Silent Daughter 1: Taken
liberal arts college instead, they didn't even put up a fight. They didn't care anymore. Besides, college was primarily supposed to be a place for me to meet a man after all. For them, it doesn’t matter what I majored in, but for me to attend an Ivy League school would have been appreciated. It sounds good. And there are suitable bachelors gracing the campus with their presence.
    Then again, my choice for a different school was a good fit to the overall “challenging personality” that I allegedly inherited from my troublemaker grandmother.
    It’s okay. It has its place. Even having a bad seed in the family is seen as an accessory in their world. I am that bad seed. The weird outcast that no one understands and no one cares for. Like an adopted puppy, I am taken care of just enough, but always know that I don't belong. I have become invisible to them.
    They don't have to show me. I don't need their dismissal to feel out of place.
    All my life, I have felt that there is something profoundly missing for me. I know that I am yearning for something, but I still cannot put my finger on it. All I know is that I don’t fit in. I am not even hurt by the fact that my family has become alien to me and vice versa.
    It’s all the worse that I had to move back in with them. No one is happy about this arrangement, and I don’t know who’s hoping more for me to get out of here as soon as possible: me or my parents.
    Our house is a location for parties, receptions, and dinners all the time, but very few are as big as today’s event. I am standing among all these people, shaking hands, greeting everybody I have to greet until it finally gets crowded enough for me to become an irrelevant factor at this party. The redundant daughter that some people don’t even know about.
    I grab my glass of champagne, the third of the day already, and flee to the garden, staring off into space in an attempt to avoid further conversation.
    I hate social events. I hate groups,and I hate socializing. In a way, I am perfectly fine with just mysel f — and in a different way I am not. Not at all.
    Happiness is such a mystery to me.
    There are few things that make me smile, and some of them scare the hell out of me.
    I can still feel the restraints around my ankles when I walk. The places where the rope cut deep into my flesh. I didn't do anything to help my tortured skin, and I am not trying to hide it. No one will notice anyway. The faint, red lines that circle my ankles just above my feet. They burn with every step as the pantyhose rubs against them.
    They make me smile. Pain makes me smile.
    Like many others, this one is self-induced. A reminder of the darkest corners my mind wanders off to when I am by myself. When I touch myself to the thought of being tied up, choked and raped by a stranger.
    I am always alone with these thoughts. I am the one who ties my ankles, spreading my legs as far as I can and tying them to the bedposts to restrain myself while another piece of rope goes around my neck, only choking myself enough to feel it but never bad enough to leave marks there. I still have to be careful, especially when I have to look presentable for my sister’s engagement party. But if it were up to me, there would be marks around my neck as well. I cherish bruises, even if I have to inflect them myself.  
    My family is right to keep me at an emotional distance.
    There is obviously something wrong with me.
    Our house is filling up with more and more people. I decide to fetch myself another drink, determined not to engage in any small talk or even eye contact with anybody as I make my way to the bar.
    A swarm of faces crosses my path, old and young, strange and familiar. I don't care for any of them. I see my parents standing close to the entrance of the parlor, where they positioned themselves to greet every single guest who enters.
    They are talking to a man I have never seen before. Dark and tall, with black hair and broad shoulders beneath his

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