Breaking Point

4

Chapter 4

I didn't like to admit it, but most of the time I was alone. And usually, I realised this in the evenings as the dying light swept over my open textbooks as I finished up my homework and squinted at my phone screen to check the time. My mom was out working. My sister was out pretending everything was normal. My dad was lying unconscious on a hospital bed.

And I was doing homework like always but I felt lost.

Sometimes, I wished I could be like Salma, who went out with her friends and did whatever girls did and hid her feelings behind her makeup and Lululemon sweaters. I wished I could also easily slip into that mindset; and drop everything and just live in the moment like Salma always did and just, live. But I was stuck in a routine that I couldn't change.

Some days, I forgot everything and it all seemed like nothing had ever changed. I expected my dad to come home from work and overlook my studies, lecture me for hours on end and remind me to focus on my education and how he had to walk ten miles on dry, cracked ground to get to school and how I had it easy and that if I let my studies go, I would end up on the streets, living in a soggy cardboard box and holding out an empty can of oatmeal to collect change.

His lectures had been nothing, though. At least he didn't hit me anymore.

I loved my father, I reminded myself, as I entered his hospital room that night. The sky was dark outside, and droplets of rain decorated the window, little patterns of water trickled down the glass. I settled down beside him, and stared at his chest which rose and fell in a slow rhythm. It was eerily quiet, past visiting hours.

I loved my father, I reminded myself, as my eyes trailed down his arms and rested on his hands which I had seen countless times before being raised in anger.

I loved my father, I reminded myself as I leaned back and set my head on the back of the chair and stared up at the ceiling, and tried to feel something other than regret and guilt and the bittersweet relief of not having my father around to breathe down my neck every moment.

I was a horrible son, I thought, while I counted the ceiling tiles which went blurry behind my tears. I was a horrible son, who was not at all grief stricken over his father's condition. I was a pathetic excuse of a person, who got his own father into this mess and had the audacity to feel relief. I was a crappy human being, I thought over and over again.

And I deserved to feel lost.

---

"Wow." Nadia snorted. "You look like crap."

She sat down beside me, and I pulled my hoodie over my head, crossing my arms on my desk as I buried my face into them. I had slept approximately three hours last night. And it may or may not have been because I'd stayed up wallowing in self pity and guilt.

"I'm trying out a new look." I tried to joke, but my voice comes out muffled and dead.

"Yeah, I hear the 'homeless druggie' look is really trendy these days." Nadia laughed.

"I can't look like a gorgeous model everyday, now can I?" I expressed, sleepily. "That would be unfair to you normal people."

"Uh huh." Nadia sounded distracted, but I refrained from peeking a look at her. Her beauty would be the end of me. "You tell yourself that, sweetie."

The conversation died as Salma greeted Nadia and the two girls whisper over something about Katie Stevens new boyfriend. They bet over how long Katie would keep the guy as I settled into a disturbed sleep, occasionally interrupted by the teacher barking at a student or the sound of chairs squeaking noisily.