Break This Awkward Silence
That's if you've still got one that's left
After Alex eventually convinced Brian to go home she still couldn't sleep. Instead she sat in the rocking chair in the corner of Gracie's room and watched her daughter sleep.
As she watched her little chest rise and fall Alex replayed the day that her relationship with her parents went down in flames.
Five years ago Alex had more than excepted her status as the black sheep of the family, she had embraced it.
She had cut her naturally black hair into a blunt bob with choppy layers and sweeping side bangs, it's soft curl had been flattened with straightening irons. Her ears had three more holes in each than was allowed. The sun kissed skin of her right shoulder had been defaced with a portrait of Marilyn Monroe. She listened to music she wasn't supposed to, she wore clothes that girls like her shouldn't wear but worst of all she had fallen in love with the wrong boy.
Her mother had called it a faze. Alex called it an awakening.
All her life she had been the good girl, she did her homework, never got into trouble at school, obeyed her parents and went to church every Sunday. The perfect teenager, if one existed. But deep down it wasn't enough for Alex, she was living someone else's life.
Then Johnny, Matt, Val, Zacky, Jimmy and Brian came along. When Alex was with them she could be herself, she could do the things she wanted to do and say the things she wanted to say. In one of his cheesier moments Brian had said that it had been like watching a caterpillar turn into a beautiful butterfly.
When Brian had eventually asked her out Alex could not have been more excited, until it came to telling her parents. She got a feeling that if they knew that their daughter was going out with an older, tattooed, pierced, guitar playing boy they would not be pleased. So she had kept their relationship a secret for the first six months until her parents had spotted them at the mall together one afternoon that Alex really should have been doing something much more productive and after that she was grounded for the first time in her life, at eighteen-years-old.
Two years later Alex was long gone from her parent's house and had set up home with Brian in a little apartment off Pacific Coast Highway, living in sin as an unmarried couple. Although they only lived twenty minutes apart Alex very rarely spoke to her parents, never mind saw them. When she found out she was pregnant she had an overwhelming urge to tell her mom and dad, that they'd be ecstatic with the news of a grandchild.
The afternoon Alex had decided to pay them a visit was two days after her twelve-week scan, Brian was at an important meeting with label people so she was alone. Clutching the sonogram pictures in her hand and the makings of a baby bump pressing against the cotton of her shirt she knocked on the familiar white door.
Even now, almost three years after the fact, Alex could see the looks cross her mother's face. Curiosity, surprise, wonder and disgust. In the blink of an eye. Her eyes had raked over her daughter's body, lingering on the increase in ink on her arm, the lack of metal on her left hand, the black and white film in her right, and finally on the slight protrusion of her stomach.
Then the words came. Embarrassment, slut, whore, disgrace.
Hot tears burned down her cheeks as Alex watched Gracie sleep peacefully.
How could a mother feel that way about her own daughter?
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As she watched her little chest rise and fall Alex replayed the day that her relationship with her parents went down in flames.
Five years ago Alex had more than excepted her status as the black sheep of the family, she had embraced it.
She had cut her naturally black hair into a blunt bob with choppy layers and sweeping side bangs, it's soft curl had been flattened with straightening irons. Her ears had three more holes in each than was allowed. The sun kissed skin of her right shoulder had been defaced with a portrait of Marilyn Monroe. She listened to music she wasn't supposed to, she wore clothes that girls like her shouldn't wear but worst of all she had fallen in love with the wrong boy.
Her mother had called it a faze. Alex called it an awakening.
All her life she had been the good girl, she did her homework, never got into trouble at school, obeyed her parents and went to church every Sunday. The perfect teenager, if one existed. But deep down it wasn't enough for Alex, she was living someone else's life.
Then Johnny, Matt, Val, Zacky, Jimmy and Brian came along. When Alex was with them she could be herself, she could do the things she wanted to do and say the things she wanted to say. In one of his cheesier moments Brian had said that it had been like watching a caterpillar turn into a beautiful butterfly.
When Brian had eventually asked her out Alex could not have been more excited, until it came to telling her parents. She got a feeling that if they knew that their daughter was going out with an older, tattooed, pierced, guitar playing boy they would not be pleased. So she had kept their relationship a secret for the first six months until her parents had spotted them at the mall together one afternoon that Alex really should have been doing something much more productive and after that she was grounded for the first time in her life, at eighteen-years-old.
Two years later Alex was long gone from her parent's house and had set up home with Brian in a little apartment off Pacific Coast Highway, living in sin as an unmarried couple. Although they only lived twenty minutes apart Alex very rarely spoke to her parents, never mind saw them. When she found out she was pregnant she had an overwhelming urge to tell her mom and dad, that they'd be ecstatic with the news of a grandchild.
The afternoon Alex had decided to pay them a visit was two days after her twelve-week scan, Brian was at an important meeting with label people so she was alone. Clutching the sonogram pictures in her hand and the makings of a baby bump pressing against the cotton of her shirt she knocked on the familiar white door.
Even now, almost three years after the fact, Alex could see the looks cross her mother's face. Curiosity, surprise, wonder and disgust. In the blink of an eye. Her eyes had raked over her daughter's body, lingering on the increase in ink on her arm, the lack of metal on her left hand, the black and white film in her right, and finally on the slight protrusion of her stomach.
Then the words came. Embarrassment, slut, whore, disgrace.
Hot tears burned down her cheeks as Alex watched Gracie sleep peacefully.
How could a mother feel that way about her own daughter?
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