★ {ELIZA ASHDOWN} ★ D3 [FIN]

Living souls around me
They don't see
Just staring, closed faces
Fake a smile

★ { n a m e } eliza laine ashdown
★ { a g e } eighteen
★ { g e n d e r } female
★ { l o c a t i o n } district three
★ { s e x u a l i t y } heterosexual

Fake a smile
But they don't speak
Only demanding the right numbers
Of me, breaking into pieces
I'm breaking into pieces

★ { a p p e a r a n c e }

I’m not used to crying – the heavy aching in the back of my throat, that stupid quivering of my chin and the annoying way my nose keeps running no matter how many times I swipe at it with the back of my sleeve – every aspect of it is foreign to me, but I welcome it. It feels real, nothing like the thick tumble of mercury red waves down my back and bottle-glass blue eyes, always crinkled at the edges to accommodate my usual cookie-cutter perfect smile. The mirror seems to mock me - plump lips, dainty nose, narrow face, that “oh-so endearing” dimple in my cheek– I look like a fucking Barbie doll, and all of it just screams fake, fake, fake, FAKE.

But I at least have the little things, the ones that hinder perfection. Like the bags beneath my eyes, dark and prominent and real, that my friends believe are products of staying up too late doing homework, even though my grades are average and homework is the least of my worries when my parents are constantly a hair away from strangling each other to death just outside my bedroom door. And then there are the patchwork bruises along my arms, my legs, sometimes even my face that I hide with long sleeves and blatant lies, often contributing them to my clumsiness while my friends just smile and laugh – Eliza, the girl born with two left feet and butter for fingers, what a klutz she is. Their amusement, their good-humored teasing, it sends daggers into my heart and shreds it to pieces every time, but my pseudo-grin never leaves. And for a long time I thought it never would, but this...this is different.

This is Eliza Laine Ashdown in her truest form, huddled in the space between the toilet and the side of the tub with her arms wrapped around her knees and face buried into her hands, shoulders heaving and shaking with each fresh wave of tears as she grits her teeth and squeezes her eyes tightly shut against the despair rising up inside of her, her paper-thin masquerade falling apart at the seams. Her parents are down the hall in the kitchen, screaming obscenities and accusations and all manner of hateful things while their daughter sits alone in the bathroom, too consumed in their argument to hear her (they never do) while she nurses the new layer of bruises that pattern her skin from trying in vain to stop them. This is her without the mask, the lies, a paper girl in a paper house in a paper world, a porcelain doll whose shell has shattered.

Real.

My world is turning too fast
And I can't get off this spin
I'm moving somewhere I don't want
But all I do is fake a smile

★ { p e r s o n a l i t y }

I have quite a lot of friends. Or, the fake Eliza Ashdown (the one who laughs at every joke and smiles at every stranger, who’s always ready to lend a helping hand – whether it be doing your homework for you or just letting you stomp all over her, whatever you'd like.) does. That Eliza is a social butterfly, not quite the queen bee but pretty damn far up there on the social ladder. Endlessly kind and impossibly selfless, people say she’s almost too good to be true. And she is, mind you. When people say that the Ashdown girl can’t possibly be the darling little angel she pretends to be, they don’t know how right they are.

I hate that Eliza. She keeps the real her locked away, fearing that if the she were to ever claw its way to her carefully crafted surface, the consequences would tear her apart from the inside out. And it most definitely would. The mask I’ve built up over the years, the fabricated Eliza that everyone knows and loves, is the only thing that keeps me together now. What would happen, if people knew? What would happen if my mask were to crack? They’d see the true Eliza, the one who’s too much of a wreck to pull herself together, the one with the with the broken smile and hollow eyes, bruises along her skin and tears on her cheeks. They’d take me away, if the knew the truth – they’d stuff me in the nearest community home and lock me away, and I would crumble away into nothing more than a memory. That can’t happen to me - not me. I won’t let it.

So I’ll just keep on smiling, keep on being the Eliza that everyone thinks me to be, because they can’t know. People like me – boys want me, girls want to be me – and it’s really incredible how many people try to worm their way onto my rather extensive list of besties (Ripred, how I despise that word), not that I try to stop them. I’m a doormat, see, but if that’s what it takes to keep people from suspecting that all is not quite right with the Ashdown girl, then I’ll be the nicest damn doormat I can be. I’ll just do what I do and be everyone’s best friend and confidant, the all-smiles girl who couldn’t possibly have anything to hide with how open and caring she is, who’s always laughing in the halls at school with the girls and joking around in class with the guys. Who wouldn’t want to be friends with a girl like her? That girl’s got it made, it seems. Her life must be perfect.

But people need to be careful what they wish for.

It's so cold around me
I hurry to the next stop
I'm waiting, for something
For someone, to steer me back to my life

★ { h i s t o r y }

My parents didn’t fight as much when I was little – bickered, yes, but such little skirmishes didn’t involve a slap in the face like they often do now. I suppose my childhood was…fine, as far as childhoods go. I don’t have a particularly tragic past, just a few pleasant years of bedtime stories and days spent playing on the old tire swing in the back yard while my father pushed and my mother watched on. Summer days spent sitting outside on the porch with my favorite dolls, a childhood full of smiles and hugs and I love you’s that I thought would last forever. But they didn’t.

Things changed. My parents fight over every little thing, blaming each other for each mistake and wrong choice even when it was beyond their control, blaming me for some. When I wake up, they’re fighting. When I go to school, they’re fighting. When I come home, they’re fighting. And when I got to bed? Fighting, fighting fighting. My childhood ended the day my father first struck me, hard across the mouth, when he’d had enough of me trying to play peacemaker. I tried, I really did, to stop them – to reason with them and calm them down. But that one slap from my father turned into two, then three, and when my mother decided to join the party I kind of lost count.

It didn’t take long to learn to not interfere, to keep my mouth shut and stay on the sidelines where I belong. I don’t let them know how much it hurts me - I don’t let anyone know - because they’re still my parents and I can’t bring myself to hate them for what they do to me, and no matter what happens all those I love you’s will always last forever for me.

Steer me back to my life
My world is turning too fast
And I can't get off this spin
I'm moving somewhere I don't want

★ { o t h e r } ★

★ { f a c e } ashlyn pearce
★ { p l o t s } stare's league of dreamers
★ { s o n g } fake a smile by liv kristine
★ { c o d e } oDair