When you see this pony, what do you think of? If you know her, you think of fire. Most think of a quick temper and a proneness to violence. Others think of a playfully sexy or a cute mare with a fiery passion. And many have expressed that they see a strong, powerful mare that they think of as amazing. The pony they see today, the one that never backs down before a challenge. The one who will be there and fight. The one you do not want to face as an enemy.
The mare they see today…
...is very different than the one they would have met before.
My name is Eliyora, and this is my story.
My mother was young when she had me, only just out of high school, just shy of 18. I was born in a Bucklyn hospital to a teen mother who lived in a sketchy neighborhood with an unhealthy family, and a father who was not ready to be responsible for a foal. It wasn’t exactly the greatest of starts, but my mother, Zuri, was an amazingly strong and determined mare. The moment she held her foal for the first time, she knew she had to pull herself up out of that hole. She signed up for the Equestrian military, applied for college scholarships, and tightened her life up, all for the sake of her infant daughter, and all without the aid of her daughter’s father.
By the time I was two, my mother had moved us up and away from the really bad part of her family, was raising me with help from some of the better members of my family, and had met somepony in the military, a stallion named Wild Buck. Granny and a few of my other family members didn’t like that Mom was with an earth pony, but he was a good sort of stallion.
The very first time we met, he gave me a little teddy bear, and he promised to be a good daddy to me, a promise that to this very day I will never claim he ever did anything but his best to keep. He helped get me and Mom out of Bucklyn, and we moved to Coltifornia, where they got married and had my first brother, Stalwart Shield.
Mom’s family hated that she had left them and taken me with her for Dad, and after Stalwart was born, they tried to have us taken away from Dad while Mom was away. They lied and said that Dad had molested me, and tried to teach me to say it. They didn’t care about the truth. They only wanted to hurt Dad and to keep me and my brother from him. Thank Celestia they were never able to teach me to say such a horrible thing.
Social service doctors also found that there was absolutely no damage to my body in the manner they were claiming, so we were able to go back home to Dad. He, however, never forgave them for it and became suspicious and angry to Mom’s side of the family after that.
A year or so later, we moved to Dad’s hometown so Mom could finish college, and I grew old enough to start school. I was an awkward filly, never really getting along very well with my classmates as I always preferred to read and draw by myself. I didn’t understand why they loved to run around and scream like they did, and because I was already showing signs of being much more intelligent than my age group, I always spoke in a way that they didn’t quite understand, leaving me to be alone with my books. Even worse, when I got to first grade, Mom had finished college and had gotten a good job, which took us right back to Bucklyn, and right back with the very ponies Dad no longer trusted around me and Stalwart.
That was where the sadness truly began.
Dad, while never exactly the greatest of dad’s but always trying, got angrier and angrier all the time. He yelled all the time, and started hitting me. There was even a time when he picked me up by my throat, and held me like that until I passed out. He never drank or did any sort of substance abuse, but it was getting scary to live with him because he was always so angry in that place.
During this time, my second brother Dry Witt was born, making me the oldest of three, though Stalwart was getting older now and was showing a much stronger personality than what I had. Dad always favored this and pushed Stalwart to be stronger, because he believed that it was the stallion’s job to take care of the mares.
Even though he pushed for Stalwart to be the stronger of us two, for Dry Witt was still too young, things still managed to be my fault all the time and as such, I was in trouble a lot, often for things that I couldn’t really help, or that a foal would do simply because they are young and don’t know better. I was such a well-behaved and smart filly that the adults began to forget that I was still, in fact, a child.
When I was 8, my family moved out of the family home and into an apartment of our own, and my grades got me transferred to a private school for gifted ponies where I was, once again, the new filly with no social skills and no friends. I was always alone in those days, outcast even in this place where my intelligence should have put me on the same level with the other students. I attended that school for two years before my family finally transferred me back to the regular school when it became apparent that I was miserable and lonely. Of course, though they meant well, this didn’t help at all really, as I was once again the new filly.
After some time, when I had hit sixth grade and my family had another foal, my sister Ocean Star, my family bought a house of our own and we moved, leaving Bucklyn behind for good. I thought we would be leaving the bad things behind too, the sadness and the anger, the loneliness and the pain. Dad had stopped hitting us, and had been much happier ever since we found a place to move to. Mom was still working a lot, but with a home away from the city like she had always wanted, things were looking a lot better.
We settled in to our new home fairly quickly, and I finally was in a school that I would be in until I graduated. I was very happy, because even though I was still a social wreck, I thought I would finally be making friends, because I was very tired of being lonely.
Dad had high expectations of me. I wanted to live up to those expectations, and I did try to, but I started having problems in school. My grades started to slip and I started having difficulty making myself do my homework. I did try, but I could never sit and focus long enough to actually get anything done, often being distracted by wanting to read another book or simply being too bored by the material to concentrate on it.
