Diluted (NaNoWriMo14)

Chapter Four

I feel a buzzing in my head that slowly fades in and out of focus, like it's a lazy bee unable to fly in a straight line. I see only suppressing darkness, though I can't be sure if my eyes are really even open.

The buzz comes back again, but it's not just a buzz. No, it's words. Words that are twisted, words that are distorted. Words that remind of me when I turn on the television and the signal cuts out, causing the voices to sound fuzzy and to skip syllables.

Some internal part of me wants to hear the words, wants to know what it is that's being said. It leans forward, makes my ears focus more, tries harder to listen, to understand.

But another part of me -- the one that is by far the bigger, more in control part of me -- is screaming to get away from the words, to run as far away from them as possible. It wants to squash out the small, weak part that craves the words, needs them to live.

As I wait out my internal struggle and the words steady into a lulling rhythm that I continue to ignore, I recognize the bigger part: The part of me that has always demanded that I put up walls around me, that I submerge myself in indifference to become -- or, to least appear -- stronger. Invincible to others and the pain that they may cause me.

It doesn't like the smaller part. In fact, it hates it. No, no, that's wrong, I realize. It's afraid of the smaller part. Deathly afraid.

The smaller part, as it is, represents the child in me. The child that was tucked away, like an unwanted shirt, so long ago; folded up into a tight, neat little square, and then shoved into the bottom of the drawer and buried with more desirable clothing, never to be seen again. Or so I had thought, up until now, when I am able to feel it emerging from the depths of my mind, for some entirely unknown reason.

This little piece of my being, the one whose development was cut short when I reached the age of four, still cries when her father rejects her with that cold, cordial composure. She still wishes for the mother that she never met to come and rescue her, to make everything better for her -- even though it's far too late for that, especially being as it was so improbable in the first place.

The smaller part, I realize with a small bit of shock, is the vulnerability that still exists within me, no matter how hard I try to suppress it, to eradicate it, to destroy it. It will always exist within me, just as it will always exist within everybody, clinging to the past and its associated forgotten hopes and dreams. Like expired milk you keep in the fridge and never throw away out of guilt, because it would be a waste of money and you never got to drink it. But you won't do anything with it now, especially now that it's been rotten for so long. It will just sit, sit and rot and wait for something that was supposed to happen years ago and will now never happen, ever.

Wait for the mother who never came.

You should be gone, I tell it, and yet here it is, somehow still existing in the back of my mind, unseen and unheard -- until now.

"You should nourish it," whispers a voice. It is the same voice that I heard saying the partially inaudible words mere seconds ago, but now it has come into focus and I can understand what it is saying. It feels familiar, too. Comforting, soothing, and calming the torrent inside me; yet, at the same time, I want to scream at it. To scream and yell at it for never being there, for leaving, for only coming now when it is already too late.

"What? Nourish what?" I ask with the lips I didn't know worked.

As soon as the last word has been voiced, I feel as if I've opened my eyes. Not really, not my real eyes -- some part of my consciousness currently detached from the situation feels my real eyes are sealed shut, and it tells me that this can't be reality -- and yet, in the same way, I can suddenly see. All around me is nature, trees and shrubs and flowers, the air heavy with the sounds of birds calling out to each other. The sun is beating down on the peaceful scene, but I don't feel it in the way that I normally feel sunlight. I feel it almost as if I'm thinking about the feel of sunlight, and imagining it on my skin and in my eyes.