Love Is Anything

Family Dinner's Suck

I brushed back my eternally rumpled blonde curls and tried to cram some food down my throat before it got too cold to eat. My father (for I could no longer really call him my Dad) grumbled something about how family dinners were a bad idea, though it was normally him saying that we should sit around the table talking about our days like most Kiwi familyś.
    Mum slapped him across the cheek, I smiled to myself, “We’ve had family dinner every Thursday and Sunday night for twenty-two years Diego, and we’re not stopping now just because-” she choked, and at that moment I had never felt more alone, “Because of a silly argument.”
    My mother, who had been with me since the very beginning, for seventeen years she had loved and nurtured me, fed me, put me to sleep, shooed away the monsters from under my bed.
    But now, she was feeding and loving those very monsters that terrorised me as a child and leaving me alone to fend for myself, did she even love me anymore? Had I made a mistake confiding in my parents? I knew my father would act like this, but Mum?
    Maybe I should have kept quiet.
    I manage to cram down some more food and then thank my parents and leave the table. I go sit on the stairs and try not to cry, would I be able to hold the pieces of my life together? Was there even a point to living.
    “Hey Lukey,” my older sister Rachel smiled at me while creeping up the old wooden stairs, we lived in an old battered house in west Papakura, sometimes we could hear police sirens throughout the night, “So I’m leaving for Uni tomorrow...”
    I kept looking at the floor and murmured “Good luck,” jeez I didn’t mean to sound that cold.
    “Hey, after making that the most awkward family dinner in the history of awkward family dinners,” She grinned “You owe me a hug.”
    I couldn’t help smiling, the hug jar was an idea our parents used to use to stop us from fighting. Every time somebody swore or yelled at somebody, they had to give them a hug.
    I hugged her, “Don’t worry Lukey baby, it’s gonna be alright.”
    I sure as hell hoped so.