FEEL

55. Énouement

Énouement ~ the bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out and not being able to tell your past self

~ The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows ~

~°~

He dropped me off without a single word. Not that I would have preferred it any other way. He still opened the door for me to walk out of the car, and I had pulled it shut and then opened it myself because it felt at least slightly satisfying to know that the gentleman in him would be peeved at not having done it for me. That it was, because his jaw tightened as he watched me step out of the vehicle. When he shut the door for me, I had glared, opened it, then closed it again. Cameron hid his vexation well, but I could read him beyond just expressions.

I felt his scrutiny behind my back as I headed inside. His car only started when I reached the second staircase, as usual, and I couldn't help the anger that nearly shakes my body.

He cares so much, so much that he can't even hide it. But for some reason, I must believe that he doesn't care enough to let me stay with him. For some reason, I have to accept this strangely unclear fact that he wouldn't want to raise a child with me, let alone stay with me for a moment longer than he has.

He didn't protest when I said I wanted to leave without even packing my things. He didn't ask if I wanted to go the next morning, as it was late right now. I can't help but wonder if he had actually cared for me at all, or if it had just been some guise he put on to get me to want him somewhat more than I already did.

Except it didn't sound like him. On my walk up the stairs, I conjured up various thoughts and theories against him, ones that would make me see the villain that had been hiding behind the sweet, gentle demeanor. But it all just didn't fit together. Not when I pictured him, or remembered the genuineness of his soft smile, or the raw sensation of his hands on mine. A sensation that I know could never  arise from counterfeit affection. It was hot and real and so so safe. So unlike everything I have ever known.

My decision only hits me when I enter my mom's apartment. All the lights are off, it's dark and cold and the dull space feels larger than it actually is. There's the subtle scent of my mother in the air, that of dead roses and bland vanilla, mingling with that inherent home aroma.

The moment I walk in, the dead weight of this place burdens my shoulders again, a familiar weight that had always been there when I am within my mother's vicinity. I hadn't noticed until now just how incapacitating it was. That ever-looming presence of grief, loneliness and unadulterated dispair captures my entire body and makes each step feel like pulling my feet out of knee deep cement.

I had laid awake in bed, shivering but not cold. I had stayed up so long that I heard my mother enter, pass my room, then dose off to bed. Little after that, the sun came out and she rose again, readied for work and was swiftly on her way.

It's then that I start to realize the prison that she is in. There was an ache within her, even a loneliness perhaps, that possesses her to slave herself to oblivion. There was something she was trying to shut out, the demons of some lifelong anguish, that have been burdening her since a time I was too young to tell. I think about what life has put me through and start to imagine, with as much time as forty-eight years, what it had done to her.

It's only now that I start to cry. Yesterday I had wanted to so terribly, but the ache had been caught somewhere within me, balled up and numbed so that I didn't feel it but the weight of it drew me down. Now, it all came down in a vicious storm.