Patrige
"I used to think grief was just sadness. A quiet, mournful ache.
But grief has teeth, It chews through reality until everything tastes like lies."
My family mourned the loss of our beloved matriarch, my mother. The funeral was elegant and subdued, attended by polite faces and shallow condolences. But once the ceremony was over, and the guests had departed, the silence that followed wasn't peace.
It was rupture.
The loss shattered something deep inside of me. Already teetering on the edge, I worsened when a hidden truth clawed its way to the surface: my father, the man I once idolized, had been living a double life.
His mistress had walked the same halls, touched our family heirlooms, smiled in our photographs.
" He had said I was his light, his reason... but all the while, he had another life. Another woman. Another family.
I wonder... if I close my eyes long enough, will I wake up in a world where none of this ever happened?"
The betrayal was too much.
The walls of my mind cracked, and within weeks, I was admitted into a psychiatric hospital.
The media called it a nervous breakdown. My family called it stress. But no one asked why the girl who had everything suddenly wanted to disappear.
But if they thought the story was going to end there, they were in for a big show