❝I'm trying, I really am. But, I feel so.. let down. It's like I'm falling, and there's no way to get back up.❞
Oceana Bloom, a writer and an artist, can't seem to put her pain into words and her sadness into art. It's not that everything hurts, but...
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When I was a little girl, I was scared of sleeping in the dark. Every night, I despised going to bed all alone. I feared that the monsters under my bed would eat me. Turns out, the monsters in this world don't live under your bed, they're actually the voices in your head.
My mind stirred up endless possibilities of what would happen to me if the monsters did show up. My mother always told me to not be afraid, but when I never showed any progress, she took matters into her own hands.
She sang me to sleep.
Her songs were about anything and everything. She sang about whatever came to her mind- anything from the moon and stars to ladybugs and grasshoppers. Regardless, she always made it sound beautiful. As she continued to sing in her soft voice, I'd find myself drifting to sleep. She made me feel safe from all of the monsters that were under my bed.
Every night, she sang to me, and every night, I slept peacefully.
One morning, my mother gave me a gift. Confused, I asked her why. It wasn't my birthday nor was it hers. It wasn't any special day in general. She urged me to open it, but before I could, she fell to the ground.
I'll never forget that day, tears and screams, and how my hopes got crushed by each passing second. My mother became sick, and she was dying. My mother was dying. I remember one particular night my mother was sleeping peacefully on her bed, and I started to sing. I remember how serene she looked, regardless of her life being pulled away from her. My fingers skimmed her pale face, and I started to feel tears on mine. That night, I cried tears that I had never cried before. Tears, that fell onto her soft, violet blanket as I sang about wings and the sky. How I wished she could fly away from her pain.
But, she never flew away.
She was like a bird in a cage, trapped in a world that wasn't hers.
The day she died was when I opened my gift. It was a music box, small and trimmed with gold and covered with designs of roses. When I opened it, there was a ballerina spinning. I closed my eyes as I listened to the song that it played. As I hummed along I felt the familiarity to the wordless tune. It turned out to be the same tune my mother always added words to when she sang to me. This music box played that melody over and over again, it was perfect. The perfect melody, but it felt a little empty. My mother's voice was the only thing that could fill it and make it whole. As her face filled my mind, the tears started rolling down my eyes. I missed her.
I missed her soft smell of lavender that could fill any room she walked into.
I missed the smiles that she gave me when I didn't have any of my own.
I missed the soft kisses she'd place on my cheek.
I missed the way she sang silly tunes when she felt happy.
