Chapter 126
Lisa
The night is warm. It's strangely captivating and calming. My soul, however, rejects it. Every warm breeze that brushes by my skin feels like a betrayal. I'm feeling unusually cold in this warm summer night. I walk around the suburbs of Seoul with my shoulders clenched and wishing I would've brought a jacket with me. I know I'm not actually cold, but the goose bumps that are crawling over my skin disagree with the actual weather. Based on my current state, it's the coldest and darkest night of the winter. Whenever I exhale I expect to see my breath materialise, but since it's summer I don't see that happening. I wish it were winter. It would correspond to my lost wandering, like the girl with the matchsticks from Andersen's tale. I'm waiting to freeze over, and by the feeling in my legs and fingers, I'm halfway there.
It'd be easier to endure this in winter. The rejection, the heartbreak, the abandonment and neglect religiously practised by my mother; all of it would make more sense in winter. The cold air I inhaled would send a sharp thermal pain through my lungs and veins, but there would be clarity present - clarity of reality. Feeling this lonesome, being transported back to my powerless child-self to a warm summer night feels like a joke. If it indeed were winter, I could explain why I'm feeling so cold and why I'm freezing. The only thing I'm left with is the acknowledgement that it's all just me. And how I am rejected by my own mother.
Responsible for feeling this cold - me alone. Responsible for fucking it up with Jennie - me alone. Responsible for taking care of Leo - me alone. Was denied my mother's love and care - me alone. I can see only one possible pattern here - me being alone. It's how I've always been. I was on my own since after the divorce. I couldn't be pre-occupied with hitting puberty, I was pre-occupied with Bambam and Rosé. I don't regret it though, because now I'm just one of the three kids who's fucked up, not all of us at least. And being alone is what I've always wanted. It was safe and comfortable. I did whatever I wanted. If I didn't feel like doing something or if I felt like doing something, I could make my own decision without caring what anyone else might say.
But now being alone has become engulfing and unbearable. And after seeing my mother again not giving a single shit because she was fucking someone, I ended up alone again. It's like watching my childhood on repeat. The cycle never ends. What passes between me and my mother is like the idea of time - a snake eating its own tail, its existence going off into infinity. She made no effort whatsoever. My mother, I mean. I was there, falling apart in front of her, the child in me believing that she'd be there for me. That she truly did care for me. But all she cared about was returning back to the house, back to whoever she was fucking.
I was ready to completely surrender when she opened her arms to me, and when she had me at my most vulnerable point, she finally got what she wanted - everyone wanting to have her. So, she broke the last part that needed her. My sole existence now is my mother straight-up denying me her support. Someone, something is clenching its hand around my throat. Even when I want to cry out, I have no other choice but to swallow it down, otherwise, I feel like I'm gonna fall down on my knees and wail at the pavement.
I feel my shoulders progressively sag down. Every step requires more energy from me than the last; soon I don't know if it's my knees that are growing weaker or is it just me giving in. Ironically, I was always the confident, the cocky, the self-aware and the independent one out of all three of us. I never was, I think, I was just good at pretending. I put on a show so confidently and so assured of where I was headed that I started to believe in it myself. I so desperately tried to be happy that I created a bubble I resided in for over ten years, only every now and then taking a quick peek outside, then hiding back in. What do good looks help if I'll always end up alone? What good is college success when I ended up like everybody else? Stuck at a job until I retire, which is when another young person will take over and I'll drift into a forgotten memory. In my retirement I will dwell until I'll finally decide to let it all go and people will have to pay for my funeral, no one to truly grieve the loss. The one person that potentially would, now hates me. Everything nice that she's given me, I turned it into a threat, and I ended up bringing out the worst in her. Yeah, how could anyone possibly resist me?
