We Met in April (IFYIA Revised)

My Sorrow

"Everything I do, I do for you."

This phrase, in my experience, is always used with the intention of making you feel horrible for even questioning the motives of people in your life. In my case, it's my mother. Her words have always felt empty. Whenever I would decide not to do what she asked, more like ordered if you ask me, she would say something like that and it would make me feel like I was the worst person in the world. I really picked a terrible person to attach my self-worth to didn't I? Then again, it isn't as if I had much choice apart from her. Ever since that godforsaken day, my life has resembled a never-ending nightmare that I just can't seem to escape. 

In this meaningless existence of mine, I have but one prized possession. Ironically, it was the person I hate the most that gave it to me. My violin. It was as if it was an extension of my very being. I poured everything I had into honing my craft and mastering it. One day, that woman snapped.

Even right now, I am still unsure as to what it was I did that could possibly warrant a response of that nature from any person, especially my own mother. From what memories I can muster of the day, I will tell you what happened. I will tell you exactly what it was that made me grow to despise my mother. 

I was in the sixth grade and no more than eleven years old. I was practicing for an upcoming recital, the Maihou Music Competition. Due to the esteemed nature of the competition, with its history of having spawned many a successful musician, I was hoping to perform really well. I wanted to give the most passionate performance I possibly could! My piece being the Kreutzer, I practiced over and over again until it felt like the sheets were burned into my retinas. I was able to play the piece through without mistake.

After what felt like a lifetime of preparation, the day came and I was performing in Towa Hall. With the majestic Steinway as the center piece of the stage, the venue itself was breathtaking. The senses were assaulted in completely contrasting ways, the lights so bright you'd fear going blind if you looked in their direction for even a second but the silence was so deafening that you could hear a pin-drop if you focused enough. 

"Play the piece as the composer intended."

As I recalled this line, my blood ran as cold as ice.  

My dad was my mentor, in every sense, especially when it came to the violin. He was my world. Since I was small, I had been able to avoid my mother's wrath because I had the protection of my father. I always played for him. I wanted to make him happy but, more than anything else, I also wanted to make him proud. 

He had been suffering for quite a while. I knew he was ill but whenever I tried to talk about it with him, he told me to focus on playing and that I didn't need to worry about him. After my first performance, he uttered a phrase that I will never forget, as long as I live; "I won't always be there for you, you know."

When he first said those words, I was too young and naive to decipher their meaning. However, on that stage, in that moment, playing the piece he had played me to sleep with, something told me he was gone. I sensed it. That immediate feeling of despair was so great that it overwhelmed me and I burst into tears, becoming evermore hysterical. 

My hunch was correct. My dad had left me. I was alone in this world.

As I lost my protector, that woman become even more erratic and irrational than before. She was quickly spiraling out of control, and I could do nothing about it. 

One day, she smashed my violin, screaming at me saying how much of an embarrassment I was to her. Whatever had occupied my mother before was no gone. Her body was but a husk. Standing in front of my eleven year old self, was a stranger. 

Thinking to myself that my father was better off being dead, as he would no longer have to go through this pain, I felt my eyes roll back in my head as my mother struck me for the first time. It was only then did I realize I had given my thoughts sound and becoming enraged she had hit me. 

A crimson streak flowing down my face, I was frozen in place by a cocktail of emotion. I was terrified, angry, upset and, more than anything, helpless. I was still mourning the loss of my beloved father while she had simply moved on to a new target. 

This pattern continued for a few years and I gave up playing the violin. I couldn't cope with the pain it inflicted on me. Day after day, strike after strike, she kept chipping away at my mental fortitude. Any semblance of love we had left for each other had dissipated years prior. My will to live was being beaten out of me.

Just like my body was losing blood, my world lost color and at the tender age of eleven years old, I wanted nothing more than to be reunited with my dad. I wanted to die...