Fear made its way up my back, grazing my spine. I held onto myself as I made my way to the door.
"Going anywhere?" Mother said. I forgot to ask for permission, shoot.
"Oh. I'm going to Kiyomi's house to"
"To study for your final exams?" She completed my sentence. I froze.
"Yes," I said.
"You're not carrying any books, Hana." She said, piercing me with her eyes.
She said my name. She said it. She caught me. And for a second I thought she was going to shoot me for it.
"Do you take me as a fool?" She spoke with a calm tone.
"No, Mother," I said, shaking. I'm not breathing.
"I know you're not going to study." She didn't dare move her gaze from mine, I wasn't looking at her.
My voice left me, it vanished.
"I had the coincidence of speaking to your friend's mother. I had the pleasure to find out you've been lying to me. Lying to the both of us." My father remained quiet as my Mother stood up and walked over to me.
"Do you dare explain what kind of nonsense you've been doing while you're wasting your future? At the coffee shops and beaches?" She voiced. I was looking at the floor.
"I saw the photos of you at the seaside. How shameful is it to see my daughter prancing around such boys doing god knows what in that disgusting clothing? Don't you ever think of your image or your family's name? Where's your mind to tell you right from wrong, you shameless girl?" She yelled.
She caught me. I shouldn't have lied, I'm a fool. I should've known, and done better.
Shame, image, family, daughter, boys, nonsense, future, waste.
I'm still not breathing.
She grabbed my arm and looked at me. My head kept spinning and my eyes were watering and I lost my senses. That burned.
Her voice went cold and my last breath was so coarse my lungs were now yelping and my esophagus was drying out. She can't be ashamed of me, right? No, no! She doesn't know, she hasn't seen my last biology test or knows he came so I can tutor him. She understands, doesn't she? But she doesn't, and for the first time, I'm not too shocked.
"Beaches, coffee shops, boys, are you trying to ruin your life? When I first found out, I thought I'd let you enjoy something for yourself, thinking you'd use that brainless head of yours and stop fooling around. But as I predicted ever so effortlessly, you failed. You failed and decided to take advantage of our absence! You continued with this naivety until this very moment, letting your future slip away, as you've always allowed it to. You've always let your future slip away, never trying to reach out and take it. Never trying hard enough for everything, lazing around. I don't know why I thought you'd put in an ounce of effort and please us for once. And there you stand, lying once more! But you so hoped we wouldn't ever know because we're idiots. We're the fools that raised you and believed you would take on our family's name and honor it like the rest of us have worked so restlessly for."
It was for nothing. It was all for nothing.
My achievements, my work, my grades, my image, my life. It was for nothing. Every breath I took to make them proud made them ashamed and I am nothing but the empty void in this family. An empty void among a family of stars.
Anything and everything I do will be transparent and only I will see its value. I won't ever be one of the greats, a member of this family, or this world that wants so much from me.
Her face twisted with disgust. Her eyebrows furrowed and her face scrunched like there was an awful stench in the air. She pointed and put in all her might to express her shame.
It didn't feel like she was looking at her daughter. Not one bit. Her eyes were burning with fury and hatred and I wanted to scream until that expression left because it was not fair. The way her face was red and her eyes wanted to get rid of me was an expression I won't ever forget.
It didn't feel like she was looking at me and I wanted to snap her out of this moment and remind her I'm the little seven-year-old daughter that brought her an award and only ever wanted to hear her say "I'm proud of you". It's me, I wanted to scream. Don't you know me at all? It felt like she was looking at a disgusting monster. And she was. She was looking straight at me. Yet still, I was confused.
I never knew my Mother had such feelings of repulsion for the child she birthed. The child she carried and nurtured with the food she ate. The child she raised and kissed and bathed and clothed and loved so tenderly. Who knew my Mother had it in her to say these things? But it was the truth. She's proved that I am nothing but a burden through it.
It didn't feel like I was her daughter, I think she let go of me somewhere along this journey.
Is that how she sees me, thinks of me? Am I that horrid?
She continued to shame me. My armor was destroyed.
She then let go of me. I felt her hot breath in strong exhales and soon enough there'll be a flame coming out to burn me. I felt my hair covering my face and its sides and I'm glad it did, it hid the shame I felt. I've ruined my family, I've ruined their name, I've ashamed everyone. My father was sitting, staring at the floor. I felt he was ashamed but a part of me was hoping he didn't hear anything, somehow.
I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe. Frankly, I didn't want to do both. I didn't dare do both until she excused me in the most repulsed tone.
I knew she wanted to keep going, somehow. I knew she wanted to keep screaming and shaming me until I fell to the floor and begged her for forgiveness at her feet. I knew that she wanted to expose me bare in front of my father and tell her about Ushijima and all those nights I left the house and that day at the beach and everything else she knew. But I don't know how much she knows. I was aware that if she had the power to drain me with her insults and screams, she would've. However she didn't, and for a second I thought it was because she loved me or felt some kind of remorse that held her back.
