#i 𝔴𝔞𝔫𝔱𝔢𝔡 people to be 𝔞𝔣𝔯𝔞𝔦𝔡 of 𝔥𝔲𝔯𝔱𝔦𝔫𝔤 me ❛ self paras ❜ | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thrill-cfthechase · 3 years

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feelin’ twenty-two

tw: pregnancy, death, alcoholism, verbal abuse, creepy men

november 4th was elliot’s least favorite day of the year. it was never a day of celebration in the chase household, instead a day of forced smiles and words left unspoken. it was her birthday, but it was never preceded by a ‘happy.’ it was a somber occasion, a day of mourning. when she was young the people in her neighborhood would get her a cake and little gifts to make up for the party that her father never threw, but she could tell they were behaving differently than they did on other kids’ birthdays. she was nearly four when she found out that her mother had died after giving birth to her, and while she didn’t understand death, she knew she had done something wrong. on her fourth birthday she threw a fit. it was a nasty tantrum that the chases and all of sunset park tried to forget, but elliot would always remember the first time she remembered thinking i want my mom.

she wasn’t sure how old she was when her father stopped acknowledging her birthday, but she could tell he knew what day it was because he was always even drunker and angrier than usual and able to find new and creative ways to get mad at her that didn’t involve the death of her mother. her brothers would take her out for ice cream and she would eat her mint chocolate chip in silence while they watched her, foreheads etched with concern. some years they saved up enough money to buy her a gift, but she would never play with it. she didn’t feel like it was deserved. on her seventh birthday her brothers took her mini-golfing and they let her win. it made her furious. they never took it easy on her ever, and the last thing she wanted was for them to coddle her. she just wanted it to be like every other day. that night she found her oldest brother, tucker, crying. he was fourteen and far too proud to let people see him cry, one of many traits of toxic masculinity that managed to make it’s way into elliot. she didn’t know what to do or how to comfort him so she said nothing and went to her room, staring at the cracks in the ceiling above her bed until the sun rose the next morning.

by her twelfth birthday tucker had moved out for college, and that year her other brother, forrest, had a soccer game in a town two hours away. she got a confetti cake from her next door neighbor, mrs. casey, and spent the evening doing homework in her room while she ignored the sound of her father yelling at the tv. elliot thought she was being sneaky when she tiptoed into the kitchen to get another slice of cake for dinner, that the tv would mask any noise she made despite the fact that the la-z boy her father sat at was only a few feet away from the fridge. when he turned to tell her to give him another beer she was so startled that she dropped her cake on the floor. as she sat on the cold tiles and cleaned up the mess she’d made the drumming of her heartbeat in her ears was almost loud enough to drown out the insults being thrown at her. when forrest got home that night he made a joke about elliot not saving him any cake. she told him to go fuck himself and he called her a bitch. she still hates funfetti.

the night of elliot’s sixteenth birthday was spent in a stolen dress at a hotel bar downtown with a man twice her age. she pretended to believe he wasn’t married and he pretended to believe she was twenty-one. they talked for a few hours, with elliot at her most charming and gracious in a way that people who really knew her would find laughable. she was still new to this type of con, the kind that required her to be a lady, but it worked, and she left with his watch, two credit cards, and four hundred in cash. she was gone by the time he realized anything was missing. when she got home her father seemed surprised to see her, like he hadn’t realized she wasn’t in her room all night. he had never seen elliot in makeup before, and the fact that he was now seeing it at two in the morning didn’t seem to sit right with him. “if your mother was here she’d be so disappointed in you. but she’s not here, is she?” it might have been the most tame thing he said to her, but felt like the cruelest by far. those were the words that echoed in her head as she lay awake in bed with gus, her fourteen year old dog, asleep on her chest. he weighed twenty-five pounds but the weight on her lungs didn’t bother her - the ability to breathe didn’t seem particularly important.

elliot’s twentieth birthday was a little over two months into her first year at gallagher. she didn’t intend on telling anyone, but it felt strange to be another year older in a place that still felt foreign to her. she confided in the two people she had grown to truly trust - ellie and kass. kass even baked her a cake, and something compelled elliot to give her a hug. she wasn’t usually physically affectionate, but no one had baked her a cake in years, and she couldn’t help feeling a little sentimental. as soon as kass left she had to scrape the “happy birthday” off the cake so that no one else could see it, but for the first time she could remember, she was a little glad it was her birthday.

elliot looked at her phone. november 4th, 2020, 12:01 a.m. the two hardest things for her to say were ‘i love you’ and ‘i’m sorry,’ but on this day she felt the need to say both to her brothers.