In school, I was still not making friends, and in fact I was becoming the target for teasing due to being so different. Also, because I was so timid and shy, some classmates began to take advantage of me, tempting me by pretending to want to be my friends only to use me for their purposes or humiliate me. I was alone, and afraid. Things began to get worse as I started puberty earlier than most ponies my age. My body began to shape and grow, and others often mocked and teased, now throwing in inappropriate sexual comments.
As I left middle school and entered high school, my life began to truly spiral. With both Mom and Dad working, Dad began leaving me in charge of the house, including cooking, cleaning, and looking after my siblings all alone. When anything wasn’t right, I was berated, often very badly, and punished.
Cancelled birthdays, called a liar lazy shit, compared to a thieving and drug addicted uncle, told we may as well get me drugs now with the way I was going, put down further and further every single time because everything became my fault. I was the eldest, I was supposed to be the one responsible for everything. When my brothers or sister did something wrong, I also was in trouble because I did not watch them well enough. I was never allowed to go anywhere, not that there was anywhere for me to go because I was still without friends.
During these years, a group of girls who lived in my neighborhood and went to my school started trying to get closer to me. I was wary due to my experiences, but I was also painfully alone so I let them. They came over to my house a couple of times. The first time, they all pushed me around my own room and knocked me down, laughing at me all the while. The next day in school they pretended like it was just some sort of normal routine they did, and since I didn’t know any better I forgave them.
A couple of weeks later… They came over again. My siblings were over at their own friends’ houses, so the house was empty. I thought we could have the place to ourselves to do whatever, but when my guard was down… one of them threw one of my own sheets over my head, and the pushing started again. During it, parts of the sheet got lifted up, and they began grabbing me… inappropriately. I got knocked onto my bed, and I felt them coming closer, their hooves still on me. By Celestia’s own grace my mother arrived home early and called into the house, forcing them to stop and back off, giving me the chance to throw them out.
I never told anyone what had happened to me.
I never tried to make friends again after that. I wanted everypony to stay away. I trusted no one, and was more alone than I had ever been before. My grades and schoolwork slipped further, making Dad become harder on me than before, sinking me down deeper and deeper. I began to truly hate myself, and even wondered why I had bothered to stop those girls. I began to think I shouldn’t have, that I deserved to be treated in such a horrible way. My siblings all had friends and were all doing much better than I was in school. Mom was always working, came home tired, and almost never seemed able to spend any time with us. Dad, who was working as an EMT at the time, was always angry with me for something or other. I was always in the wrong no matter where I turned, what I did, who I spoke to, or anything like it. I stopped taking care of myself, so much so that I stopped bathing regularly, only cleaning periodically when it brought complaints from my classmates and school. I never laughed, and very rarely smiled at all. Even when I did, it was a forced smile to fool those around me. I stopped letting anypony hug or touch me at all.
To make matters even worse, Mom and Dad were fighting all the time now. Often I was kept awake at night hearing them scream. Eventually, it all came to a head, and they divorced, with Mom taking the lower floor of the house as an apartment and living down there alone, with the rest of us living under Dad’s care.
During this time, I managed to make it through to my high school graduation. Dad claimed that because of all the responsibilities I had always bore through my school life, my graduation meant that he would treat me as an adult. I was to be able to make my own decisions, to have a sort of life for myself, even though I was still living at home. It was the first thing at home that gave me hope for a long time.
Unfortunately, it fell apart in a matter of months.
I attempted to find a college I could go to, but because of my grades I couldn’t qualify for any sort of scholarship, and because my family was doing well financially I couldn’t qualify for any sort of financial aid. On top of this, I began making mistakes at home again, never really understanding certain things Dad would tell me to do and leaving me to get in trouble again, causing him to cast me down as a child once more.
I never could trust myself, and that made me afraid to do things for myself as well. Despite always being the one in charge and taking responsibility and blame for everything, I was considered more of a child than Stalwart, and as such was cast aside. I was lost. I had always been put in a place where I wasn’t supposed to take care of myself, and eventually it became my philosophy to a point where I was mentally incapable of handling responsibility for myself.
I desperately needed to change something for myself, so I began looking into some loan options for college, and even began working with a mare to take some college courses while working out the lowest loan rate I could get. I was very eager, because I felt that having some college under my belt was better than none and that at least I could do something with myself this way. However, Dad eventually found out and became furious. He berated me for looking for loans and forced me to end my search, leaving me unable to take any sort of college. I began looking for work, but even approached that half-heartedly. Dad noticed this, and I soon found myself facing the threat of homelessness. Every single day I was to bring home proof of five places I applied at, no matter what it took, or I would spend the night locked out of my home, forced to sleep on a park bench.
