Under the Umbrella ✓

-02-

Aria shouldn't have been thinking the way she was but she couldn't help it. In a few days, she wouldn't even recall carrying these thoughts, but for now, she all but wished that she were never a part of this family, or at least the head of the family.

She knew life was going to get harder when her father resolved his mind to leave them. She couldn't blame him. She had wanted to leave too but she didn't have it in her to make the leap and the only reason her father had the courage to leave was because he trusted his first daughter enough. It was his chance to enjoy his life and while it was hard to see him go, Aria, unlike her sisters, let him go without a fight. They hadn't seen him ever since he left.

Aria could hardly keep her thoughts on hold as she walked and walked without a destination in mind, fighting tears all the way. She kept mulling over how she could run away from the responsibilities in hopes of her father taking care of it instead. It was selfish of her but it was especially at times like these she missed him.

Everyone at the age of twenty-one was probably out there enjoying youth – at least to her knowledge – but here she was, taking care of her sick mother and her four sisters. Not to forget, she worked day and night while pushing her limits to pay for her and her sisters' education among other running expenses. Her father never failed to wire some monthly money into her account but it was never enough and she could never tell him that. Not that she was able to anyway when she had no way of contacting him.

Aria prayed that no one she personally knew saw the encounter between her mother and herself a while ago. She had towed her mother all by herself, grateful that she hadn't run off too far away from the house, while the entire street stared at the commotion. She could imagine the trouble her mother should be causing her sister who was taking care of her but she didn't want to think about it. How many times could she really feel sorry for her sister and not do anything about it?

More than being mortified by the situation, she was just sad that this was what her life had come to. No. I can't be doing this again, she thought. She was done pitying herself, mostly because people who knew her pitied her plentiful for her portion as well. Whenever she began to give in to those thoughts, she drowned in the pool of woe for days, just thinking and wishing and praying. Nothing really came out of it and she didn't have the time for that. 

She had people, concerned and unconcerned, who would question the crestfallen smile. The very queries led her to become the kind of person that faked her way through a smile because it got too tiring to explain. She never knew where the beginning to all these inexplicable feelings was. She wondered if she wished to find and understand them or if she wished to erase the existence of it all so she never had to bear the deposits of pain again.

All she learned now was that it was much easier to look cheery and casual because while being happy was judged no one ever questioned that.

While her happiness was insincere, there were those rare times when her smiles mattered, which in turn made it all the more real, and only one person ever had that influence over her. So before she could change her mind, she whipped out her phone and dialed the number.