My heart is like a star. Not in the way that it neither shines brighter than an entire galaxy, nor in the way that it radiates enough energy to eclipse the sun. Rather my heart is a star because when it disappears, it leaves only a black hole behind. My heart was strong enough to pull all emotions into a vacuum of despair and denial. No light, no matter how bright, no matter how powerful, can do nothing to escape the dark reaches of my mind. Some might find that morbid, but something about me finds it slightly poetic, to know that there are things in this world so strong.
Before my mother left as a black hole, she used to always call me her star. She would curl into me and call me the only thing that lit up the night sky, and the only thing worth reaching for. I'm not really sure how my older or younger siblings truly felt about this. I can't help but feel like they may have come to resent me for it.
When the world was so cruel as to take her away from me, I stopped believing in the existence of stars. To me, they were nothing but black holes in disguise. They took all your feelings and kept them. Every ounce of sadness, and joy, and anger all fell prey to a single concept. Stars still specked themselves across the Virginia skyline, but to me, they were nothing but lies; empty promises and stillborn thoughts.
Even when I'd driven my car into a tree in the last week of the school in my junior year, I didn't feel anything. There was nothing left inside me to feel. The only thing that existed when I looked deep down was despair and emptiness. It's not depression. It's not anything really. How do you even begin to explain the darkness of an all-consuming vortex that does nothing but eat away at you?
My dad wasn't mad when I came home from the hospital after the accident, just disappointed. That seems to be his thing. It's like he has his own vortex that stops him from being angry. Every now and again you'll see the remnants of it rise up and claw its way out, but never to the extent that you would expect. He'd come to rely on being disappointed in me.
As far as he was concerned, I'd had everything going for me before my car decided to veer into that tree. I was popular. I was well liked. I was a jock. I was pretty much everything that he wanted me to be and more. The one thing I wasn't? Happy.
I'll go down fighting say that the tree came out of nowhere. To the ends of the earth, I will tell you that it was an accident. In many ways though, I'm truly and honestly glad that it happened. For the first time in a long time I couldn't rely on the one thing that made me untouchable. There was a jocky frat boy that died with that crash, and I'm thankful, because I didn't really like him all that much to begin with.
The accident had done extensive damage to my arm. Not to the point where I needed to have it amputated (despite how much I thought that would have made an excellent story / conversation starter), but to the point where I could no longer play baseball.
My dad saw it as a hindrance. I saw it as a relief. I'd never actually liked baseball in the first place.
Sometimes my father would blame my reckless attitude on my mother. He said I got it from her, like a lot of my personality. The only real problem he ever had with that was that my siblings were moving on just fine, so why couldn't I?
But I didn't want to move on. I didn't want to forget about mom. I just wanted to stand my ground and hold onto her for as long as I could.
Not because she was my mother. Not because I loved her with all my heart (which I did). It was because I was her star, shining away infinitely in stark contrast to the black hole which occupied me at the moment.