I would trudge the streets for hours and hours searching for any place I had not submitted an application. Though I did want work, this felt like too much. There weren’t enough places around our home to apply to in order to fulfill that requirement, and I began having to return to places to re-apply, just to abate Dad. It never made a single lick of difference though. Nopony would hire a mare who didn’t even seem capable of taking care of herself, let alone handle the responsibilities of a job.
In the end, it was all a pointless endeavor. Dad, who had during this entire time begun working in real estate, eventually took Dry Witt and Ocean Star, and moved further out on the island, leaving me and Stalwart with Mom and leaving the house in her hooves.
Me and her looked into possible alternatives for schooling, and because of my skill and enjoyment of cooking, I was enrolled in a culinary school, despite Dad’s protests of me doing such. I enjoyed it a lot. Learning the various cooking techniques and styles was fantastic. Unfortunately, like with my regular schooling, my inability to make myself do work properly caught up with me when it came time for internships. I had difficulty maintaining the schedule, and wound up having to change my internship location a couple of times.
During this time, I finally managed to land myself my first job at a grocery store’s deli department. It was a rare occasion where Dad was actually proud of me, which made me very happy. Working the job while also still on my internship meant I was essentially doing two jobs at once, which left me very exhausted and often in intense pain, but I managed to make it through to graduation and began looking for work in the culinary field. I was not foolish though and I held on to my current job at the grocery store while I searched.
However, despite everything I had struggled and gone through, even fighting my own nature to get to where I was, I never found work in my licensed field of profession. Every struggle, every personal triumph, every ounce of suffering and effort I had gone through… all for nothing. I was devastated, but I continued to do my work at the deli. When he and I would talk, Dad would often remind me of how he had protested my culinary training as a bad idea, leaving me feeling as though my first real step to do something for my own life was a pointless waste of time and that I should have just listened to him.
Why not? I was a stupid, useless, childish mare who couldn’t do anything without Daddy holding my hoof and guiding me. I only managed to fight off complete despair by reminding myself of my job and my mother… which was why what I learned later managed to finally break me.
My mother… had only had me because she was trying to prove to herself she wasn’t a lesbian.
My conception, my birth, my entire existence was supposed to be proof of a lie my mother had told herself in school.
And the lie had come undone, for by this time my mother was dating an earth pony mare named Spirit Drum. By existing, I was wrong. By living, I was lying. My entire conception was to make a lie true, and that lie had shattered. I couldn’t see straight, couldn’t think, almost couldn’t breathe most days.
I was so lost in despair and depression that I would not, absolutely refused to leave my room at all, not even for work. It lead to me losing my job, and to me sitting alone in the dark, where I felt I should be. Lies were bad. Lies shouldn’t be in the light. Lies should be left in the darkness where they were born. Even the rare times I emerged, all semblance of identity in me was gone. I wandered about, an empty husk, aimless and pointless. I didn’t even feel pain. I felt absolutely nothing at all. By existing I was wrong. That was all I knew. And I had always been taught, when you do something wrong, you have to fix it.
I decided I needed to fix it.
One night, home alone because Mom was working late and Stalwart was on a date with his marefriend at the time, I went into the kitchen and located a pair of sharp kitchen scissors. The only thing I thought was that lies were bad and that no one should lie. I wanted to get rid of the lie. I levitated the scissors to my throat, and very nearly committed when I caught sight of my reflection in the kitchen window.
In shock, I tossed the scissors away. Seeing myself that way made me realize what I was doing, and I don't think I have ever felt as disgusted with myself as I did in that moment.
I ran back to my room and, for the first time in far too long, cried. And I cried and cried until I passed out. I had felt something the instant I saw myself like that. It had been shock, disgust, and terror, but it was still a feeling. When I woke up the next morning, I took myself out the door and went to apply for food stamps, just so that I had something, even something like this, to allow myself to eat. My mother was embarrassed to use the food stamps, leaving me to use them only despite me trying to contribute to the house with them. Still, I had something. As pathetic as it was, I had a stop-gap while I searched for work again.
I eventually found a job at a Trot Mart, and worked there for two years. When my employment there ended and I wound up having to go back on food stamps, my Dad recommended something to me.
He had begun dating a pegasus named Flowing Wave, whose father had just passed away, leaving her disabled mother alone. She couldn’t be left alone because she couldn’t get around on her own, so they were arranging for some in-home aid for her. While this was going on, she needed someone to stay with her, so Dad suggested me. It was something they would pay for me to do, so I figured it would be some easy money.
Unfortunately, her mother, Midnight Glitter, was… unpleasant to be around to put it politely. I wrote most of it off as grieving due to losing her husband however, and when it came to an end after three weeks I resumed my job searching, with my standard lack of success. A couple of months later, around the time of Princess Luna’s restoration, Dad recommended that I should take a shift working with Midnight, which I replied that I was uninterested because I was searching for my own work. It was not mere dislike or stubbornness that kept me from saying yes either.
