There was an earthquake in my soul as I sat, soaking wet and still dripping, on the blanket. I shivered in a cold I haven't felt for years, it looked like giant green eyes reflecting the flame of our heater, hands between thighs on the third step of our staircase.
It's suddenly winter and I have called you three times, you said thirty minutes, but it's been three hours since, now there's no answer and I wonder if you died in a car crash. The pain is so big, both of your death or your broken promises that I fantasize about dying myself, the imagery becomes real in my soul and I am doomed to wander this three-floored, cold and empty house for eternity.
I am still laughing with this beautiful human by my side, in this beautiful spot, in yet another beautiful day, but my fingertips know. The hairs on my legs, my heels, the space between my ribs and the depths of my spine, they all know that there is a lead orb keeping me from truly holding this hand, a very real, loving hand; so I let myself be pulled for a couple of minutes. It's so heavy, fighting wouldn't take me anywhere but into my head, so I roam through words into a darkness I've not quite missed but feels just like home.
I float through the pain, as I hear my mother's voice, she's crying because she says I don't love her. I see her hands, she has freckles on them and she hates them, she hates her body, she hates herself too, but man she's good at pretending. The phone rings and in that second she cleans her tears and answers in laughter; you'd never known I, again, made her cry. Suddenly I'm on the other side of the line and she's sitting in a strangers living room, she's lying to me, she's trying to hang up, to get rid of me: "I'll be home in thirty minutes", it's the third time she's said the same, "but the more you call me the later I'll be". Talking about choosing your battles, or which promises to keep. I'm sitting on the staircase, alone, the house triples its size and as the sun sets, the darkness around me grows, and all the horrors come to these green, wet, eyes. My cheeks feel cold, my nose is red and I suddenly fell off the window of my mother's room when I was trying to see if it was hers the car that just opened the front gate of the community of houses; it wasn't. But I see her and my dad crying over my corpse because their daughter was found outside the front door with her skull crushed against the red ceramic tiles of the entrance and bled to death, alone. The doctors confirm that it was not an instant death, she suffered for hours.
In the meantime, I am forever here, alone, in an eternal sunset that feels as cold as the early mornings going to school. I feel desperate and trapped but can't open any door, nor window. The only view is the empty space where my mother's car should have been. Claustrophobia comes and I can't breathe because the anxiety is filling my lungs with the universe's nothingness, it overflows out of my nose and mouth, and ears and eyes. I sweat darkness out of every pore and all is enclosed. The green eyes are still looking at the flame of the heater, now the teacup is empty, a full bladder and the fear of all the ghosts in the house. I can't move, frozen, loneliness and pain, left alone to roam the dangers of imagination in a broken house.
"Why would you bring me to this world, mother?"
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I'm floating away from this memory, the pain is real but the logic is indestructible, words burn like suns:
Narcissistic, selfish, generational trauma, grandma, El Quisco, Catalunya. Ego, ego, ego, ego, ego, ego, ego, ego, ego...
The green eyes meet my father's, now between the 9th and 10th step of the staircase, my middle finger is pointing at him, I gasp and run upstairs, get into bed and cover myself with the pink duvet of the Rocket Power, as he lifts his hand and runs behind me mumbling some words I didn't quite understand, he reaches my room at lightspeed and sits next to me: "why did you do that?". The wet greens close as the darkest black comes and I'm away again.
"I'm sorry dad, I can't remember what happened then, but I'm sorry. You were also just a kid, though you probably deserved it, I was always a smart child, though an oversensitive one, just like you. Thanks for now hitting me, but you could've kept your word of doing it; at least I'd have a reason now, but instead..."
In the green Opel, he's picking me up from school, he'd been staring at high school girls from the gate and I feel his lust as I walk toward him. We sit in the car and I don't understand why each time he touches my knee from the pilot seat I feel a goosebump of repulsion and I freeze trying to detach my leg from this body I inhabit. He has to change gears so he lets go and I move my leg away; it's the only chance, but I can't be too obvious, how could I explain? I am trapped in his car. His, Him. My first model of a relationship with a man, with him, who has betrayed me. He who promised to protect me, to keep me safe from the horrors of this system, from the horrors of this world, both palpable or not; He, himself made me unsafe, doubtful and left me to roam these pains, these doubts, alone in fear, in uncertainty and helplessness. Another one who's gone, unavailable, incapable of love. Man, that hurts.
My greens are wet now, my cheeks are as well, my soul: depleted, I feel empty when these memories come to haunt this broken child I carry inside my guts and I wonder if it will ever get better, or is this it, my doom? Cursed to carry the pains of those who didn't care for them at the right time and passed it on to us three children, and a fourth now.
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