Dear Diary: Living with Natalie

By Eloise

TW: Emotional/ physical abuse

Dear Diary,

How do you go to school when your mum keeps crying and your dad won’t stop yelling?

It always starts the same way. I come in from school and sit on the sofa, scrolling on my phone, watching random videos, and then mum comes in. She’s been cleaning all day, and she’s usually got her hair tied up in a bun.

She asks me how school was today. I say it was fine. She finishes her jobs; I sit on the sofa.

Dad walks in. He wears his suit and tie. He walks upstairs. Mum makes dinner.

We eat dinner. Nobody talks, and I eat slowly, chewing each mouthful thoroughly before I swallow, lumps clumping and sitting on the back of my tonsils. I watch my mum. She’s frowning with her eyes, but her lips paint a beautiful, unnatural smile. My dad eats loudly.

He doesn’t like the onions my mum has used. She tells him they add flavour, and he drops his fork. My stomach sinks as his fist hits the table. I’m excused; I crawl up the stairs. I wait for their words to hit the top of the staircase and listen for the tears afterwards.

Shouting, and then silence. Often, my dad hugs her afterwards. I wait for voices again before I hide in my room.

The next day, I wake up to stretched smiles and tired eyes.

By the time I get into school, I’m ready. I spend hours perfecting my face, painting a happiness upon my cheeks and lips. I get a uniform card as soon as I get in, but I collect them; I have a locker full of pink uniform cards. I place it next to the rest and find my friends.

Ella, Meadow, Freda and Hazel sit on the bottom of the technology stairs, and I find my place next to Hazel. She’s drawing a picture of a dragon blowing fire at a castle. It’s going to be in oil pastels, she says to me.

I’m not really listening until I hear Freda talking about some girl who has been annoying her in class.

“-and then she impersonated the teacher, saying he was stupid. Honestly, she keeps disrupting my lessons, and I’m so sick of it. I wish she would be sent to timeout,” Freda says, scowling. I ask her what this girl’s name is, and she says Daisy.

In my next class, we are introduced to a new student, and I beckon her to come sit beside me. She has long, ragged brown hair and deep blue eyes, combined with a black rucksack that looks exactly like the one I have.

Some boy opposite us says he wants to fight her after school. She says to him she doesn’t care, she knows how to fight, she’s been fighting for her mum since she was seven.

She tosses her hair and offers me gum. I take some and ask for her name.

“Daisy,” she says.

“Nat,” I respond.

I walk around with Daisy at breaktime and meet up with my friends later at lunch. As soon as Ella leaves the table to get herself a cookie, Freda starts talking about how she’s been really quiet recently and if anything has been happening that we know of.

I think to myself, I’ve been really quiet recently, and nobody has asked me if I’m doing okay, but when Ella’s quiet, let’s all talk about her.

Hazel mentions some milkshake incident on the way home from school, and by the time she finishes, Ella’s back at the table with a chocolate cookie that will likely end up all over her face by the time she’s finished it.

That’s the thing with Ella, she wears scrunchies in plaits in her hair, and she doesn’t shorten her skirt or hitch her tie up like the rest of us. She doesn’t wear makeup; she wears purple glasses and often has no idea why people are mad at her. It’s like she doesn’t care about all the things you’re supposed to do to stop people from being mean to you.

Ella’s in my next class, so we walk together. She tells me that she started reading another book yesterday, and talks incessantly until Daisy sits next to me and tells her to shut up.

Daisy calls her a nerd and steals one of her pens, asking me, “Should we move away? She’s so annoying.”

I look at Ella, and she looks crestfallen. She looks up at me, and I don’t know what to say to either of them, so I just shrug.

“She’s not bothering me. Anyway, have you seen Michael’s trainers?” I reply and let Daisy talk about this guy she thought was fit when she met him earlier. I let Ella listen to the lesson and pull the same face my mum does at the dinner table.

I feel bad, but I can’t look after her too.

Dear Diary,

Dad moved out today. He and Mum have decided to separate temporarily.

I do my make-up and perfect my hair before I leave the house.

Daisy meets me by the front gates of school, and I tell her my dad moved out.

She says, “Good riddance.”

I say, “Good riddance,” and we laugh, walking through the front gates of school.