Unwanted

The first thing Emily felt was the wind.

It tore through her hair and slipped beneath her clothes, cold enough to make her shiver. Below her, the ocean was almost completely black, broken only by faint strips of silver where the moonlight touched the restless waves.

She stood at the edge of the cliff, staring down.

Crying.

Aching.

Betrayed.

Humiliated.

There was no way out anymore.

No apology could undo what had happened. No words could erase the laughter, the whispers, the way people had looked at her.

This humiliation was the last thing she could bear.

Emily closed her eyes.

One tear slipped down her cheek.

Then she took one step forward.

For a heartbeat, there was nothing beneath her.

Then she was falling.

The wind screamed around her as the cliff disappeared above.

They say your life flashes before your eyes when you're close to death.

Emily's didn't begin with the worst day of her life.

It began much earlier.

It began when she was four years old.

She remembered the flat first.

The faded curtains.

The small kitchen.

The smell of her father's work clothes when he came home.

And the table.

Emily had been sitting beneath it, too frightened to move.

Her tiny wrists were fastened to one of the table legs with handcuffs.

She didn't understand why her mother had done it.

She only knew the metal hurt.

"Mommy?"

Her mother's footsteps moved around the apartment.

Emily looked up at her.

"Mommy, I want Daddy."

Her mother didn't answer.

She was packing.

Clothes disappeared into a suitcase. Drawers were emptied. Emily watched her mother move through the room as though she were somewhere else entirely.

"Mommy?"

Nothing.

Emily began to cry.

Her mother finally looked at her.

For one brief moment, their eyes met.

There was no tenderness there.

No regret.

Only a coldness a four-year-old child couldn't understand.

"Your father will be home soon."

"Can I go with you?"

Her mother stopped.

Emily smiled through her tears.

"Please?"

Her mother looked away.

That was the moment Emily learned something children should never have to learn.

Sometimes the person you love most can leave you without looking back.

The front door opened.

Then closed.

Emily listened to her mother's footsteps disappear down the hallway.

She waited.

Minutes passed.

Then an hour.

Eventually, the apartment became completely silent.

Emily pulled against the handcuffs until her wrists turned red.

"Mommy?"

No answer.

"Daddy?"

Nothing.

She didn't know that her mother had left with another man.

She didn't understand betrayal.

She didn't understand abandonment.

She only knew that she was four years old, alone in a quiet apartment, waiting for someone to come back.

And that was where it started.

The fear.

The loneliness.

The feeling that love was something people could promise you in the morning and take away before nightfall.

Emily would spend years trying to prove that she was worth staying for.

Years trying to become someone nobody could abandon.

She would learn that pain could wear many faces.

She would learn that humiliation could cut deeper than any knife.

And she would learn that sometimes the people who promised to protect you were the ones you needed protection from.

But she wouldn't remember any of that as she fell.

All she could remember was being four years old.

Waiting.

Waiting for her father to come home.

Waiting for her mother to return.

Waiting for someone to choose her.

And, for the first time in her life, Emily stopped waiting.