BLACK SWAN||PJM||

𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗋𝗍𝗒 𝗌𝖾𝗏𝖾𝗇

∙・•・•∙・•✿•・∙•・•・∙

𝐄𝐔𝐍𝐇𝐀

My limbs were weighted down with weariness on the train ride home, a dull, cold blanket of hopelessness lying over me and suffocating me in its inescapable embrace. My thoughts, only moving painstakingly slow and gloomy, throbbed in my head, forming a headache. My whole form was slumping under the pressure of my mother's illness, and I failed to hold myself upright in the seat despite being in the public sphere, despite the stares of other passengers directed at me, some concerned, others plainly curious and intrusive.

No improvement.

"No improvement," the doctor had informed me with an apologizing and pitying smile, resting his hand on my shoulder in what he probably deemed a comforting gesture. "Her condition hasn't changed the slightest." Seemingly upon noticing the devastated slump of my shoulders, he had added: "But, see, Miss Moon, at least that also means that it hasn't worsened."

And while that was, of course, good to hear, it didn't succeed the slightest to lift my spirits as it meant nothing other than stagnant suffering for my mom, who was imprisoned on her bed, cables of all sorts sticking into her pale, bloodless skin to provide her with medication that never seemed to have an effect.

And currently, I once again sat on the train like every Thursday, torn between a longing to arrive at home as I wanted to put my exhausted body into bed, hoping that if I would wake up, everything would turn out to just have been a cruel nightmare, and fearing to enter the house that was void of my mother's presence and touch, the comforting scent of her flowery perfume having long faded. Thinking of the loneliness that would inevitably overcome me when I would open the front door was enough to make me want to never get off the train, hoping for it to drive further and further away from my problems until the passing time would make me blissfully forget them, my memories slowly fading from my mind, leaving me in content ignorance.

And I wondered, why did everything in my life have to go wrong? Why couldn't fate or whatever was out there deciding my future just let me live in peace?

In an attempt to pull me out of my thoughts (and maybe also to punish me), I bumped my head against the window, using a bit more force than intended, earning weirded out stares from the nosy passengers that crowded the train, coming home after a long day of work.

But I didn't react as my mind was once again somewhere else, my eyes impassively staring outside while the pressure constricting my lungs and slowly suffocating me grew stronger and stronger.

When I eventually arrived at the front door of the house, my energy was so drained that I didn't even manage to hold my posture upright, my hands trembling and my mind so exhausted that I honestly almost admired myself for managing not to break yet, for not crying in front of the passengers on the train or the pedestrians on the street. And now that I was standing in front of the house, I wanted nothing more than to let myself fall into my bed and pull the blanket over me in a desperate attempt to hide away from all my struggles and hardships.