the freak in the mirror

It's been just a little under a month since my arrival, Father, and I still feel a bit like I've been hit by a Brute Splicer. Dazed. Unsure of which way is up. Sometimes it all feels perfectly normal, like I've just picked up from where I left off when I was here before, and other times I don't have the first idea what I'm doing or where I'm going. Sometimes I miss you desperately, like it really has only been a month since we escaped and you left me, and other times, it's like a healed wound. Scarred to be sure, but just a vague ache that part of me seems to have lived with for years.

I find myself walking through the city, finding myself lost, but walking another block and chiding myself for ever forgetting where I was. I went to the bookstore I worked at once. The displays were all different, new books, old books arranged in different ways, but the smell of paper and bindings and the sounds of soft voices were all the same. Different, but the same. Foreign, but as familiar as my cage back in Rapture. Everything is like that and I dearly wish it would just pick a side.

Like today, Father, I was at the shop to pick up a few things: some clothes, snacks I can keep in my room at the Home (things that won't spoil like everything else seems to these days), a few books, and I was halfway back to the home before I look into my bag and see something that almost breaks me. Cat toys. I bought cat toys, without even thinking, for the cats I no longer own. I don't even know where they are, I was living alone when I left, did they go back to the shelter, were they adopted by someone else? Grumpy little Eve, your white ball of fluff, and scrappy one-eyed Captain Jack. And then I remember, I had taken in Boy, too. Maria's dog. I failed to care for those small, helpless creatures that depended on me, as I once depended on you. I've lost them all.

I've lost everything, really, when you think about it. Even if I remember parts, and people remember me, deep down, I've lost everything again. I don't know how to get it back. I don't know that I want to.

I can't face the other kids at the Home, not like this, on the edge of tears, having to explain to my roommates why I have a pack of fake-looking fuzzy mice. So instead I go to the park, it's not the best weather, overcast and grey, but I don't know where else to go. So I find a bench, pull out a small bag of chocolates, and... well, alright, I'm pouting. But don't you think I've earned the right, Father? Wasn't freedom supposed so wonderful? You wanted me to be so happy and I'm not. I'm in another cage and I don't even know who holds the keys or how to escape. I haven't felt this way since... since I first realized what Mother truly intended to do to me and how utterly helpless I was to stop her on my own. I'm failing you, failing the life you wanted for me, just like I failed those poor animals.

And as if to rub salt in my emotional wounds, a happy mother with her baby in a pram walk by, their family dog trotting along beside them. I have to fight the extremely petty urge to toss a bit if ice or electricity towards them. Not to hurt them, never to harm an innocent, just to... I don't know, make their day a little more like mine. Miserable.

I miss you so much. But I'm glad you aren't here. I think you'd be disappointed in me.

Alright, Father, I know I should have called first. Or texted. Or done something to prepare Juno for what was about to happen, but truly it happened so fast. He seemed so alone, even in that crowded cafe, and he'd crept right up to me, settling in against me as if it were the thing that's supposed to happen. So... I decided, quite on impulse, to bring Captain Cat Sparrow home with me. If Juno decides he can't stay, well, I will endeavor to find him a home as comfortable as ours.

I just hope that Eve forgives me, but I think, if Cat is a friendly with Eve as he is with me, it will all work out.

I juggling the carrier and my bookbag, but besides the occasional questioning meow I don't feel I've knocked Cat about too much. Opening the door, I poke my head inside, "Juno? Are you home? I've, um, I've got a surprise for us."

I really hope I haven't mucked this all up.

I have learned so much in this place, Father. I go to school now and have a job and do all kinds of things that real girls do. But there's still so much to do and tonight I hope to have another experience that I've heard so much about. I've watched movies and read books and nearly all of them talk about slumber parties as if they're the quintessential coming of age experience.

I want to have these experiences, things I never would have done had Mother succeeded.

So tonight I've planned a night with my friends, and invited them to invite a few of theirs. I have cookies and ice cream and pizza and games and scary movies to watch and I truly hope that everyone enjoys themselves. There are pillows and sleeping bags all over our living room and I have to thank you for allowing me to overrun the apartment like this.

I do hope we all have fun.