Kendra nearly walked into me but managed to avoid a crash by stepping aside in the right moment. Looking up from previously being concentrated on her palms, slight shock mirrored in her brown irises as they grew larger once she realised that I was right in front of her.
Our friendship had always been so effortlessly light. The weight now that hovered between us like a gas about to suffocate me was nearly unbearable. I half expected Kendra to leave without saying a word, but it seemed like she was waiting for me to make the first step. I figured now was as good a chance as any to do just that.
"I never meant to hurt you, Kendra." I wasn't sure if that was a good start, but I knew it was the truth. It had never been my intention to hurt her feelings, but I understood that that was what I had done, regardless.
Kendra nodded without responding verbally.
"I know that you care about me, more than you care about a lot of people. And I know that it's hard for you not to know when something is going on, though you're perfectly aware that something's amiss. You hate it because you can't help, and that's ultimately the only thing that you ever want. You've got so much compassion inside your soul that it can hurt you, because there are so many people out there that aren't like that. And although it's your strongest quality, it's also the one that makes life hard sometimes."
Kendra's eyes became watery, and I could feel how my words were impacting her.
"Ironically enough, I don't have that amount of compassion. I can feel what other's feel, but I don't feel it the way you do. You truly hurt when someone else is in pain. You don't need a gift to feel it, you just do. It's because you care so much. And since I hurt for people that I don't even know, compassion is what will kill me if I'd have as much of it as you did. So, I build up walls." I lowered my voice after taking a deep breath.
"I build up walls because I can't bear feeling someone else's hot anger boil my blood. I don't want to shed tears when foreign pain slips into me. I hate feeling afraid when it's not me that's scared of the dark. I don't want to laugh when someone else is happy, but I'm dying inside."
I held back my own tears and instead forced myself to continue.
"I avoided feeling emotions altogether, or at least, I spent a great deal of time and strength on trying to. It didn't do me any good", I continued, thinking back to my bloody nose, the loss of sight, the outbursts.
"I'm trying to deal with my gift by embracing it. It's hard, because my core is like a magnet, drawing everything in, and it's hard not to let emotions take away my control."
I reminded myself that I needed to get to the point. Kendra silently looked at me, not saying anything, only listening. Her heartbeat was steady and she seemed unfazed on the outside.
"What I'm trying to say is that I haven't really figured out what works, what can put my mind in a state of ease and calm everything down inside that I'm in control and okay with who I am. All I know is that right now, I don't know where I belong and I don't know what I feel half of the time, which is why I can't tell you. I suck everything in. Everything bad that has happened, I just suck it in and it stays there and makes my soul rot with a darkness that just spreads because I don't know who I'm supposed to be. I don't know if I'm supposed to be in control, or if I'm supposed to be as unhinged as I am. I don't know how to deal with myself, so how am I going to even start thinking about how to deal with Reagan? Or with the war that we'll probably be a part of? With his mother? With everything the council hid from us and still haunts me? Holden's betrayal? Reece's utter disappointment in me? Or Emmet, being alone in so much because I'm such a mess and Reece has so many responsibilities? How am I supposed to deal with all of that and not fall apart? Who's going to pick up the pieces when I finally blow up? Why can't I pick myself up, get a grip and not let my mother's face haunt me all the time? Why does my soul believe that I'm not good enough when every cell in my body is trying to be?"
I began hyperventilating by the time I finished my unfiltered process of putting my thoughts into spoken words. Instead of healing me by talking about it, it felt like I was ripping every scar open and letting them bleed for no reason but to make someone else understand something about me I barely did myself.
Kendra wrapped her arms around me and whispered into my hair as she held me. "Take deep breaths. In, and out," she said, her voice a soft murmur.
The next words she spoke, she did so with the influence of her gift. I could feel it because they floated towards me like a singing melody, wrapping themselves around me as if its sole purpose was to create warmth and a sense of ease. My frantic breathing quickly became calmer, as the melody slid through my soul.
