard her father pounding away at the bedroom door and shouting for her to come out this instant, but she didn’t feel the sense of release that she had expected.

Quickly, Darci looked back down at her wrist and saw: nothing. Her wrist was just as smooth and tan as it was before she had sliced it with the scissor. The only thing to show for her efforts was a quickly fading white stripe.

Darci examined the scissor and discovered the problem: the blade was too dull.

Darci started wailing, throwing the scissors back into her desk drawer. How could this happen to her? Every attempt at escape was blocked by something stupid. Was her life really so safe that even her scissors weren’t sharp enough to cut her?

And then Darci remembered: her father had given her a hunting knife on a camping trip when she was nine years old. The single blade had a serrated edge at its base and a straight edge at the tip, for whittling. It would be perfect—not to mention appropriate.

Darci quickly jumped over her bed to her chest of drawers. She flung open the underwear drawer where she remembered putting the knife a long, long time ago, and started flinging various undergarments across the room in search of the knife. Darci found all sorts of objects—underwear (of course), gift wrap, old jewelry that she had lost years ago, ancient paper dolls, and even a baby toy or two—but she couldn’t locate the knife. Thinking that maybe she had moved the knife to the drawer of her bedside table, Darci switched locations. Books and old, unsent notes to friends went flying, disregarded, across the room, but Darci didn’t find her knife anywhere. Suddenly—

And I’ll do anything to just feel better, any little thing to just feel better!

Darci realized that her cell phone was still in her hand, and that it was ringing! Through teary eyes, Darci read the caller I.D. to see who would be calling at such a time as this!

“Liza!” Darci cried into the phone as soon as she answered. “Liza!”

“Whoa,” answered Liza. “What’s going on? Did you try to call me earlier?”

Darci cries into the phone, unable to make any coherent sentences through her hysteria. She crumples into the floor beside her bed, curling up into the fetal position. Suddenly it dawns on her what she was about to do… what she was willing to do to escape from her problems. Maybe the counselor her mother had sent her to was right when she said that Darci was depressed… maybe she really did need help.

Darci looked down at the crucifix that she had unthinkingly worn since she was in middle school and had another realization: she didn’t really believe in God, or Jesus. She’d just grown up being told all sorts of stories from the Bible, pretty much being brainwashed into religion.

This realization made Darci cry even harder; it was like finding out that Santa Claus wasn’t real all over again.

“Darci?” Liza asked, bringing Darci back to her current situation.

Darci sniffed and held her breath, trying to stop the tears. Liza waited patiently for Darci to get her breath as well as her courage to say what was wrong. When Darci was finally able, she told Liza everything that had happened.

“Oh, Darci,” Liza sighed, sounding overwhelmed. She had no idea that things had built up so much inside Darci. “I’m so sorry, Darci…”

“I couldn’t even kill myself!” Darci cried. “I couldn’t even kill myself! I can’t do anything right!”

“That’s not true!” Liza insisted. “You are so strong, Darci. You have dealt with everything so much better than I ever could have.”

Darci seriously doubted that, but she nodded into the phone anyway. It felt good to be reassured by someone who knew the whole story, had even been there to see her father interact with Claudia and decide for herself what was going on between the two adults.

“Liza?”

“Yeah?”

“Liza… I think I need help…”

Darci heard Liza sniff and realized that Liza was crying as well. It amazed Darci that it could affect someone so much to learn that she might have ended up killing herself tonight. She didn’t want to cause anyone that much pain; no one else could know about what happened.

“Liza… promise me you won’t tell anyone anything!”

“Darci…”

“Liza, you have to promise!”

“But—!”

“Please!”

Darci heard Liza take a deep breath in. “Fine. I won’t tell anyone.”

Darci sniffled and felt an actual smile start to form on her lips. She filed away the night’s events in a little folder in the back of her brain, and pushed the folder into a stuffed filing cabinet labeled Secrets. But for some reason, when she stuffed the imaginary file into its filing cabinet, Darci didn’t feel it in her head; she felt it, like a rope tightening, in her gut.

Darci thought maybe she could last two more weeks before another break-down.

“The lights go out all around me, one last candle to keep out the night. And then the darkness surrounds me, I know I’m alive but I feel like I’ve died. And all that’s left is to accept that it’s over, my dreams ran like sand through the fists that I made. I try to keep warm, but I just grow colder. I feel like I’m slipping away. After all this has passed, I still will remain. After I’ve cried my last, there’ll be beauty from pain. Though it won’t be today, someday I’ll hope again, and there’ll be beauty from pain. You will bring beauty from my pain. My whole world is the pain inside me, the best I can do is just get through the day. When life before is only a memory, I wonder why GOD lets me walk through this place… And though I can’t understand why this happened, I know that I will when I look back someday and see how you’ve brought beauty from ashes and made me as gold purified through these flames. After all this has passed I still will remain. After I’ve cried my last, there’ll be beauty from pain. Though it won’t be today, someday I’ll hope again, and there’ll be beauty from pain. You will bring beauty from my pain. Here I am at the end of me, trying to hold to what I can’t see. I forgot how to hope, this night’s been so long. I cling to Your promise there will be a dawn. After all this has passed, I still will remain. After I’ve cried my last, there’ll be beauty from pain. Though it won’t be today, someday I’ll hope again, and there’ll be beauty from my pain. You will bring beauty from my pain.” Superchick

The quote is from the song Beauty from Pain by Superchick.

This story doesn’t have a happy ending because technically it hasn’t ended yet. I am currently on medication for clinical depression, but my dad is still lying to me like the asshole he is. “Liza” is still my best friend as well as my confidant, and she has always been there for me whether I have a break-down or a sleep-over. She and I have both joined a Bible Study group with some other friends to try and regain our faiths in GOD and CHRIST. This story is dedicated to “Liza”, for finally getting to her phone!

Oh yeah: the only name in here that has not been changed is that of my father’s mistress: Claudia. For some reason, I could not re-name that woman. My friends and I have dubbed her “She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” (creative, huh?) but for this story, her own name seemed evil enough for her character.

If you have depression or are just going through something hard and can relate to this story, please know that this story is also dedicated to you in hopes that you will find help, whether it is in a parent, a religious leader, or, like me, a friend. I hope you have someone to help you through everything, and I hope everything works out okay. HUGS!!!