Through The Dark

29 - Emmalyn

29 - Emmalyn

This was not a good day. I had not heard from Ben all day long and that hurt me deeply. Not that I had tried much either. Life was about taking, but also about giving. There had to be a certain balance about it, a thing most humans had not seemed to master, me included in that portion of humanity. It was ironic, since I pretended to be omnipotent, to be able to do everything –and most importantly, I pretended to be able to get everything right, perfect.

Lately I had started to finally realize that it was not like that. I was nothing special, just like everyone else. I made mistakes and I had to pay for them.

I had slept out last night, leaving my broken family –a breaking that had partly been done by me- on their own. I had left because I was not ready for any explanations or further discussions. I had decided to finally be irresponsible and do something for my own good, or bad. I just had no idea of what else to say, and to be honest, I was afraid of what either my mom or Ben would say.

Suddenly, I was very pissed off at my dad. He only took, not caring about the consequences. That was not the way a parent was supposed to be. They were supposed to give and give to their kids, not take away from them. I knew that it was probably not fair to blame it all on him, but it relieved some of my guilt and I was all up for it at the moment. Otherwise, it would consume me completely, and the thought of not being strong enough to deal with it scared me.

That was something new, I had never been afraid before of not being strong. I had been raised that way and the part that was missing, life and William Anderson had made sure I learned about it. I had turned tough by life circumstances, so what was going on now? Had I not been prepared, almost bred for survival to a situation like this?

I was failing my family terribly, and I wanted to kick myself for thinking that they were failing me, too. But how to get my mom's weeping out of my head? I had to listen to music loudly to try and drown the sound all day long. I was sure I had never before heard such an awful and heartbreaking sound. It was terrible, to see your loved ones getting hurt. I had found out that it hurt even more than being hurt yourself.

Olivia had tried to make me feel like it had been her idea to invite me to sleep over out of the blue. But I was sure that the decrepit look on my face had a lot of influence on that. I was grateful for it, though. I could not go back to that place, and I had nowhere else to go.

I checked my phone for what felt, and probably was, the millionth time this morning. Ben had not even replied to my message from last night where I told him that I was staying at Olivia's place. I had mentioned her in the hopes to get him to talk just to ask about her. But he replied nothing -another blow to the heart. I hated being like this with my brother. It felt so wrong. I was afraid that the longer it carried on, the harder it would be for our family to heal and go back to what it was.

I wanted to cry, partly because I had realized he was right. I spent less and less time at home to run away from the problems that haunted us. I was leaving him on his own to selfishly save myself. The thought obscured my morning even more. I really was nothing like I pretended to be, and I was just realizing that I was lying to myself, even more than I was lying to everyone else around me.

It was awful, what I was doing. Ben was just a young boy. I could deal with this or just decide to leave it aside and he could not. He had not learned that yet. I roared and gloated about how great I was and I could not even be there for my family when they needed me. What kind of a person was I? Ben deserved better, and so did mom. But with Aunt Diana and Leonard in the house, it was hard to try to keep my family together and discuss these matters with them. What was I to do? Wait until they left? It might be too late by then.