Laura
The walk down the path seemed to take hours as Laura reflected on her twenty five years in the world. When she woke in the morning she decided that, after her parents left for work, she would take one last walk through the park before she would get her father’s gun out of the safe and end the pain.
She left the house towards Spring Grove Park, past the neighbor’s lawn that was never well-manicured, and Laura was finally empty of emotions, recalling simple things like her days in grade school. It seemed to be some of the earliest memories she could recall when her mother never made any time to be with her, and Laura was left to a life with her father. In her head came the memory of her trying to learn math while he was showing her flash cards. She didn’t like math, but that didn’t matter to him, and with every error came comments of how stupid she was, how she never tried, and her constant feeling of disappointment in pleasing him.
She tried to please him all these years, but it was never good enough.
Report cards would come home, usually B’s and C’s. Laura would fear the repercussions when her father looked at them, inevitably more comments of her stupidity would come from his mouth, more talk of how she wouldn’t amount to anything when she grew up, and more being sent to her room to study instead of play with her friends.
Her father never physically hit her, but every comment for twenty five years felt like a punch to the head.
She never wanted this day to come, but the thoughts had been bubbling to the surface for years. This morning would be the last time Laura would want to hear him. She woke up wondering how she ended up here, twenty-five, living at home, sleeping in the room that held so many of her father’s dreams of her future, many still hanging on the wall or standing, dusty on the dresser. There was the soccer trophy from when she was eight years old, a “participant” medal she was awarded when she was in track, a picture of her dressed in full, pee-wee football gear, and a family picture from Halloween with her looking all the part of a firefighter.
The history of her dreams were also in the room, only most of those dreams died years ago. On the wall hung a poster of Taylor Swift, there was a picture of the guitar her parents would never get her for Christmas, and dust layered the top of the picture frame that held her prom photo with Zach propped up on her dresser. Laura loved Zach, or at least the thought of Zach, who seemed to have his life together. He was always the lead actor in the school drama productions, and the last time she saw him, Zach was on TV as a contestant on a singing show.
It was no wonder she could never please her father, nor be good enough. In the end she could never make his dreams come true.