"You're going to be alright. You're calm, and at ease, and you're breathing in slowly through your nose, and out through your mouth. You're hearing the wind around you, you're feeling my arms touching your back, and nothing else."
I wasn't sure how to feel about Kendra using her gift on me in a moment where I wanted nothing more than to be rid of my own. Conflicting emotions passed through me and I couldn't quite sort them out. While I appreciated her willingness to help me despite being mad with me, it felt like all it did was suppress everything further. As if I hadn't already done that enough.
Sensing my turmoil, Kendra said, "All you have to do is calm down. That's all this about. Calm."
And with a few more breaths going through my nose and burning its way down my throat into my lungs, just to be exhaled in an equally painful way, I finally took a breath that supplied me with actual air.
"Good. There you go."
Kendra and I stepped out of our embrace and although my body was capable of breathing and standing upright, the conflicting feelings still remained, and I felt strangely empty after having said so much about myself. It was like a void suddenly became tangible in myself and nothing meant anything anymore. Everything just didn't matter.
"You're a good person, C. You always have been. The things you've been forced to deal with... Sometimes I asked myself how you're even able to still smile. When we left the Iarhus and the weather was nice and you just laughed, you remember that?"
I did. It was because the Iarhus was so stuffy, and I had been proud of myself for delaying Kendra's Promised Bond with Dante. I nearly scoffed at remembering those actions that at the time had made perfect sense, but now seemed like something a foolish, naive girl would have done.
"I don't think I would have ever been able to survive everything you went through," she muttered.
"Despite being pulled from the only home that you were comfortable in, despite your mother physically hitting you, breaking your bones, teaching you that you weren't good for anything, you laughed because you felt like you could breathe. I know how dense the Iarhus could be," she said, chuckling lightly before turning serious again, "You let yourself feel good in that moment. And it takes so much strength to be okay, despite being told that feeling good is a punishment. That you don't deserve to have anything in your life succeed, just because nothing succeeded in hers."
Kendra became agitated then but continued anyway.
Something in my mind started to unravel with each punch Kendra threw.
"Your mother was weak, and her treatment of you was proof of that, every single day. She was weak for making you clean her spotless room and punish you for being too slow by sending you naked out into the snow. She was a pathetic excuse of a person by slapping you senseless when she witnessed my momma praising you for something she thought unworthy of any sort of compliment. I get angry thinking about all the things you've shared with me over the years!"
My mind became the biggest open wound of them all and Kendra relentlessly tore everything open that she could find.
"Your mother is a monster, C, and I know that you refuse to see it that way. I know she's your mother, and that has always been your excuse. But it doesn't matter! Someone that does what she did is not allowed to have the title of a mother, and it certainly doesn't get to be used as an excuse for all the horrible things she's done to you, and you refuse to face! You say that you don't know what you feel, and you say that you don't know how to deal with yourself. You know why? Because you were constantly being told that being yourself was wrong, when in truth, the only right thing you could ever do is be yourself!"
Kendra was shouting by now, and I couldn't hold back the sob that raked through my entire body with a force that made my knees connect to the ground beneath me. The pain that shot through my bones was nothing compared to the shrill scream that tore through my head.
"Stop it," I pleaded, my voice barely above a whisper.
Kendra either didn't hear or didn't care.
"You're good enough. Actually, I don't think anyone out there is good enough for you!"
Shaking my head, I cried silently and wished she would finally stop.
I didn't want to hear that. I didn't want to hear any of it.
"You deserve to be happy. You deserve to appreciate everything that you succeed in. And your gift is only the beginning. I imagine that the magnitude of your gift is highly underestimated, and you just need someone to guide you for you to be in control. Your gift has always been reduced to a curse. So extreme, that you begin believing it yourself. You, Catherine, are my Maecena. I know you better than anyone in Espheros does. And you are meant to heal this world. And you will heal it. Because you are good enough. And there is no one that can stop you. No one but you."
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This was a hard and emotional chapter to write. So many emotions came out of Catherine which she's been keeping bottled up... I hope that you guys felt a little of that!
Did you think it was high time she let all of this out?