Ocean full of Secrets

Part I_19

17th of March 2014

My mother always used to tell me that I have the most vivid and fascinating imagination of all the people she knows. And she always told me to write it all down. All the crazy ideas I had, the stories I came up with. All the conspiracies I suspected our neighbours of planning and the biographies of every single monster, both friendly and evil, that had ever inhibited our house. Some of them still do as a matter of fact. She claimed that it might all be useful someday.
She told me I had galaxies trapped inside me and that to let them out all I had to do was keep an open mind. Towards others, towards the world and towards myself. She said I had the potential to be a thousand different people all at once and never should I dare to limit myself. And she told me never to lose my faith in the impossible, my ability to see magic everywhere I went and to never let reality get me down. But that's exactly what I did.

In retrospect, she really was a great mother. She always supported even our craziest dreams and aspirations. She was always there for us, never judging but pulling us into a comforting hug of unconditional love. So why did she leave us? I'd love to believe that it really was just a tragic accident. That she simply wanted to sleep. But something tells me there's more to it than that. The police on the other hand, once they had ruled out homicide, didn't waste much time on determining whether it was suicide or accident, but quickly dropped every investigation.

After her death I was in denial. I didn't even want to admit to the possibility of her ending her own life on purpose. And more importantly, my failure at making her want to stay. But lately it's been starting to make sense to me. The desire to just end it all. To just ... quit. I wonder if it really is over after death. I do hope so. If not I think there should be some kind of warning. I can't imagine the disappointment of someone who finally got up the courage to end their life, only to discover they had been reborn as a caterpillar. But really, all I wanted to say is, I understand, and I'm not angry with her anymore, as I was only a few months ago. Now I just feel sorry. Sorry that she might have felt this way too and felt like she couldn't talk about it to anyone. Sorry that I obviously failed at making her feel like she could talk to me. Sorry for whatever happened to make her feel that way and above all, sorry that I never got a chance to tell her all that.

A few days after the funeral I wanted to do exactly what she always asked me to do: start writing again. But as the years had gone by I could feel my imagination departing, leaving me hollow and empty. Another void inside, sitting alongside the ones left first by my unknown father and then the one created by my mother's death. Even when I tried to start with the one story that had been stuck in my mind ever since I was a little kid but I had never gotten around to writing down: The story of the time Donkey the Rabbit helped his good friend Funky-Monkey to reunite with his lost family at the circus. But even then my mind stayed blank. I wonder if imagination and creativity are things you can find again once they have been lost, or if they're gone forever.

Today Neil found out that I've been skipping classes lately, as well as my therapy sessions. He was furious. He got mad in a way that I've never seen him get mad before. Well, that's not entirely true. Actually it reminded me of all the times he got mad at mum for having one of her frequent inhumanly behaving fits, or another one of her regular outbursts of childlike insanity. But I've never seen him use that look on me. He kept talking about how he was doing his best to help me and all the time I wasn't even trying to get better. How I was starting to act just like her and he wasn't going to let that happen again. About how he knew that he has been a terrible husband and probably an even worse stepfather, but he didn't know what else to do anymore. About how he wished she was still there to tell him what to do and how to handle this situation, because she always knew what to do. He on the other hand was out of his depth. He said that he had tried to help me by giving me as much freedom as I needed, but obviously that hadn't been the right way to go about it either. Something had to change. He said that Saki would come over the next morning to pick me up for school. And he would personally see to it that I will come straight home afterwards and that I will attend every single therapy session from now on. And apart from that I wasn't allowed to leave the house anymore, unless I was being accompanied by someone he trusted.

When he had finished his tirade of accusations and threats, silence fell over us like a binding veil. Not being able to get out a single word, I stood at the foot of the stairs, looking at him incredulously. My head was filling with all these thoughts that it started to feel like it was going to explode. But there were no words in the world to describe everything that was going on inside my mind and so I just stayed quiet. Even if I had wanted to, it felt as if I had lost my ability to formulate words. My tongue felt numb and I wasn't sure anymore how to pronounce even the simplest words. I opened my mouth several times only to close it again and eventually I turned around and slowly ascended the stairs to my bedroom. All the way I could still feel his eyes in my neck. Knowing that by now he would probably be starting to feel bad for what he had said and especially for how he had said it, I began to walk faster. Now that the sound of my feet on the steps had broken the ban that had held us in silence, I did not want to give him a chance to apologize.

Yours,
Cassie