SKAM- William & Noora

Part 9: The Past

Noora was sitting in a coffee shop with Vilde and Eva, when she received the call. The call that changed it all. Even not knowing the caller didn't stop her from feeling as though she was at cross-roads without her consent.

The hustle bustle of the cafe' was rubbing her nerves the wrong way so she quickly got up, excused herself and rushed outside. She nervously pressed the accept button and stood there helpless, as a stranger relayed to her quite grimly that her demons were up and roaring. Her past had finally caught up to her and she wasn't prepared at all.

Leaning against the sturdy wall of the cafe', the words "Your parents were in an accident. Your mother wants you to come home, immediately" sounded like a funeral bell as it repeated over and over again in her mind.

Noora violently cut the call and felt her stability and unique calmness slowly but surely slipping away. Her parents had ordered her home. Not a request or a plea, but a fucking order. And like in her childhood days she was expected to drop everything and rush to do her parents' bid for an approval that seemed as unbelievable as unicorns and fairies.

Goddammit! She'd moved on... grown up, made a life for herself and yet she was still being used like a rag for the advantage of her parents. She knew how wrong it was to have this toxic hatred in one's soul but whenever she thought back to her childhood, all she could remember was the desperation to please her parents for the tiniest of scraps that proved to her that she was loved or cared for. 

Noora scrubbed her hands through her hair, the dread of visiting her parents choking her, pulling her under. But she had worked too damn hard to build a life that was for her and her only. A life whose master was only one person: Her. And she'd be damned if she'd let her parents take that away from her.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

She was a fighter and fight she would until all her demons were slayed to nothing.  

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The packed bags were sitting innocently in a corner. The tickets on her bedside table. But sleep was definitely not on tonight's agenda. She was too wound up. The anxiety of meeting her parents, the uncertainty of defeating her past, it all weighed heavily on her mind. The motivational message that would normally allow her to see another perspective, seemed to glance off her like oil to water.

Her bottom lip was swollen and on the verge of bleeding from the way she was savagely chewing on it. The concerned and bewildered faces of Eva, Vilde and Eskild was putting gasoline on her guilt-fueled fire. She felt awful for not placating them, but she was just numb. Without feeling of anything other than the bleakness of her immediate future.

You'd think with time she'd have learnt to forgive, to allow her wounds to heal, but she'd used those wounds to remind her of the importance of having a life of her own. Of being the sole judge, jury and executioner. And maybe, that's why she'd purposely let herself bleed. Kept the pain alive to make her self-esteem stronger. It definitely gave her an incentive to escape the gilded cage her life actually was.

But she wasn't 15 anymore. She wasn't the same fragile naive girl that had left with no other motive other than to force her parents to realize the importance of her in their life, a sure effect of her absence. But once again, she was in for a rude awakening. There were no search parties, no miserable announcements, no pleas on media platforms begging her to come back. Hell, she'd even wondered if her parents even noticed she was missing.

That's when she'd made a promise to herself to live, learn, make mistakes but never ever apologize for anything. Not anymore.

And Noora knew she'd take that promise to her grave.