The first thing I was told was to be careful of the men in my life that I trusted. The second was that I would face heartache. The third was two people I trusted were keeping a life altering secret from me. The fourth, I would move hundreds of miles away from my hometown in Oregon in the near future. The fifth on was the most crushing, apparently my life would change after I turned twenty-one, and she said I was to make the most of the time I had left. As if it wasn’t bad enough already, she said it in an almost ominous tone that made it sound sinister and all negative, not a happy, excited one, too.
Now, like I’ve said, I’m definitely what you’d call a sceptic about shit like this. I don’t believe in ghosts, I don’t believe in life after death, and I don’t believe in people being able to see our futures. There’s just nothing in me that finds any of it scientifically feasible, so I leave it as a matter of personal choice if people take any of that stuff seriously or not. Obviously, my feelings have changed about that now seeing as how I was picturing me being a ghost and shit, but at the time no.
Regardless, it weighed on my mind, but I didn’t truly believe it and went on just living life like I normally did. I had a boyfriend named Eric who I’d known since I was middle school. He was the boy next door type of guy, and the good guy that everyone loved. We got along well and had been dating for six months by then, and it felt like it was heading for something serious. I wasn’t in love, but maybe I could have gotten to that stage with him. Well, so I thought at the time.
One night, a month after the party, I came home from the library and overheard my parents arguing. This was a big deal and caught my attention because they tended to be emotionless people – ones that had pushed me all my life, but gave nothing back emotionally or physically.
Examples of that were: at age two they put me into an advanced learning pre-school. We did our alphabet, math, we learned scientific things – at age freaking two. After that, my parents hired a team of homeschool teachers who came over every day and worked with me on an advanced learning curriculum. Is that possible? If you have money, hell yes it is.
My parents were both leading surgeons in a hospital in Portland that catered to rich people – celebrities, famous business moguls, the world’s elite. They pioneered groundbreaking plastic surgeries and were paid huge amounts for it. Because of that of course they had the money to put their kindergarten daughter through an education at home that was years ahead of where she was meant to be.
By age eight I was in middle school. Age fifteen I graduated from high school and started college at home. Before I started, I’d decided to go into nursing, which was a huge disappointment to them. I just didn’t have the mind to perform surgeries like my parents. Regardless, I stood strong, and in my second year of college I began going to classes on campus.
After school I’d go to the hospital, and I’d have to sit in surgeries and consultations with one of them. That’s how it continued until I was at the stage where I could physically assist them during procedures.
I was only four months away from my twentieth birthday when I graduated and was immediately employed by my parents at the hospital they worked at. It might sound like a caring move by then, but more than likely they organized it because they were hoping I’d decide to go back and study to become what they were, aka medical robots fixated on their next paychecks.
Sound harsh? So does controlling your daughter’s life to the point that the only friends she had were ones that you’d chosen for her. People you’d deemed ‘suitable’ to socialize with your child, people who wouldn’t hinder the plan you had for them… basically, my whole life had been controlled by them to that point.
That’s why I was at that party. Amber was on the approved list, my ‘best friend’ since I could walk, and my parents had no idea how far away she was from what they thought. She wasn’t the innocent girl she made herself out to be, the one who wore the matching twin set and who was afraid of her own shadow. Amber had a dark side to her that she released through alcohol and holding parties when her parents were out of town. She was my best friend because she was the only person I was allowed to get close to until I started dating Eric.