Is That Mom

Part 1 of Chapter 1

Chapter 1:

The Weight of the Past

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Part 1:

Isolation and Emotional Void

The day began like any other in the small, sleepy town that Ethan called home. The morning sun slipped through the cracks of the curtains, casting narrow slivers of light across the room. It was the kind of light that never fully brightened the space, leaving shadows in the corners—a fitting metaphor for Ethan’s life. At twenty, he was young by most standards, but there was a heaviness in his eyes, a tiredness that spoke of years lived without joy. He lay in bed for a few moments, staring at the ceiling, dreading the monotony of another day. Eventually, he rose, got dressed, and headed downstairs to the kitchen.

The house he lived in was old but well-maintained, a testament to his grandparents’ diligence. Margaret and Walter had lived there for decades, and it was a place filled with memories—some shared, others kept hidden. The wallpaper was faded, the wooden floor creaked underfoot, and the furniture was a mix of old-fashioned pieces that had seen better days. Yet everything was meticulously clean, a sign of Margaret’s relentless need to maintain order.

Ethan found his grandmother in the kitchen, as always, already preparing breakfast. The smell of coffee filled the room, mingling with the scent of freshly baked bread. Margaret greeted him with a warm, if slightly tired, smile. “Morning, Ethan. Did you sleep well?” she asked, her voice soft and gentle.

“Yeah,” he replied, though it was a lie. Sleep was often elusive for Ethan. His nights were plagued by restless dreams, images he couldn’t quite grasp upon waking. He sat down at the table, glancing at the empty chair across from him. Walter would join them soon, but there was always a sense of absence in the room, a space that felt incomplete.

Breakfast was a quiet affair. Margaret hummed softly as she served scrambled eggs, toast, and bacon. Walter eventually shuffled in, his gait slow but steady, and sat down with a grunt of acknowledgment. They ate in near silence, the clinking of cutlery against plates the only sound. This was their routine—a ritual they repeated day after day, a comforting but hollow rhythm. Ethan’s mind wandered as he ate, thinking about the day ahead, though there was little to look forward to. He had a few odd jobs lined up around town—fixing a fence, helping Mr. Harper at the local hardware store. It was work that kept him busy but did little to fill the emptiness he carried inside.

The town itself was as tired as Ethan felt. It was the kind of place where nothing much ever happened, where everyone knew everyone else’s business, and the biggest news might be a new sign at the diner or the occasional scandal involving someone’s misbehaving teenager. The streets were lined with aging buildings, a mix of shops, cafes, and houses that had been there for decades. There was a beauty to the familiarity, but it also felt like a trap, a place where time moved slowly, if at all.

As he walked through town, Ethan exchanged nods and brief greetings with a few familiar faces. Most people liked him well enough, but there was always a distance, a sense that he was separate from them. He often wondered if they could sense his isolation, the way he felt disconnected from everything around him. Maybe it was because he had spent his entire life there, but he had never really felt at home. It was as if he were passing through, even though he had nowhere else to go.

Ethan’s thoughts often drifted to his mother, a woman he barely remembered but whose absence had defined his entire existence. She had left when he was just a child, too young to understand why, and no one had ever given him a straight answer. There were photographs of her around the house, but they told him little. In most of them, she was smiling, her eyes bright with a warmth that Ethan longed to know. But those images were relics of a past he couldn’t grasp, fragments of a life he wasn’t a part of.

He knew that Margaret and Walter avoided talking about her. When he was younger, he had asked them, trying to understand why she had left, where she had gone, but their responses were always vague, evasive. Over time, he had learned to stop asking, though the questions never went away. They lingered, gnawing at him, a persistent ache that he had learned to live with. His life was a series of routines, actions performed without thought or feeling, a way to get through the day without confronting the void inside him.

Helping Walter around the house was one of those routines. They would spend hours fixing things—leaky faucets, broken chairs, anything that needed attention. It was work that didn’t require much conversation, and that suited Ethan just fine. Walter was a quiet man, stoic and steady, but there was a sadness in his eyes that Ethan sometimes caught glimpses of. It was as if they were both carrying the weight of something they couldn’t put into words.

Occasionally, while they worked, Ethan would catch his grandfather glancing at him, as if trying to gauge his mood, to see if he was okay. But he never asked, and Ethan never offered. They were trapped in a cycle of unspoken emotions, bound by their shared silence.

After a day of mindless tasks, Ethan would often find himself back in his room, staring at the same ceiling he had woken up to. He would lie there, his thoughts drifting to the life he might have had if things had been different. He imagined a life where his mother was there, where his father hadn’t drifted away, where he wasn’t stuck in a town that felt like a cage. It was a pointless exercise, but it was the only way he could escape, even if just for a moment.

He wondered sometimes if it was his fault. Maybe there was something about him that had driven her away. It was a thought he couldn’t shake, no matter how irrational it seemed. He had never talked to anyone about it, not even Margaret or Walter. They were good to him, had raised him with love and care, but there was always a distance when it came to his mother, a wall he couldn’t break through.

In the quiet of the night, when the house was still and the only sound was the ticking of the old clock in the hallway, Ethan would think about her. He didn’t remember her voice, didn’t have any clear memories of her, but he felt her absence like a shadow that never left. It was as if she was a ghost, haunting him, even though he couldn’t see her.

As the day drew to a close, Ethan found himself sitting on the porch, staring out at the darkening sky. The stars were beginning to appear, tiny pinpricks of light in the vastness of the night. He wondered if his mother was out there somewhere, looking at the same sky, thinking about him. The thought was comforting, but also painful. He wanted to believe she hadn’t forgotten him, but as the years went by, that belief was harder to hold onto.

Ethan’s life was a paradox—full of people, yet profoundly lonely. Surrounded by routine, yet constantly searching for something he couldn’t name. As he sat there, lost in his thoughts, he knew one thing for certain: he couldn’t keep living like this. Something had to change.