Like Father Like Daughter

It's been years since you left me this way. Dead on the inside and dead on the outside too at times. Oh, but I still see you so clearly. I see you every time I look in the mirror. I see your eyes stare back at me, devoid of life and health, devoid of love. I see your lips smile at me when I grin while I'm smoking. When I open them to devour another handful of pills that I don't need but crave desperately. When I swallow the last mouthful of Merlot. I see everything I hated about you and everything that you could have been. Now I only see them on myself, though. Because you are nowhere to be found. But you have managed to leave me here, cleverly, with all of your old ghosts and skeletons. The ones that have infected me with a disease that, even though it isn't contagious, is still threatening to everyone around me. Somehow I've managed to hate you so badly, that I have become you. Right down to your addictions and personality traits.

I often wonder how I became someone that left me. How I became someone that I swore was my lifelong enemy. How in the hell did I become someone that abused me? Used me? Dashed in and out of my life like a goddamn fairy godmother, always promising better and more wonderful things, but at the end of the night was gone like everyone else. Oh yes, and then when I became sick like you were, they all left me behind. Sick of me like they were sick of you. If I had a dollar for everytime that my mother said to me "You're just like your father" or "You're becoming like your father" believe you me, I would be a wealthy woman. Instead, I'm left here with your stupid ghost and it would seem that I am destined to become like you.