“hey, i know u don’t like it when i apologize on this day, but it’s my birthday and that’s what i want to say. i’m sorry u lost her. thanks for never telling me it was my fault. i love u,” she texted them.

it was only nine o’clock in seattle and she immediately got a text back from her oldest brother. “you’re going to dismiss everything i say, but i need you to know that i love you. raising you has made me the man i am today, which is cheesy but it’s true. it’s not fair to you that you had to deal with all of my mistakes, but i believe that learning from them is what will make me a good father. losing mom is probably the worst thing that ever happened to me, but getting you was the best.” a single tear fell down elliot’s cheek and she quickly wiped it away and buried her face in spruce’s fur. her phone buzzed again with another text from tucker. “well, mia is the best thing now, but you held the title for a long time. i love you smelliot.” she cracked a smile and sent back a quick “love u too fucker.” it took her a long time to fall asleep, although that wasn’t unusual for her, and she dreamed of memories that didn’t belong to her.

she didn’t have any expectations for her birthday, but she was pleasantly surprised. levi wished her a happy birthday, and she only vaguely remembered telling him accidentally while drunk and wasn’t sure if she’d mentioned how little she cared for the day, but he didn’t make a big deal out of it and for that she was grateful. she was surprised when rowan wished her a happy birthday - elliot didn’t feel deserving of her kindness, but it still felt good. she got her annual cake from kass, delicious as always, and she tried to not think about the fact that this time next year kass wouldn’t be there and she wouldn’t have a homemade cake to deface. she also got a cake from asher, who had made one for her last year as well when they were dating, and a cupcake from reese. it was a lot of baked goods to explain to people, but stuffing her face with cake helped elliot feel a little better. one thing about having roommates was that they tended to know things about you that you might not want them to know, but she wasn’t too worried about ella making a big deal of things. she definitely hadn’t anticipated receiving a hamburger with a lit birthday candle in it, and it both made her laugh and tasted delicious. she was laying on her bed doing homework when alex walked in, unannounced and uninvited (rude) and gave her not only a bag of hot cheetos but also a knife engraved with what according to alex was the state flower of california (the opposite of rude). she didn’t really know what to say to him other than the thing she had managed to say all day long: thank you. it wasn’t her favorite thing to say, she wasn’t known for being particularly courteous, but she meant it. she was thankful to know that the few people who knew about her birthday had bothered to tell her they cared. on most days elliot would think of course they care, i’m me, but this day made her feel small. luckily for her, she had friends who reminded her otherwise.

elliot looked at her phone. november 5th, 2020, 12:00 a.m. it was over, and she was relieved. she wasn’t quite sure if it had been a happy birthday, but it seemed like in the past few years it had become less and less of a sad one. she was lying in bed, spruce fast asleep and snoring under one arm. “i’m sorry,” she whispered to nothing and no one. perhaps she was saying it to herself. she put her phone down and curled up beside spruce. as she waited for sleep to come she thought of her mother, of the woman who had been described to her and the woman she’d imagined she was. elliot thought back to all the times her brothers had told her how excited their mother was for elliot to be born and the time her aunt told her she was sure her mother had loved her with all her heart, if only for a few minutes. she cried, silent tears that stung her eyes and stained her pillow. eventually she took a breath and got out of bed, deciding to take spruce for a midnight walk. the air was cool and still and the sky was clear. elliot sat down on the grass by the edge of the forest and looked up at the stars. she stayed there for quite some time, looking out into the darkness and trying to remember names of constellations. she saw a shooting star and smiled, wracking her brain for what to wish for.

just some good things would be nice.

when she finally crawled into bed, the tightness in her chest that always appeared on her birthday was gone, and for the first time in weeks she slept peacefully.

