Mom?

One hand clutching the rod for support, the other grasping the straps of her handbag as if to reassure herself of some measure of control. 

“Why didn’t you invite me?”, she blinked back hot tears, her voice breaking a little.

I stared at her. Wasn’t it obvious? It was a weekday, she had work; not to mention that she had missed most events of mine in the last seven years so-

She cut off my explanation midway, turning around to face me.

“You’re embarrassed of me.”, she hissed and her face crumpled.

So did something inside me. It hurt but I felt my gaze become cold, unfeeling. If she wanted to be melodramatic in the middle of a crowded subway carriage, she could be my guest. She could believe whatever she liked. 

She thought I was heartless anyhow so what was there to lose.

I turned around, grimacing as I blinked back tears of my own. I didn’t invite her because I was afraid she would be embarrassed of me: how could she not.

I snapped back to present day, staring back at those red eyes that had haunted me for so long. Except now I saw them far more frequently; every time she called actually.

She called everyday.

That house was crushing her. Whatever comfort I had provided was no longer there to cushion the blow. I had left, selfishly, her alone to cope with what was a train wreck in the making, held together by prayer and little else.

“Heh you’re heartless, aren’t you”, she chuckled, momentarily amused. “Wish all your friends, okay?”

I smiled back smugly. “Friends are just there to get you from point A to point B and nothing more”.

As the lie left my lips, I found myself staring in the mirror as if to ensure that it wasn’t my father speaking. I would rather be the lying me than the honest him.

“Completely heartless.”

I just grinned, with no heart behind it.

It helped her to think of me as heartless, as someone cold and unfeeling enough to survive even the harshest of winters when it came to love. She was proud of how she had raised me, bragging about how she had felt pushed around by life and had vowed to raise a confident child: someone who could boss life around when she had failed.

It helped her so I played it up.

“It’s like you have an armour around you and everything just bounces off. Nothing anyone says seems to reach you”

I blinked. Was that true? Was that how I appeared to people?

How very intoxicating.

I cut the call, closed the curtains on memories, closed my eyes. Curled up, sobbing.

For once the intoxication wore off, you wake up so very alone. So luxuriously alone.

Finally you can let the armour slip, let tears seep through every chink and soak into the bedspread.

Finally I can let my heart breathe.

It’s an isolating way to live, neither here nor there. Am I strong or am I weak? Tough or tender? Yes I have a heart but if no one’s around to hear, does it make a sound? My heart breathes but what is it breathing for?

How can one little heart hurt so much?

Who do I want to be?

Ah that’s a little optimistic, isn’t it? A tad unrealistic, and overly grandiose to question “Who do I want to be”; as if I were some staid philosopher, seated in one of those fancy schmancy armchairs. Plain pretentious, for I am uncertain if I even want to be.

Actually, that’s me softening the narrative. I’m not uncertain, never have been. Currently, I don’t want to be.

I don’t want to be alive.

But my mom would be sad.