She wanted to die.
He wanted to live.
•••
A hand grabbed onto my wrist, yanking me back just as the train rushed past, before I'd even had time to comprehend whether or not I'd carry out the action. I stumbled back into the person's chest, my hear...
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Maybe this was all a joke.
A sick, cruel joke Fate was playing on me in which every time I overcame some form of mental problem it decided to bombard me with another one.
Maybe this was all a plan orchestrated to make me feel such opposing emotions until I simply self-combusted.
It wasn't bad enough that I was running off no sleep, or the thousands of worries about Romeo I had swarming around in my head, or the possibility of feeling a four letter word that petrified me just to think about, or the loss of the transient peace that wasn't tainted with chaos, or the fact that I was in the middle of London all alone after losing the one person I'd actually somewhat believed when they said they wouldn't leave me.
Of course, it just had to get worse.
"Right back at you, mum," I mumbled, too past the point of exhaustion to bother with giving her a better response. I turned back around on my seat and took a long drink of my hot chocolate, attempting to soothe the rapid aching of my heart at the presence of the woman who pretty much left me for dead every time she decided to leave again.
Within a few strides my mum was lingering beside my table, probably glancing at me with a mix of sympathy and concern as she rested her hands on the table, reaching out to hold mine but then stopping herself. I knew I shouldn't be so cold towards her – when I was younger I used to run to her with open arms – but I couldn't bring myself to engage in small talk and force myself not to get attached again since I knew seeing her would soon be over before it would truly even get to begin.
Just looking at my mum was enough to remember it all: the days when I was naive, when I was ignorant to the true problem in the midst of the place I could never quite call home. Granted, she did a good job at trying to keep up the pretence of the perception of a happy home when I was younger, but the more I grew the less she tried to conceal the mess that she birthed me into.
The one thing I could commend her for is the fact that she eased me into it gently; at first, she left me alone with Him more often, and stopped being a human shield for me to hide behind, instead leaving me out and exposed to a terror I'd never fully had the chance to comprehend.
Then before I knew it, more often turned into pretty much always, and the terror morphed into a trauma that I was so overexposed to that it made me change my beliefs to suit the words He always told me.
I understood why, and perhaps my understanding was the worst part about it, because I could never quite bring myself to fully blame her for deserting me.
But she was supposed to be there; she should've been there.
Instead I was forced to lose the facade of the happy family we put on whenever we were outside of the house, and was hit with the reality that we were the definition of dysfunctional. And she just let it happen. She went to work and left me to deal with the man she chose to marry, the man she decided to bring me into this world with, only to neglect me at my moment of greatest need just to save herself.
