Some Day One Day

11.5

With one arm wrapped around the grocery back, I used my other hand to fumble the key into the keyhole. I'd just come from the super market to purchase a few things I needed for the household. I always hated being outside when it was dark because the lurkers of this neighborhood merciful people at all. A few weeks ago, a bullet speared through an old lady's house and struck her in the back of her head.
I sighed heavily when fear trickled through the center of my body. It was scary to me how things like that could happen to innocent souls who have nothing to do with the world's squabbles. That was one of the many reasons why I kept solely to myself. I didn't want to get into anyone's business and I definitely didn't want them to get into mine.
Once I stepped in my apartment and closed it behind me, I flicked the switch, which soon bled a ramification into the eerily quiet abode. After making my way to the kitchen and placing everything where it needed to be, I stood over the stove, warming up some hot cocoa in a small pan.
That afternoon didn't turn out to be as bad as I thought and I knew that the only reason was because deep down inside, I was elated that Shawn and I had talked. It meant so much to me because we both weren't being stubborn, and even though the conversation was sketchy, it was a start.
I prayed that things would remain that way as speaking to Shawn had been my only beacon of light in this dark world.
I didn't speak to Shawn after that exchange on the patio. It wasn't out of malice, but it was precise that things were still rather strange and far between with the both of us. I'd only come across from him in the hallway and with lack of what to do I'd smiled. He would respectably give me an acknowledging nod as he walked passed me.
We were always crossing paths...
As I poured the steaming hot cocoa into a mug, a large back of what sounded like a slamming door shook the walls of my house. I flinched slightly but relaxed soon thereafter because I knew what was to come. A loud male voice wasted no time yelling only for a female scream to cut right in.
My neighbors were always on schedule when it came to arguing. But like all heated relationships, they would make up soon after. I shook my head at them with a faint smile, the concave of loneliness deepening.
Since my checks started looking better, I was able to buy proper groceries and didn't have to go hungry for days on end.
With my cup of steaming hot chocolate, I made it to my room and went to the luggage that hampered all my unpacked clothing. Placing the mug of cocoa beside me, I picked carefully at my clothes until I found what I was looking for. Picking up the furry covered book, I swooped up my mug and went to sit on my congealed bed.
Angie's comment about my writing took me back to the days when I'd sit in my room with the door locked and the curtains drawn to create a sanctum for my thoughts and me alone.
Writing was never something that I did or truly cared about my Aunt Meredith had passed away. Her death was an eye opener, leaving me with so many different ruminations that I didn't know what to do with them. I wanted to tell someone about these thoughts, and even when I spoke through word of mouth, I couldn't express myself the way I'd truly wanted to. At my auntie's funeral though, Angie read a eulogy in the form of a poem that left the cathedral in tears. The poem was so inspiring, a stark remind of Angie's remarkable ability to spill her emotions into poetic form.
So I'd thought of writing a whole lot, but never truly got down to it because I was afraid that I wouldn't be good at it. I was so used to being good at everything, or at least better than most, that I was always afraid to face new challenges in fear that I wouldn't be good at that particular thing.
But Angie told me releasing your emotions shouldn't be something that makes you strive for perfection. She told me it was supposed to be a stress reliever.
From then on, writing became my other partner in crime save Shawn.
I'd never shown anyone my writings because I was scared that their opinions wouldn't be ones I reveled in. Also, my writings were so personal, and a complete contradiction to the character that I showed everyone else that I worried they would think I was either a liar or insane.
I opened the pad to the first page of my notebook.
It was a blank page...
The blank page to my notebook was filled with as much nothingness that was in my soul. That morning I'd received the burdened news along with the rest of my family that my auntie had been found along a sidewalk, her body trampled all over and disfigured. As she roamed the streets at night, a reckless driver who never even stopped in his tracks to see if she was all right had struck her.
That morning was the very first time I had seen both of my parents weak and vulnerable. This time they didn't even try to save face for me as my father held my mother and she cried her eyes out. My father constantly said that it was his fault, and my mother blamed herself too.
