Chapter 2
686 Words
7 months earlier...
I felt a great sadness as I stepped off the plane that day after having left almost immediately after my father had been buried. In my world going away was a coping mechanism, the only way I knew of getting over the pain.
Two pairs of faded jeans, two T shirts and two sweaters were the only clothes I had taken from my walk in closet. I had looked at the different branded shoes, designer clothes and bags and had hated how they were worth so much, yet they could not bring my father back.
I had managed to withdraw some money which I was going to keep on my person as I wanted to avoid being tracked down by my over controlling mother had I used any of my cards for transactions. I knew that the only way I could keep her mind at ease was to call her and my sister at least once a month just so they knew I was ok.
My mother, sister and I had never been in good books. It was always my mother and Jayda against me and my dad. It sucked that I no longer had an ally, someone who would be on my side no matter what. Someone who never judged me in the way I dressed the way I talked or in the way I decided to live my life.
My dad had been the only person who I felt saw me for who I was and loved me with all that he had. My mother on the other hand always had a way of making me feel that being myself was not good enough.
“Why don’t you dress more like your sister” she would say.
“Why do you hang around with those kind of people? Don’t you see that they are below you?”
“Why can’t she just be normal, why can’t she act like Jayda I mean it almost seems as though she was bought in this world to taunt me for whatever reason which I don’t know” I once heard her say to her friends.
As I grew older and became more of the person I wanted to be the more I became the child my mother loved to dislike. My sister Jayda however was her very heartbeat, a mini version of my mother in the way she spoke, dressed and in the company she kept.
There was nothing else besides our identical physical attributes that was similar. Jayda always had perfectly made, long hair, a well-made up face complete with perfectly shaped eyebrows while I preferred short hair, no make-up, a pair of loosely fitting, ripped jeans and a one of those “s**t Happens” or “Thou shall not try me…mood 24:7” statement T shirts which always drove my mum up the wall.
My dad on the other hand…well it hurts just thinking about him and how we would go on road trips to no specific place but to hunt for the next best burger joint. He always stuck to his usual drink on ice while I tried out different coloured cocktails and local brews of wherever we ended up and how we would listen to his or my favourite song depending on who was riding shotgun.
I missed him terribly and after having lived carefree and vicariously in the past two years; moving from place to place, making friends and lovers and then moving on to the next place coming back home felt strange and filled my heart with a great sadness.
The sadness wasn’t only because I would have to face the fact that my father was no longer there. I had to come back and be a pillar for my mother who was falling apart after hearing news that my twin sister Jayda had packed her bags and left. She had called my mother and told her she wanted to be left alone and that she did not want to be found.
As I walked out of the airport I hoped that my mother was going to be my pillar just as I was going to be hers, nothing that I had been through prepared me for what was to come…
- Writer
