The Concept of Perfection

Chapter Eighteen- No Longer

Chapter Eighteen- No Longer

            Unreachable.

            That’s what the sky has always been. Unreachable. And I think of all the other things that are out of my reach. My past. Who I am. Who I was. The rest of the world. Vince. Adrian. The words of that poem. All so out of my reach.

            It’s like no matter how hard I try, nothing’s within my grasp anymore.

            Will the sky ever be in my reach?

            I wonder, because that’s all I could ever do.

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            The moment I entered the house, my knees wobbled. Clutching the shoebox in my hands, I sniffed my way inside the house. And the next second, Aunt Isby was looking at me, and I know she wasn’t just looking at me. She was seeing me. And she asked me to sit down, so I did.

            “What’s wrong? Addy, what’s wrong?”

            “I’m—I’m fine,” I replied.

            “I asked you what’s wrong, not whether you’re fine or not,” she told me. And at that moment, she sounded so much like my mother, and I cried more. And more again.

            “Addy,” she said. “You can’t just cry and say you’re fine. I care, okay? And I don’t want you to keep everything in. That’s what you’ve been doing ever since you got here. Keeping everything in. So, don’t.”

            I sniffed, and I stopped, because it was the first time somebody ever told me that. I mean, I know. I know I almost never say the things I want to say. I know that I’ve always tried keeping everything in. But it was different when someone told you.

            “You’ve done just that for the first part of your life, Add, and I’m just telling you… you still have the rest of it to break free,” Aunt Isby said, and she didn’t even sound like she was consoling me. She wasn’t even trying to stop me from crying. She was just telling me to break free.

            And all these years I kept everything else, I realized why I did. Why I kept quiet. Why I cried only when I was alone. Why I didn’t answer when people asked me what was wrong. Why I was just keeping everything all to myself.

            It was because it’s different. It’s different when someone told you that you shouldn’t keep everything bottled up inside you. It’s different because they’re telling you to break free. It’s different because for the first time, you feel like talking. And you feel like talking because you feel like someone’s hearing you.

            So I told Aunt Isby. About Adrian, about Vince, about Alvin, about the letters, about that poem I can’t remember, about myself, about my mother, about my father, about my own feelings.

            “You’re strong, Add. You know I really like that about you, right?”

            I fell silent. We both fell silent. And then she hugged me tightly, and by that time, I felt really sleepy, like I could close my eyes and fall asleep instantly.

            “Break free,” she might have whispered to me as she hugged me, but I couldn’t be sure.

            And when I got to my room, the shoebox still in my hand, I wanted to do just that. I wanted to just break free. Because somebody wasn’t just there to hear me out, but was there to really listen.