It was like I was looking at two different people—at strangers. And that's what saddened me a little bit more than the tragedy of my aunt's death. The fact that seeing my parents when they weren't strong or taking charge was unnatural to me. My older sister was to fly in later from the other side of the country to come and show support.
I felt a strange sense of loneliness wrap itself around me the next week or so. My parents tried their hardest to regress to their normal, positive-minded states, but I knew that it was all a lie. The same way it was all a lie when I smiled around at school since no one seemed to notice that I wasn't fully there.
I tried to hold up this veneer for as long as possible but it didn't last. And the more I repressed these emotions within me, the heavier that pang of loneliness and despair got.
I really had no one to talk to except for Angie, but with Ojay in her life, she was preoccupied for the most part.
I just wanted the vacuity that kept on spreading within me to be filled up before it consumed me as a whole.
And just like that, I began to feel overwhelmed. Those were the few times when I realized that everything around me wasn't real. Everything seemed so fake, so temporary.
What made it so frustrating were the pummeling modulation kept on reminding me that I had absolutely no right to cry when I supposedly had everything.
My eyes welled with sudden tears as an awkward pain from a place I knew nothing about, filled me up. Resting my elbows on the table from which I worked, I buried my wet eyes in the heel of my hands.
It's not that I was the type of person to think that crying was for the weak. It's just that I knew once I started crying, I never stopped because they were imprisoned tears, begging for freedom after a long time of alienation.
I knew better than to cry in public, but I also knew that no one usually hang around after school—especially on a Friday afternoon in the library. So I allowed the symbols of unexplained pain to drift from my eyes.
"Beyonce...?" I heard my name in the only voice that sounded as deep as his.
My entire body grew rigid from the tremors that crying brought. Incautiously, my hands fell away from my face and I stared up at the inscrutable expression etched all over Shawn's face. Oh god, he was looking at me strangely and that was the worst thing for me ever—for someone to think I was strange because of what was truly jailed deep within.
Still, our eyes held and as usual, I couldn't take my eyes away from his.
My heart fluttered. I thought I was the only one in the library but when I saw him, I was shocked beyond belief. Of course, I never expected someone like him to go to the library, but the more I got to know Shawn, the more my misconceiving of him was rectified.
So far, all the judgments I made of him turned out to be false.
Staring into the eyes of someone who was a stranger, but not very much so, I felt like my weakness had been exposed to the world. I wondered if this was how my parents felt when they cried in front of me.
"You iight ma?" Shawn asked me with a worried frown, the strange look clearing away from his dark eyes.
I yearned to tell him no, to tell him that I wasn't okay. But I felt cold and dishabille, like I'd been stripped of my clothing and bared to the masses. And like someone who'd been thrown out into the public with nothing to cover them up, I recoiled with embarrassment. I felt a shame so deep that more tears, this time of mortification, fell.
Swallowing the bittern lump down my throat, I nodded with haste and stood up shakily while snapping the notebook closed that was now dotted with my teardrops.
My fingers trembled as vied to get my stuff together. The more he watched me, the more I panicked because it made me weaker and weaker by the second. My heart was making such a racket that I feared I would have a panic attack in front of Shawn.
Just because I'd allowed him to wipe my tear once didn't give me margin to cry in front of him whenever I felt the need.
All the while, Shawn never said one word even if he'd captured me in my weakest form. The library was quiet, and its quietness greatened the sniffs and gasps that I tried to sustain.
I was mortified and embarrassed.
"I'm sorry." I found myself apologizing without much thought, "I'm sorry..."
"What you sorry for?" Shawn asked me quietly, but his tone was as powerful as an electric chain reaction for it sent heavy currents through me, thus slowing me down momentarily.
Somehow, someway, I picked up my pace and had everything in the firm hold of my arms. I mumbled a quick 'excuse me' before scuttling out of the library.