Bottle it Up

Chapter Three

A home was a place you lived in and felt comfortable in. A house was a place that you lived and … well that’s just it. I had always lived in the later, and not because of the building, because of the people in it. Not to say I didn’t love my parents, I did, but our relationship was built from that type of love that was unconditional from birth.

My parents never liked to pry in my stuff, or my mind. I never had those after school chats my mom in the kitchen, eating some sugary snack that she had whipped up. I never had that back to school shopping trip where she had chosen the perfect clothes for me since she knew me so well. I never had those moments where I had a heart to heart with her. My dad wasn’t much better at stuff like that. He wasn’t an emotional person, even though I thought my mom was more of a rock.

Sometimes I thought my parent’s disinterest was because I didn’t have any problems, and to this day I try to believe that. The real reason was that they didn’t like entanglements, and although they’d say I was the best entanglement that had happened to them, I knew better than to believe them.

I said I love you when I left for school. They returned the words, a smile on their lips, thinking they must’ve done something right since their child hadn’t gone through that stage of teenage rebellion. The truth was I had nothing to rebel against. I could come home with a six pack of beer, and cracking it open, taking a sip right in front of them. I would imagine they’d be angry, I’d want to be angry with me to see some sign of emotion. They wouldn’t be though, and that’s one of the things that kept me from even trying it. My dad would just look at me, leaving it to my mom to take the next step. She could just say not to spill it on the carpet though, but she really wouldn’t care, it was something for her to say to fill the empty air.

Kids would kill to have laid backs, encouraging everything they do, but I’d tell them to enjoy their strict parents. My parents didn’t even encourage me at all. They just let me free when I didn’t have any idea what to do with my life. I was a bird who didn’t want to be incarcerated by a cage, but I wanted to know how to fly before I was set free. I didn’t have that liberty though, since it was I was only six when I was able to walk down to the store by myself, across a major road. I was barely nine when my mom abandoned me at the movies because of her forgetfulness.  

I one tried to talk to her about stuff at school, not much, just about some girl in my class that drove me insane. I was in middle school, and although looking back she wasn’t all that bad, at the time it was like every time she looked my way I was going to throw a fit. I didn’t though, but it would’ve been better than speaking to my mom and causing myself of realizing she truly didn’t give a fuck.

“Hazel, you can’t go around bitching about people,” she had said, her eyes slightly disappointed. I was thirteen when we had spoken, and I even then I wasn’t really surprised by her language towards me. In the Murphy household you were treated like an adult from the moment you could speak, and according to my mom that meant that you had to suck it up. “You’re not going to get anywhere in life if you tell your mom about your problems,” she added, and I remember that pang I felt in my heart.

“So should I tell her how I feel?” I asked, and she flat out laughed at me.

“That won’t get you anywhere either,” she replied, and I masked my confusion. Somewhere inside me I knew confusion would be considered some sort of disappointment to her. “Just don’t talk about it,” she said, looking me into my eyes for seemingly the first time since I was born, “you’ll get over it eventually.”

And so I did. I waited for that end to come. I wanted that eventually to come so I wouldn’t care what anyone thought of me, and I’d be bulletproof, but it never came. I gave up on being numb to words and stares and attitudes because there was no point in it. I never gave up on keeping it inside though. I learned a lot of things from my mom in my eighteen years with her, but the absolute worst thing of advice I’d received from my mother was to just not talk about it, her annoyingly confident voice flashing through my mind every time I remembered that day like it was yesterday.