Make It Count | ✓

05 - windswept

—five—

windswept

THE ROOM WAS enveloped with deafening silence, thick to even cut with a knife. But it was the noisiest kind of silence I had ever heard, along with that pounding sound that ostensibly wanting to come off of my ears. I wasn't sure where it came from, realizing moments later that maybe it was from that constricting sensation in my chest.

Some of my friends said it was the same feeling when a person was deeply fascinated with another person, or in love, for lack of a better word. I didn't have the right formula, the standard equation to get the upshot of what really I was feeling about Belle.

But personally, I didn't think we needed to do the proper math to put two and two together. It was then I recollected a memory from a few years back.

I walked into the kitchen, greeted by the usual quietude that surrounded the house, and I found my mother sipping her cup of coffee in the kitchen.

She averted her gaze and I balled my fists, my knuckles turning white as I studied her face. The bastard had hit her once again, seeing her swollen lips, one of her eyes and cheeks were starting to turn to purple, blue, and green. I was fucking furious because of my father but also at myself; I was young and couldn't lift up a fist to hit my father; I had been a wuss.

She shot her hand out, clasping her frail fingers around my arm, stopping me from causing a trouble. I was seething, so did her eyes began to turn glossy, shaking her head slowly. It was then I deciphered I was slowly losing her, too. In a flash, her face became impassive and my heart then wrenched beyond words.

"Why?" I had asked her, my voice was quivering, echoing the tremor of hurt deep inside me. My mom bustled my hair, a sweet gesture she used to do to me. But it was also a sign for me to try to understand. She fully knew what my question meant, hanging the silence in the air for awhile.

"Chase," she sighed, the skin on her chin creasing now and then. "I love your father." She sobbed then, unable to hold back her feelings any longer, her nails digging into my shoulders as if to gather strength from me. "You know what, love also means to sacrifice, to understand, to be patient, and to think about another person's happiness."

I knew where my Dad came from; he'd invested his time, money, energy, and faith to their company. Then one day he had been tricked but he didn't want out, but my mother did. My mother took all the blame then, so did my father started to get piss-drunk for most of my childhood and beat me and my mom without the slightest remorse. But that just didn't cut it.

"But love doesn't mean bearing the brunt, mom!" I snapped, banging my fist on the counter top, and she flinched a little. "Love doesn't mean getting a punch every fucking time!"

She cried and cried, burying her face in her hands. "I know," she whispered, at last, cupping my face. But I had let my guard down too soon because the next moment, she dragged a long breath and added the words that made my stomach twist, "And that's why I have to love myself, too."

My mom then left and never came back the next morning, until it turned to months until it escalated to years. But there was one thing my mother had been trying to show me—of how she and my father had loved each other then.

Love, she said, meant having the courage to go through any lengths, of going the extra mile to show someone how they mean a lot to you. It didn't require reasons, it didn't require reciprocation. You just love someone because you simply do, because that was what you felt like your feelings would explode and because their happiness was yours, even if it meant hurting yourself in return.