During this time a medical issue I’d been having had surfaced, one that would need surgery. I was busy handling that while looking for work, and I wanted to see my chances after everything was said and done. It was the first time in my life I was truly taking care of my own issues without somepony helping me, and I wanted to get it done. It took several months to get all the referrals, examinations, and coverage, but I managed it. Dad offered his own home for me to stay in while I recovered so that I would be around someone if I needed something, an offer I took him up on. In this time, Midnight had moved into an apartment that Dad had built into the former garage of his house, and had the workers in there with her to take care of her, all hired through a proper office and covered by medicaid.
While I was on my way to one of the last medical examinations before my operation, Dad tried once again to get me to take the job, completely convinced it would be a good job for me. I still refused, and he pulled a card on me. The very shift he had been pestering me to take, they had hired an illegal immigrant to work. If the office or medicaid found out about it, then Midnight lost everything. No coverage, no home aid, nothing. And being who I was, I couldn’t just sit on my hooves if there was something I could do, even when I knew it was something that would be unpleasant. I agreed to take the job, taking over the shift from the illegal immigrant.
Around the time of Discord’s return, I began my new job. I was hopeful that I could make this work, because Midnight and I had gotten along alright in the past. I could use my old culinary skills for my cooking responsibilities, I had plenty of experience in maintaining a clean home, and I knew my superiors well. It was finally starting to look up.
It only took a couple of months for that optimism to shatter.
Midnight, it turned out, was horribly abusive. She had no qualms about cursing out, belittling, and berating everypony around her, demanding that everyone give her absolutely everything, all while accusing everypony around her of being thieves and liars, calling them shit and worse. She stole things from her own family, would directly attack in every way possible shy of physical. Every sort of mental and emotional abuse, she would dole out without remorse, hesitation, or discrimination. Everypony was a target, especially those she was around the most. This meant her aids were the prime targets for her wrath. It was difficult for Dad and Flow to hold on to workers for this reason, and it wasn’t long before I became the only consistent employee, often having to cover the opposite shift as well as my own. And with it being a live-in position, this meant being there for days at a time as it normally stood. My shift was supposed to be three days long, but it was not uncommon for me to have to stay for ten days due to covering my shift, the the opposite four day shift, then my own again. Trapped inside a tiny apartment with this mare, the only thing separating us from the rest of the family, my family, being a wooden door that was almost always closed because nopony else wanted to deal with her or help me, I found myself trapped in a job that abused me so thoroughly that even when I properly complained about it, I was simply dismissed with comments of, “You need a thicker skin.”
This job lasted… for four years.
During those four years… I found myself drifting back towards that dark, depressed, suicidal pony I had thought to leave behind. I had let myself be trapped again, confined, used, abused, and punished. I was still being put through hell for crimes I had not committed. I didn’t understand why. Had I really committed so great a sin somewhere that I had to be punished in such an unending manner?
Toon Kritic: "No, you didn't."
In my times wandering about seeking work, I had met a pegasus named Toon Kritic who seemed like an alright fellow. He had introduced me to some other friends of his, and despite my lingering distrust of others, I slowly found myself opening up to them. They saw my life and my treatment as unjust, and they slowly pushed me to make things better for myself. I deserved better than I had gotten, than I had let myself have. They never missed an opportunity to assure me that I was worth something, and that I didn’t have to sit alone in the dark.
For the first time in my life, I felt like I was loved, cared for. Like there was more to me than just… existing. They even made it okay for me to… feel. Even in the clutches of a horrible mare like Midnight, they made sure to keep in contact with me, to never let me feel like I wasn’t worth something. They held me up, out of the darkness, and slowly, I found myself trusting them. Believing in them. Opening up to them and not feeling like I had to carry my burdens alone. For the first time in my life…
I had friends.
Even as I was sad, I was able to be strong.
Even in my darkness, I was able to see light.
And I was able to stand against a hurricane of abuse, disregard, and neglect, because for the first time, I was not alone.
All the feelings I had repressed and fought against, had not been allowed to express, had been scorned and punished for, I was finally allowed to feel. I no longer needed to hide. It was okay to be me.
It was okay to be… Eliyora.
I am Eliyora. And no matter what gets thrown at me, I will always be Eliyora. Hot tempered and violent, or kind and understanding, strong and unyielding, or weak and depressed, it is all who I am. There will always be those who would take advantage and hurt me, but I will never let that overtake my heart again. I am exactly who I am, and am becoming exactly who I am supposed to be.
Author's Note
The artwork in here was done by so many super-talented people. Many thanks to Countess Rose, Krall, TakaraPOV, Chipflake, WaconDragonArtist, and Winged Wolf Alari for all the art they provided for this.