#i 𝔴𝔞𝔫𝔱𝔢𝔡 people to be 𝔞𝔣𝔯𝔞𝔦𝔡 of 𝔥𝔲𝔯𝔱𝔦𝔫𝔤 me ❛ self paras ❜

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thrill-cfthechase · 4 years

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tl;dr: elliot is sad about her mom, elliot’s birth and how she got her name

august 17th, 2018

sunset mobile home park, santa rosa, ca

elliot has never had a clean room in her life. there might have been a week when she was six where there had seemed to be order, but besides that it was in a state of unending chaos. there were clothes and sports equipment and trophies and candy wrappers. there were papers that seemed to exist for no reason but that elliot still couldn’t manage to get rid of. and there was a box of her mother’s things that had gone untouched for nineteen years. she had some of her mother’s belongings, like the moth-eaten sweaters she found in the closet and a journal that had been under the couch for god knows how long. but this box seemed to have hidden itself behind raincoats and a bruce lee poster, and now sat in front of her covered in a thick layer of dust. she had been content to leave it that way forever, but tomorrow she would leave her father’s home in a jeep cherokee older than she was and drive into the unknown. or, more specifically, to virginia and to gallagher. she just couldn’t leave a piece of her mother behind.

she opened the box, fanning away the cloud of dust that formed. on the top there were homemade vhs tapes with masking tape labels on the side: tucker’s first birthday, forrest’s first words, tucker’s first soccer game, halloween 1997. elliot set them to the side, she would have them converted into dvds later. but it was the kind of home movie she’d already seen. all the kids in the neighborhood running through a hose and laughing, her mother’s smiling face as she carried a candle-lit cake for her brother’s birthday, her brothers doing silly things while her parents watched through a lens and made commentary about how much they loved them. the last home movie they had was labeled november 1st, 1998. her mother was sitting on the couch with tucker and forrest on either side of her. each boy had a balloon tucked underneath their shirts so they could look just like mom and the three of them held their large bellies and laughed. elliot must have watched that one a hundred times as some sort of punishment for the fact that three days later she would be alive and her mother wouldn’t be.

underneath the tapes was a baby book. at least, it looked like it was supposed to be one. her name was on the cover, but it was empty except for the sonogram on the first page and a few labels that showed only blank pages. there were photo albums chronicling her brother’s childhoods, dozens if not hundreds of pictures of toothless smiles and skinned knees. there had never been many pictures of elliot when she was little. some days her father couldn’t bear to look at her, let alone take a picture. but every once in a while her brothers would get a hold of a disposable camera and capture gems like elliot with a face covered in chocolate cake on her first birthday or a beaming five-year-old elliot accepting a yellow belt in karate. it wasn’t uncommon for the youngest sibling’s childhood to be less documented than their older siblings. sometimes it hurt, and sometimes elliot was glad she could forget. beneath those she found more sweaters and she instantly stuffed them into her suitcases, not caring if they fit or if they were clean or if she even liked them.

at the very bottom of the box lay an envelope, tucked underneath a fold of cardboard. elliot pulled it out, her fingers coated in decades old dirt. there was no writing on the envelope - no name, no date, no address. maybe it wasn’t hers to open, but it wasn’t anyone else’s, either. she peeled it open as carefully as she could and reached inside, pulling out a letter. she instantly recognized the handwriting as her mother’s, and before she had time to think it through, she unfolded the piece of paper and began to read.

Dearest Baby,

I didn’t always know that I was going to need you, but as soon as I knew you were coming I understood that this family wouldn’t be complete without you. I have been waiting for you for a long time now and I think you will be here soon. We weren’t expecting you so quickly but you seem to want to come into this world and I am just so happy that I’ll get to meet you. Getting to know you in the past seven months isn’t quite the same, but it has been wonderful nonetheless. We have a bond, you and me, and it is more than just an umbilical cord. Sometimes I think I should learn morse code because I'm sure your kicks are trying to tell me something. I really did look into it, which you might think is silly, but the library didn’t have any books about it so it was a moot point. Maybe your kicks are symbolic. You want me to know you are strong and that even though this pregnancy has been hard, you’re going to keep fighting. If you are reading this, you are grown and you will know that there are things I have not been able to give you. I’m sorry for that. But I hope by now you can see that I love you and your brothers with all my heart and there is nothing I wouldn't do for you. I wish there was more I could say to you, but I'm very tired and sometimes I feel like words fail me. I just hope that I’ve shown you how much I love you every single day, and this will just be a funny little reminder.

