Not Exactly What it Seems

She never ceased to amaze me and never in the ways I am expecting. After all of the stuff they had discussed and all of the fighting that went on, she walked away and pretended as if she was above it. As if she was better than everything that she had been taking for so long. And she was, I knew she was. There was so much more that she could have been doing, but she never had the chance. She was finally giving herself the chance. I couldn’t let her end that because she was frustrated with her parents. I knew I had to talk her down from that ledge or I would lose her forever. I couldn’t let her go; I loved her too much.

Maybe I didn’t want it all to end like that. I knew that there were actually people who cared about me-the real me- and they would have been so disappointed if I gave up like that. With Hayden’s help, I gathered enough courage to go back to the party and act as if nothing was wrong. Act as I had been doing my whole life. There was nothing new with that and I just had to trust that I would find a way out with him at my side.

I wouldn’t talk to my parents the entire night. They would come up to me as if nothing was wrong just to save face, but I would walk away. I was not going to pretend like I wasn’t mad at them. I may have been pretending that nothing was wrong, but I was not about to pretend that we had such a loving relationship. I was dying on the inside because they felt like I would just brush it off because people were around. What a fake family we are.

“You know sweetie,” Hayden whispered in my ear, “I never did get to tell you how beautiful you look tonight.” He was the only one that knew how to make me blush. And it wasn’t even from the compliment- merely the name.

I had been called many pet names, but sweetie was never one of them. It seemed so intimate and precious, none of my relationships had been like that. Hayden knew how to make me feel like the most important person in the world and he wasn’t even trying.

“Hayden, you’re judgment is so very clouded,” was all I could say. He grinned and kissed me with a tenderness that left me breathless.

I was able to stay away from my parents for the rest of the trip and I was even able to get two random guys on the plane to switch seats with me and Hayden so that we didn’t have to be close to my parents. They were not very happy about that, but I could not have cared less.

The entire drive back home, they yelled at me for being disrespectful and for making things so much worse than they needed to be, but I didn’t listen. Hayden and I were inconspicuously listening to my iPod. It might have seemed like a bratty thing to do, I may have seemed like the most ungrateful daughter- I really didn’t care. There was nothing they could say that would make things okay. There was no way I would ever be able to look at them and see a warm and loving family. It was broken and there was no way to fix it. Ever.

Hayden, well, he knew that there was no fixing the family. He knew that there had been a perfect family once, but that was completely destroyed. I knew that there was never really a perfect family, just the façade that everyone saw. When I was younger, I felt like we were the perfect family, I fell for the façade, I thought that I had everything. When I was younger, there was nothing that I wanted and nothing that I needed because that façade was so imbedded into my brain, into my life. What was I thinking though, really? Did I really believe that everything would be okay and that, in the end, everything would make sense? I knew that it never made sense but I didn’t care because I trusted my parents. Why had I trusted my parents? Was I really stupid enough to believe in a fairytale ending?

For the longest time, everything I knew was every lie they fed to me, but I felt like that was all I needed. They gave me everything and when I was younger, I believed that all the pretty things made my life. I was never one of the shallow rich kids, but I thought that having nice things made life easier. What I didn’t realize was that there was so much that my parents had left out when they were planning my life.

Hayden looked at me like I really mattered, like the stupid life didn’t matter, but it was only me that mattered. Am I stupid to believe him or was I stupid to believe my parents for so long? Did he really want to stay by my side while everything falls apart or was he going to get fed up with my life? I didn’t want him to leave, but I didn’t want him to stay either. I loved him with all of my heart, but I wasn’t the right girl for him. He deserved a simple girl that didn’t have so many secrets, so much crap going on in her life. He deserved someone like Nathanial found, except one that wasn’t famous. Maybe a cute little rocker chick he can meet at a concert, he would be happy with someone like that. She would be simple, maybe have some family troubles, but her world would be built for him. She could love him without wondering what her other half would think of him.

What would Felicity think of Hayden? When I was America’s daughter, would he be someone I looked down on because he didn’t have the things that I had or the fame that made Felicity the girl everyone knew? What would I say to him when I was in the public eye?

He thought I was perfect, but I knew he was lying. I was not perfect and I had never felt perfect, even when I bought into my double life. I always knew that there was something missing in my life, but did Hayden really understand that? Was he willing to understand my twisted life or was he going to get too deep and then decide he wasn’t able to handle it? He was the greatest guy I had ever met, but at the same time he was just a teenager and shouldn’t have had to deal with my life.

There was nothing simple about me and though there was something to be said about complexity, he shouldn’t have to be pulled into my complexity because there was nothing good about it. I hated doubting him, but I had to in order to be fair to him. It wasn’t fair that I constantly took him from his life just so that I would have someone to keep me grounded and sane throughout everything I was being put through. What about his needs? He was so willing to give up everything so that I was happy and I hated the fact that I took it for granted. He was real and he was there and that was all I wanted, yet I was so desperate to keep him with me at all times.

My thoughts were confusing me and I didn’t know where they were leading, but I knew that it was not a good place. Was I really contemplating breaking up with him? Was I willing to give him up so that he could find a better life with some other girl? I needed him and I loved him, but I wanted him happy and I was convinced that I was the last person that could make him happy. A girl with normal problems would make him so much happier.