Each step I took after that felt like walking on nails with the weight of an elephant. It was torture. I walked past my sitting father and tucked my fingers under the sleeves of my hoodie, the last thing she needed to see was my red fingertips. I didn't explain or even tell them about my ongoing head spins and the physical pain I've felt these past weeks. They didn't need to know and I didn't dare burden them, they have enough on their shoulders. Papers and documents and meetings and stock, it was a lot. I knew that seeing their daughter betray their trust and waste her future hurt them enough, so I should suck it all up and stay silent.
I was about to go up the stairs with the words disgust and shame written in my vision when she said something I'd been fearing she'd say for the past eighteen years of my existence. The past eighteen years of my hard work and academic excellence.
That little thought of mine that held on to the hope that she loved me perished. It was dragged and burned and buried somewhere so deep in my heart that her words wouldn't ever find it. I felt it decompose when she said,
"I've never been more disappointed I have to call the filthy liar I raised my daughter. You won't ever be worth that title, or this family's title either. Don't think for a second you'll ever be sufficient."
Disappointed. Disappointed. Disappointed. Disappointed. Disappointed. Disappointed.
I heard a ringing in my ears and a bell in my head and a laugh in my chest. I froze in my tracks and looked at her for the first time since she started yelling. The tears flooded my eyes and my fingertips burned once more and I didn't do anything about it. Betrayal. You were supposed to be proud of me.
I deserve to feel pain. I deserve to feel shame. I'm a disappointment. I'm a disgrace. I've shamed my family. I've shamed my ancestors. I've shamed my parents and my name and I've been irresponsible with my future. I will be a bigger disappointment when I become an adult and I will achieve nothing because I am nothing. I've wasted the life they've given me and I should be happy that I breathe the very air they've blessed me with. If only they could send me to hell, where I belong. That's where I want to end up at this point. Surely there's a place for people like me. There's no room for shaming burdens in the home of the noble Takahashi family. Burdens that attract scandals and disgrace.
I went into my room and closed the door centimeter by centimeter, quiet as a mouse. I stood against the door. Panting, I heard them take their things and leave, murmuring. The moon had arrived. I dragged myself to the window and saw that they'd just left the driveway. I sat right by the window, on the edge of my bed.
The moon shone. It spoke, but it didn't. It understood, even though it was an object. It didn't even have vocal cords yet it told me to let it out. I have ears yet I didn't hear it but I felt it. My tears escaped, rushing downwards as if I'd been stabbed and it was blood. They kept going and going and my anxiety grew more than its size and my heart was racing and my hands were shaking.
At that moment I felt free to cry and scream. I cried and whimpered but to no avail, every cry shook and hesitated. I sounded like a child and I looked like one.
My fingers burned and screamed and my head pounded intolerably I had to clutch onto my forehead. I had to pull at the hair on my hairline and I did it just for the fun of feeling something. I sat on my bed curled up and rocking back and forth with words and letters replacing my blood and that sentence snapping my heart clean in half. I held my head in my hands. I was sobbing so aggressively every younger version of myself was crying with me. They decided to join me, maybe my agony was entertaining.
I could've sworn that I relived my life in my brain where I imagined pleasing her. Every memory of success turned into one I wanted to throw away and burn because it was all for nothing. My parents think I'm a disgrace who does nothing but mess up yet still that little girl who was so punctual and mature at such a young age is screaming in my throat, wanting to be free. She wants to rest. So do I, I tell her.
Everything I did wasn't ever enough, it was always under the rim, insufficient, lacking, could be better, and needed work and improvement. Everything was transparent and I wanted to be transparent. And now it didn't even matter at all.
I wanted to live in the gaps of time where there was no time, where time was frozen, where it didn't exist. Being nonexistent, how lovely. I wanted time to stop and the world to end because mine came crashing down so fast I couldn't seek shelter. It all fell on me, my life fell apart in my own hands because of me.
~
An hour or two have passed and all I can think about is what she said. I'd lost my sense of time because the way the word disappointed rolled off her tongue was the venom I never knew existed. The only one I had no immunity to. These tears burned, but I can remember that sting, I felt it not too long ago.
I'm still crying.
My eyes are still burning.
My body won't stop rocking and shivering.
I keep begging myself to breathe.
My back ached at the position I was sitting in, so I stood up with my phone in my hand and my tears soaking the knees of my sweatpants. My eyes were stretched and puffed like they were fresh out of the oven while my fingers lingered. My heart was still halved and I can feel the shards cut up the lungs I can barely breathe through.
For an hour or two I was sitting in front of a drawer carrying all my awards and medals. I was going through all of them, staining each one with a few tears, wiping it as I go. I couldn't help it, I sat there and stared at them, like a maniac. Rereading the signatures, rereading everything.
