Blood Ties

Chapter7-Silence

Sera

I don't wake up all at once.

I drift.

There's a steady beeping somewhere nearby, distant and insistent, like it's trying to pull me back into my body. Voices move in and out of range. Someone says my name, stretched thin by worry.

Then the sound fades.

And I am fourteen again.

I didn't have the language for what was happening then. I only knew that the rules had changed without anyone explaining why. Doors closed that hadn't before. Looks lingered too long. My body became something I was suddenly aware of, something that felt wrong just for existing.

I remember the exact moment I realised my mum knew.

It wasn't dramatic. There was no shouting, no confrontation. Just a pause in the kitchen, her hands stilling mid-motion. A look that flicked to my face and then away again, too fast to be accidental.

I hadn't said anything.

I didn't need to.

She knew.

The realisation landed quietly, but it hollowed me out all the same. I waited for her to react — for anger, for fear, for action. For her to do the thing mums are supposed to do when something is wrong.

She didn't.

Instead, the house shifted around that knowledge. Conversations became careful. Warnings were disguised as advice. I was told to be mindful, to be mature, to avoid being alone. Not why — just how.

As if the responsibility had somehow become mine.

I learned quickly what not to say. What not to ask. I learned that when I tried to edge toward the truth, she redirected the conversation like it was a bad habit I needed to break.

She chose quiet.

She chose not to see.

That was when I understood something fundamental: knowing and protecting were not the same thing. Love did not automatically mean safety. And a mother could look straight at her child's fear and decide it was inconvenient.

Time blurred after that. Days folded into each other. Nothing changed, and everything did. I stopped expecting rescue. Stopped believing that being honest would help. Survival became about making myself smaller, less noticeable, easier to ignore.

I didn't hate her all at once.

Hatred like that takes time.

It grew in the space where protection should have been. In the way she avoided my eyes. In the way she kept the peace at my expense. In the understanding that I was being asked — silently — to endure something so she wouldn't have to disrupt her life.

I wasn't being protected.

I was being managed.

The truth settles in the same way it always does.

Heavy.

Unavoidable.

She knew.

And she let it happen.

The sound of the world tries to reach me — a distant beeping, muffled voices — but it doesn't pull me back. It only bleeds into the memory, layering itself over the past until I can't tell which pain belongs to when.

Fourteen-year-old me learned how to disappear.

Adult me learned how to endure.

They aren't as separate as I once thought.

The dark closes in again, thick and familiar, wrapping around the truth I've carried for years. There is no relief in it. No clarity. Just the steady understanding that some wounds don't heal — they wait.

I don't wake up.

I sink.

And the silence takes me with it.