Fake Fiancée

20. Youth - 2

20. Youth – Part 2

Dedicated to anyone who has lost a parent. 

“And if you’re still bleeding, you’re the lucky ones. ‘Cause most of our feelings they are dead, and they are gone. We’re setting fire to our insides for fun. Collecting pictures from the flood that wrecked our home. It was a flood that wrecked this home. And you caused it, and you caused it, and you caused it. Well I’ve lost it all, I’m just a silhouette. A lifeless face that you’ll soon forget.” – Daughter (listen to the song please, it makes the chapter so much better)

 

 Andie

 

   Many say that the first thing the mind does when you lose someone important is go into denial. It’s the phase where you simply can’t believe they’re gone. Maybe because you never thought they would ever leave you, or because you underestimated that person so much that you never actually knew what you had until you lost it, and when you did, it seemed impossible to you. I already went through that phase, and neither of those reasons were the one I was looking for. I found it unbelievable because I thought the day she would leave me I would probably follow right after her. But I wasn’t even there to do that. I wasn’t there, and that’s what hurts the most.

       The second phase is realization, and that’s the one that hurts the most. That’s when you realize there’s nothing you can do to fix it, when you realize that they’re gone, and you’ll never see them again, when you realize all the things you probably wanted to say, all the moments you wanted to share with that person. When you wish they were here to comfort you. That’s when the pain hits, and it seems like the world is crumbling.

       I believe I’m going to live through that phase my whole life.

The third phase and learning how to breathe again, its holding on to anything that makes you strong, or perhaps finding a distraction. I haven’t gotten to that phase yet, but I wish it would come sooner, because the pain is so unbearable that making a move to catch that thing that makes you strong, or that thing that is used as a distraction is simply enough to crumble you all over again.

     I knew I was somehow stuck in between the first and the second in this moment, as I stared at my mother’s coffin. I felt so hollow inside, like a giant hole had been punched through me and dried up all my tears. I just stared at it, as the priest prayed for my mother. Auntie said it was heart failure, and I somehow knew that would always be it. I think it was when they were preparing to put her down on her grave that phase two hit me. And I ran to her.

   I ran to her as if she was still alive, I ran to her for comfort, even though she wasn’t there, and when my body crashed against the coffin I cried. I hadn’t cried since when I found out, I knew I was still in shock back then. But it was all real now. It was like a slap to the face, hard, harsh, and very painful.

     “Please, come back.” I cried, my arms around the coffin. “You promised, you promised you wouldn’t leave me. Why are you leaving now? Why now when I need you the most?” I sobbed.

   I felt someone’s arms wrap around my waist, and try to pull me away from the coffin, but I struggled back and kept my arms around it. “No, let go off me!” I cried, “Please, come back. You can’t leave me!” I began to yell now, and the person had managed to lift me off the ground and pull me back.

  I still reached for it. “No! Don’t put her down there! She’s going to come back, she has to come back. She has to...”  I pushed the person’s arms from around me and struggled to get free, and ran to her, but I wouldn’t even go two steps because I crumbled down to the grass in the same second as they began to put her down.