All My Love,

Mama

p.s. I’m sorry I addressed this to ‘baby’ and not to you. I know what your name will be, but I’m afraid to jinx it. You know how superstitious I can get.

elliot has always taken pride in the fact that she rarely cries. crying was for babies, her brothers taught her that at a very early age. no one needed to know what she was feeling. sometimes even elliot didn’t know. but now she was crying, hard, tears gushing down her face, nose running, breath caught in her throat. she let the letter out of her grasp and it floated gently to the floor. the paper seemed too light and airy to contain words that affected her so strongly. her tears were silent - she didn’t want to wake her father on the other side of the wall, sitting on the couch in front of the tv with a mostly-empty twelve pack littered around his feet. there was a weight on her chest and a knot in her stomach, guilt and grief and loneliness. she had been loved once, truly loved, by a parent. she had never been sure if her father was incapable of loving her or he simply didn’t want to. her brothers loved her more than she thought she deserved, but it was never quite the same. she had heard people say there was nothing like a mother’s love, and elliot had ruined her chance to have that with her very first breath. she picked the letter back up and blew away some of the dirt. she tucked it into a pocket of a suitcase where it would be safe. elliot wasn’t sure what she would do with it, if she would ever even open it again, but she knew she needed to have it.

november 4th, 1998

santa rosa memorial hospital

it didn’t feel like the first two. she’s been on bedrest, and this one has come earlier than the others - almost too early and she’s worried - but there is something else. something feels different. the doctor reassures her and she trusts them, but the worry doesn’t fully go away. it hurts, it always hurts, and maybe this time is no different. she takes the anaesthetic. this is her third baby, she has nothing to prove. her husband holds her hand and she cries and she keeps reminding herself that it will all be worth it. and suddenly a baby is there, gross and beautiful in an incomprehensible way. the baby cries but she laughs because she did it. it’s the hardest thing she’ll ever do.

they hand him the baby and he looks at it like it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. “it’s a girl,” he hears, voices muffled by the adrenaline pumping through his veins. he looks up at his wife beaming. “it’s a girl,” he repeats, and he thinks he sees a flicker of a smile on her face before the color is drained from her cheeks and doctors rush to her sides. suddenly there are shouts and beeping and everything is happening so fast that he can’t comprehend what’s going on in front of him. he just stays in the corner, eyes glassy as the world seems to move in slow motion and the baby in his arms begins to cry. a nurse takes the baby and three more take his wife to the operating room. forty minutes later she is dead and he is empty and there is a baby somewhere that will need him. but he needs talia, and as he walks like a zombie from the maternity ward to the postnatal ward he feels like he can’t do this without her. he knows it. when he arrives, the baby is wearing a pink hat and a breathing tube. but she will be just fine, they say. it’s procedure for most preemies.

he has to fill out a birth record. in two weeks it will be processed and he’ll go to city hall to pick up a birth certificate and a social security card because this baby is here- an impossibly tiny person, asleep two feet away in the hospital nursery. a nurse hands him a pen and it quivers in his hand. he looks at the forms through bloodshot eyes, cheeks stinging as a painful reminder of his tears. they have already written down her height and weight: 16 inches, 5 pounds 10 ounces. a little small, but she’ll be just fine, they say. he has to fill in the rest: baby’s name, date of birth, parent’s names, and address. most of it is simple: november 4th, 1998, henry chase, talia lilly chase, 2963 santa rosa avenue, santa rosa, ca. it’s the first, and most important question that has him stumped. what could he possibly name his baby girl? all the names they had considered were for a son. he thinks of his home, where tucker and forrest are waiting with their neighbor mrs. mahoney - what was he going to tell tucker and forrest? - and of the book talia had left on the kitchen table. it was going to be a baby book, already equipped with a page for her son’s first smile, first crawl, first words. and he thinks of the cover, where stickers spelled out the name talia had chosen. elliot. it’s not a bad name, he thinks. and suddenly the answer seems so clear and he writes it down quickly: elliot talia chase. he looks at his baby girl and he’s crying again, but this time the tears fall not only out of sadness, but also out of joy.

#i 𝔴𝔞𝔫𝔱𝔢𝔡 people to be 𝔞𝔣𝔯𝔞𝔦𝔡 of 𝔥𝔲𝔯𝔱𝔦𝔫𝔤 me ❛ self paras ❜#tw pregnancy #tw death #tw implied alcoholism

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