Swayed (A Before You Exit Fanfiction)

Chapter Four - Odds and Ends

Copyright © 2013 BYEconnort  - All Rights Reserved

Surprisingly, as I went home after rushing for the one item I got at the supermarket, I was pretty calm, and thought about things during my peaceful drive home. I was so panic-stricken earlier, but now the feeling was almost nonexistent. I decided it was time to face this difficult situation directly. It just didn’t feel like me to be this scared. I’ve always been brave in a lot of situations that were worse than this one, and it was time to shake off my unnerved streak.

Now that I was thinking clearly, the day passed rather quickly. I helped my mother prepare the Pavlova, which I later found out was a kind of cake. It was the least I can do to help stop the food poisoning of our neighbors. My mother knew how to cook the basic stuff, but definitely not a recipe that was trickier than what she was used to. We worked together with minimum conversation. She didn’t talk about the dinner and about how excited I knew she felt, and I didn’t dare bring it up either.

I would say the pastry turned out quite nicely; it even tasted so.

I can see that my mother was, without a doubt, happy with our creation that she did a little victory dance when we were finally finished and the cake was now in a container, ready for the dinner in a few hours time. It felt pretty good too, to have some kind of mother-daughter bonding once in a while. Between my mom and I, who were very different in a lot of aspects, it was a rare thing.

For one, she was always the perfectionist between the two of us. I used to be just a carbon copy of her until my perspective changed.

As a kid, I had a lot of pressure on my shoulders, always trying to please her in every single way imaginable. I’ve always wanted my mother’s undivided attention, even for just a bit, but it proved to be a challenge because work was always put first before her own daughter and only child.

Let’s say I did get that attention I yearned for, but it was too late when I did. After we moved away, things became difficult for me, and the only way I could cope was to shed off all the fraud and meaningless parts of myself, and build up an entirely different barrier to protect me from inside. Something to save me and keep me afloat.

My mother didn’t know how to handle me at that time I shut myself off from her, and everybody else. It was probably the specific point where I started ignoring my old friends, my old life, thinking they wouldn’t be able to help me when we were states away from one another. I shut them off, all of them, too. It only hurt me more when I see their faces in my mind, realizing I missed them so much, and I needed them with me.

But like one of the most prominent traits I got from my father, it was my sense of self-sufficiency that surfaced the most. It helped me survive the lingering pain of his absence, and made me strong, for both my mother and I.

It gave me comfort, as if my Dad were still there to guide me through my life, even though, in reality, he wasn’t. Not anymore.

There were frequent times like this, when his living memory was too fresh in my mind, that my strong barrier seems to waiver the more I delved in the thought. I tried not to, I really did. But even until now, I didn’t know whether I got over the feeling of grief and agony, or I just learned to ignore it and keep it at bay.

This only proves the point of our move to Maryland, to start anew and fresh as my Mom supposed, thoroughly useless and void. Three years into his death, and I guess I haven’t really moved on. Not a single bit.

I couldn’t speak for my mother, though. One of a thousand differences between us is the way we reciprocated to this tremendous event in our lives.

My Dad was an anchor to the both of us, and taking him away was like drowning us in our own sorrows and misery. But ironically, he was the one who perished in the hands of the sea, the unknowing sea, who took away the glue that held me together.