I had lost my collectivity and I was nothing but a crying girl slapping my head with my hands out of pure frustration. What was I to do? I had just thrown the eighteen years of my life away like they were a tag on a new shirt. It was so bizarre how every one of these papers and medals have completely lost their value if they had any value at all.
I was going to grab a fresh shirt from my closet, I took my first step toward it, and then I was on the floor. I crashed down.
What's happening?
I fell. Silly me, I tripped. But why wasn't I getting up?
I had no energy, everything in my body was limp and lifeless. The floor must've sucked the energy out of me. I was a doll waiting to be played with. My abdomen was pressed against my carpet and all I could stare at was the space under my desk where the dust was playing around.
My knees and hands are weak and my head is spinning harder than ever. I can hear nails scraping against a chalkboard or the sound of metal pounding my skull.
I'm on my right side.
I dropped my phone when I fell and it's a couple of steps away. Can't it be closer? I'm on my right side and my legs are curling toward me. I don't know what's happening to me. I'm slipping away. I'm shaking and I know that my stomach is somewhere down deep in my torso but I can't reach for it yet. I feel a tear fall from my left eye across my nose with my eyes wide. What's happening to me?
I felt my consciousness slipping away and I knew something went wrong. I couldn't reach for my stomach but my consciousness is the last thing I have left. It feels as though my body has given up and wants to rest but that pesky brain of mine wants to call out for what could be the last time in my life. I've come to terms with it.
Yet, I'm panicking. Even though I'm on the floor, the word no was escaping my lips so fast I felt like the soldier that died in the passage I read a few months back. It's human instinct to fight death when you're about to meet him. I thought I was ready to go, to fade, to vanish, to never return, to scar everyone with my disappearance. But the word no means otherwise. I was screaming no and the tears were rushing down past my nose and onto the carpet.
I wasn't ready to die.
I'm trapped in my body. My muscles are going to sleep and my nervous system is shutting down and there's so much chaos in my brain that the pain in my head is almost gone. I hit my head on something I can't fathom as I fell, I'm not sure if it's the floor but the right side of my head is malfunctioning. Slowly, I'm reaching for my phone with my right arm and my shaking hand. I need to call someone, anyone, to help me.
Her voice is back.
Her words are back and ready to juggle knives while standing on my back, ready to drop them on me. That's when I thought of the unthinkable. If I was such a burden, why fight to be alive? I can rest now, finally. I can forget about everything and disappear.
So I stopped reaching for my phone so desperately. I didn't do anything. I let my right arm lay limp in front of me. I even took the time to look at how thin it had become with its pale skin clinging to the bone.
I want to rest. I want to lay back and feel my chest rise and fall with ease. I want to rest. Other than making her proud, that's all I want. And for once I have the opportunity to gain one or the other. I will rest.
My mind emerged into another realm. The one that was calm, relaxed, loose, and reminiscing.
I thought of my moments with Wakatoshi, my parents, Kiyo, and all my achievements, and best moments of praise. Such beautiful memories emerged into the picture one by one with a white light in between. They came in slow, with a soft strum in the background and I felt my lips twitching upward at the sight of the day he and I found that lavender in my backyard. I could've been hysterical because I was crying at the same time. My head wanted to play tricks on me and torture me before I could rest.
I could've sworn I heard his voice somewhere between the voices on the beach that day when we were alone on the rock. We were young fools, yet still not that young. It wasn't even that long ago, but I was the fool that loved him and I got my karma. We were so peaceful, just enjoying silence more than noise, listening to the overlapping waves and watching as the ocean worked away.
I kept reminiscing and now that I think of it, I hope it scars. Because I've formally given up, I've formally resigned. Every inch of my body has given up and wants to let loose. The persistent Hana has given up and will finally rest. So yes, I hope it scars.
I hope my disappearance from this earth punctures them like darts on their back.
I hope it kills them how it kills me to walk every day knowing all I do is never enough.
For once, I hope for my pain to be bound to them as they've bound misery to me.
I hope they feel so much regret they repent until they forget what it means.
I hope it hurts and teaches everyone to listen and love.
If I end up as the example of why that's all important, I'll take it.
As long as it hurts. As long as it hurts every time my name rolls off their tongues.
—————-———-———-———-—————-———-----------------—————-———-———-———-Author: screaming crying throwing up pulling my hair up banging my head against the wall
I genuinely apologize this was so much darker than intended 😶
There are so many song options for this chapter but since gilded lily is no. 1 always,
there are other ones if you're sick of hearing the same song for the last 4 chapters 😃 so there's twin size mattress - the front bottoms, you're on your own kid - taylor swift, would've could've should've - also by taylor swift, TV - billie Eilish, cigarettes out the window - tv girl (this is my fav after gilded lily), hey kids - Molina, and way down we go - ashris (idrk)
p.s. reading this out loud makes it even more depressing!
enjoy </3