★ {SHIVANI SERAFINO} ★ D9 [WIP]

★ { n a m e } shivani edana serafino
★ { a g e } eighteen
★ { g e n d e r } female
★ { l o c a t i o n } district nine
★ { s e x u a l i t y } heterosexual

I guess I'll keep on livin'
Even if this loves to die for
Cause your bags are packed and I ain't cryin'
Your walking out and I'm not tryin' to change your mind
Cause I was born to be...

I was six when I found out where the money came from.

Just picture it. A little girl, all honey-golden curls and rosy cheeks, her four foot nothing figure silhouetted within an open doorframe and big, bright hazel eyes peering into her parents’ bedroom, curious and a little scared. She’d only gone to investigate those funny noises that had woken her up from her sleep, ratty bunny slippers shuffling across the worn wooden floor of the hallway and tiny hands twisting the knob frantically because it sounded like someone was hurting mommy. But when she asked her mother if she should go get daddy – there’s a strange man in the bed, mommy, who is he? – the woman snapped at her to go to bed, Shiva, I’m working.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that the men that came creeping into the house after dark weren’t there to hurt my mother – quite the opposite - or that my father didn’t really even care enough to be angry at his wife for sleeping with other men for a few extra bucks. He didn’t care about much, actually – as long as he could afford to sit in front of the television and waste space all day long, he was more than happy. He didn’t mind that the word “whore” was in his daughter’s vocabulary long before “love” ever was, or that her childhood was one part left alone and two parts carelessness. I grew up on not much more than breadcrumbs and a poor education, in and out of school depending on the income (aka how often my mother could get a "customer" through her bedroom door), and had a grand total of roughly zero friends as a result. Kids used to tell me it was a wonder I could spell my own name.

I know now, though, and I taught myself. “S” is for starvation, for the countless nights I spent curled inward on myself and the pain, wondering how something so empty could hurt so much. “H” is for hopelessness, not happiness, ‘cause I’m all too familiar with exactly the way the sky bends just before it breaks and not familiar enough with how sunshine feels on skin after it's been storming for a while. “I” is for idiot, since my life is nothing but a series of dumb mistakes and missed chances as a result of my own stupidity. “V” is for violence, seeing as I’d sooner give someone a black eye than an apology. “A” is for alone, ‘cause that’s always how I end up at some point. “N” is for neglectful, even though that actually describes my parents more than myself, and “I” is for impulsive, ‘cause I’m a stick of TNT lit from both ends, not really one to sit around and think before throwing myself into a situation I may not be able to get myself out of. It ties back to “idiot”.

S-H-I-V-A-N-I. Shivani. Seven letters that make up a girl who grew up in a world that never really gave her a chance.

The baby girl without a chance
A victim of the circumstance
The one who oughta give up
But she's just to hard headed

Falling in love with Graham Colburn was the best and worst thing ever to happen to me in my entire life. I’d spent a long time trying my hardest to be left alone (it was the only way I knew how to be), steering clear of intimacy with a stubbornness as thick and unmovable as the walls I’d built up between myself and whoever got too close. Someone did get too close, though – came crashing through my walls with the same recklessness he was famous for. I tried to convince myself I hated him (he was a cocky bastard with a penchant for making worse decisions than I ever did), and I still haven’t quite decided whether or not I despise him or love him. I’ve never been all that good with figuring out exactly how I feel about some things. I’m more of an action person, more do than think, and maybe that’s why I was stupid enough to let him in. It felt right, though, and for a while I thought that maybe I could be happy.

We’d been dating for three months when I got pregnant.

It was a shock to my parents, of course. They knew I was reckless and didn’t give a damn about their authority, but I was seven when I matter-of-factly proclaimed to them that I, Shivani Edana Serafino, was never going to fall in love. Not just because I still thought boys had cooties back then, but because my parents had shown me that love was nothing more than being tied down to a person who didn’t care what you did or who you did when they weren’t looking, or even when you were looking. My mother slept with other men without even bothering to hide what she was doing, and instead of looking down and seeing what was going on right under his nose, my dad simply tilted his head back and downed whatever alcohol he’d managed to scrounge up using the money my mother earned by selling herself. I’d never seen him upset before, not until I told him and my mother both that I was having a kid.

It got nasty. My father even managed to unglue himself from his recliner long enough to tell me that I was a dumbass and how the hell are we supposed to afford to take care of another damn kid? My mother was outraged, called me selfish (fucking hypocrite), and in the end I ended up just kicking myself out. I don’t know exactly what point I was trying to prove, just that my dad was right when he called me a dumbass. Sixteen years old with no job, no home, and no common sense, apparently. Graham wouldn’t let me stay with him – funny, I didn’t know I was a secret – but he promised to help support me. He stole some of his parents money and managed to buy me an old, run-down pig sty of an apartment and came to visit every once in a while, bringing me the money he’d managed to rustle up from Ripred knows where. It was a long, horrible pregnancy – craving foods I couldn’t afford and throwing up the things I could, alone most of the time with pains that wouldn’t stop and no places that would hire me, ‘cause who wants a sixteen year old pregnant girl with a poor education?

I should have miscarried. I should have lost the baby, but I didn’t – it would’ve been a whole lot easier. I wouldn’t trade Seth for the world, though, not after I held him for the first time and he blinked his big blue eyes at me and gurgled curiously, reached a pudgy hand up to splay soft, tiny fingers across my cheek. He showed me what true, unconditional love really was. And it’s nothing like how I’d always imagined.

A single mom who works two jobs
Who loves her kid and never stops
With gentle hands and a heart of a fighter
I'm a survivor....

I don't believe in self-pity
It only brings you down
Maybe the queen of broken hearts
But I don't hide behind the crown
When the deck is stacked against me

★ { o t h e r }

★ { f a c e } victoria lee
★ { p l o t s } cici's colburn family plot
★ { s o n g } survivor by reba mcentire
★ { c o d e } oDair