"Waiter, refill," I said again, my eyes droopy and my him wobbling. Each time I felt like tears were going to fill my eyes, I'd order a refill which was why I was on my 6th glass and the tears didn't want to go back. I had the classic sob story. My mum was a model and actor back in the day and would wake up sometimes as early as 4am to do her hair and makeup and press her dresses. She had to look like she just stepped off the runway at all times. Then, she got pregnant with a child. That child was me. She couldn't be model thin during pregnancy and had to gain a few kilos.
A few kilos turned into over 100% her original weight. She went from weighing 45kg to weighing 110 kilos. When I slid out of her vagina, her first question was: "How long until I can lose all this weight?"
She hasn't even held me when she called her personal trainer. She worked out so much that she had postpartum hemorrhage and bled so bad she almost died. That was the beginning of the hatred between her and I. I was a colicky baby and I cried for hours at a time. She tried to take me to an orphanage repeatedly but couldn't risk being recognized. The worst part was when my hair started growing in. That was when she realized that I had my father's hair. A full afro and not the cute curly hair she got from her parents being mixed and my skin was a bit lighter than hers.
I grew up knowing that my mum wouldn't play with me like other kids. She had to have lipo to take off the weight and three years later, she had finally gotten back her body. She had used me to improve her public image for years and took me to her shoots and carried me around in a tiny onesie to show me off even when she knew I was so susceptible to cold. I caught colds very often and she would dump me with the nanny to recover and when I had recovered, we'd repeat the same cycle over and over.
I had come to terms with the fact that my mum didn't love me but that my dad loved me enough for the both of them. Then, when I was 16, tragedy struck. My dad died in an automobile accident. A head-on collision with a truck. He died in the spot. I cried for days and days. Then, my mum married Afton. He brouht with him a daughter, 19 and fresh out of high school. Her name was Sam. My mum threw away all my father's pictures because it was "messing up the order of the house and bringing back pesky memories." She didn't attend his funeral because it was disrespectful to Afton. She wanted to have him buried even when he'd always said he wanted to be cremated.
I had paid for the cremation by working at a restaurant and by taking off jobs around the neighborhood. Then, it came time for my college applications. She and Afton had agreed in my absence to send me to a private and elite college. The catch: the shook didn't allow the students to leave until the programme of study was completed.
I studied anesthesiology and became a professional anesthesiologist. I started paving the way for myself. I had been certified at 22 and started working at the hospital the school management also run almost immediately. The hospital was elite too and the clientele was mostly government officials and the rich of the rich. The pay was seven figures for an anesthesiologist and I was top of my class. The hospital also provided accomodation and food. There was a generous year end bonus and a clothing allowance and connections. What more could a girl want?
I had been working for years and I was very happy. Then, my lawyer had called. My mum had taken all the money in my trust fund to fund a dream that Sam had and lost everything. It hadn't been a lot compared to what I made in the hospital but she didn't even know that. She didn't know what I was doing after college. She didn't know I was making bag and honestly, that was the worst part. What if I had been starving? Would she have taken the money that I would've use to survive to find a "dream business" about making towel tapes. What he fuck even was that?
Then, all the holidays I hadn't been taking for three years hadbeen accumulating with extra pay. I decided to go home for ONE holiday and I was drinking in a bar. My mum had sold my father's house and used my father's ashes to plant flowers for Afton's house because he wanted flowers. When I barged into Afton's room to confront him, he tried to rape me. My mother, barging in to see his body pressing me on the bed, slapped me and told me that my whole life was a lie. Actually, my dad has been killed by her and Afton and the money I had been sending for the high-end funeral home to store the ashes had been used by her to smear my father's reputation postmortem.
That was why I was in a bar drinking my sorrows away. I would get my revenge. Being soft hearted had never helped anyone. Look at me. I didn't compete with Sam for anything but she had used my trust fund to open a dead end. Did my mother really think that it was her funding her lifestyle? I had funded her lifestyle by putting money in her account every month. 40% of my salary went into the account and she didn't even notice.
My revenge would be spectacular. Then, I would taste living life for me by myself.