Spirals

drift life - 2

It is hardest, however, to spend time with my father. He is too kind to me and it feels undeserved. I have tried to watch TV with him a few times, picking something that I hope will make him forget the day and laugh, and feeling bad if it does not. He would ask me about my school life and I would answer his questions and listen to his advice that I cannot understand, that I am too dull to follow, and if he noticed my discomfort then he would grow sad and I would hate myself for it.

"We haven't been on the best terms for a while," he'd say. "I don't know why you're uncomfortable around me. Did I say something?"

"No," I would say, "you didn't do anything. My bad."

"What are you apologizing for?"

I would grow silent then, and I would smile and try to lighten the moment that I ruined. Sometimes it worked and I left him in a happy mood, but sometimes it did not, and my father would pause the show and ask me seriously what was wrong, sensing what I felt, sensing what no one else even suspected. My thoughts became puppeteers then and I felt myself smile and dance around his questions until he let me go, concerned.

For the past three months, it has been getting harder and harder to keep secrets within me, and my father can see them peeking out. Still, I do not want to burden him with anything else; he already has my mother to deal with and finances to sort out and children to raise and a house to keep in shape and a reputation to uphold. He has so much to do, so much expected of him, and so little time to do it that it would be selfish of me to add myself to his plate.

Like my father, I will deal with my issues on my own terms.

Like father, like son.

I wish I were like him. He knows himself, knows his strengths and quickly patches up any weaknesses before they can even be seen.

I cannot even recognize myself in the mirror.

It is hard to face myself in the mirror. The one in my room has long been tossed out, shattered in a rage I do not remember, turned into a useless bag of glass shards. Before Traveler died, I would look in the glass and see someone that looked very close to myself, someone that I did not feel was me but that, logically, looked exactly like me. But now, when I look in the mirror, there is something more than my image. There is a thing in the glass that sits behind my image and wants to smile, or die. When it wants to smile then I feel like prey and I watch it split the mouth of my own image into a secret grin. When it wants to die then I can see the dead in its eyes and the lifelessness of its ashen face, and I feel creepy staring at it.

It is hard to recognize my own hands as well. Sometimes I will stop and stare at my hands, flexing my fingers, tracing the lines on my palms. I wish they felt like mine again, but they are often puppeteered, held by invisible masters, and, because I know what they have done, it is hard to accept them completely. I think about the good that they do and feel proud because it feels like they are mine in those moments. I remember what they have helped to create, even though I know they have held things from each creation, even though I know what they do when creations come back void.

I digress, I digress. Too often my thoughts spiral off-track. I believe that Traveler died too early. I have too many thoughts within me that talk to me when I am alone, too many thoughts that pull at me and fight over my body until I am on the floor with my head in my hands, breathing shallowly as if I were being hunted again, shaking like prey and laughing like a predator, confused and overwhelmed and unable to think, to think. Thinking straight feels like a privilege then. Thinking straight feels like an unmanifested dream left behind in my childhood.

I go off again. Maybe I should recall school. Does Traveler's death affect school? I am simply brought into a building by a bus, where I sit and wait for queues to get up and move rooms and switch out books. Eight times to switch out, one hour each. It is not easy to pay attention; I am too tired, and I cannot see the point anymore. School feels like a blur where I am pulled out of bed into a bus and into a building that spits me back into the bus and back into my bed again. And when I am home it feels like another blur, a blur of events where I watch the moods of my sisters and my mother and father, where I watch and react and engage like the main player of some advanced video game, a game that losing means putting my safety at risk, or the safety of my little sisters. And when it is time for me to rest, then I am alone. I am alone, and I become a puppet, and I forget what I am made to do. There are nights where I can only remember the fear I felt. But even nights are a blur, then. It makes it hard to clock how much sleep I have gotten.

It is night now.

I am tired of writing, but I am not sleepy. I am not sleepy, and the moment I stop writing, I will be whisked away. I am tired. My senses are heightened in all the wrong places and my body is not mine anymore.

I do not feel well.

I do not feel well.

Well. Whatever being well means.

I should stop writing. Its refuge is temporary anyway.

~~~