Kathryn
Shouting. Two figures in a dark room shouting at each other. My heart beating out of my chest as I held my breath and listened at the familiar voices.
"You can't force me to stay, Michael!"
"But your whole life is here! You can't leave all this behind!"
"My life is where I want it to be! You and Kathryn can't tie me down!"
"Jocelyn, please. We need you. Kathryn needs you! She needs a mom!"
"She'll be fine. It's not like she's the only child in the world who has to grow up without a mother!"
"But what about our wedding?"
"I don't want to get married to you, Michael! I don't want to commit my whole life to someone when I'm only twenty-one! I don't want to be stuck here with you and her for the rest of my life only because I made one mistake as a teenager!"
"Don't you love your child? Is Kathryn just a mistake to you?"
"What else would she be? We didn't plan on having a child, did we?"
"Jocelyn, please. Think about what you're doing!"
"Trust me, Michael, I have thought about it long and hard. There's nothing for me here! I want a new life and there's no place for you and Kathryn in it!"
The sound of footsteps across the floor and Dad's voice shouting Mom's name. Then the thud of a door being slammed shut.
I woke up in a cold sweat. I was tangled in my sheets and my heart was beating like I had just been running. It was still dark outside so I assumed there was plenty of time until morning. Untangling myself from the sheets, I took a few deep breaths trying to calm down.
It had been a while since the last nightmare which had made me forget what it felt like to wake up in the middle of the night feeling like I was three all over again. Ever since Mom left, that event had been a recurring subject in my nightmares. And every time it was exactly the same. The same feeling of fear and the same lines. I wasn't sure how accurate my nightmares were, but I had always assumed at least parts of them were true. And it made me feel horrible.
The last memory I had of my Mom was her shouting at Dad about how we didn't have a place in her life. And how she thought of me as a mistake. I was never meant to be born.
Sometimes I wished I hadn't been born. On nights like this it was normal. After waking up to this nightmare I usually didn't sleep for the rest of the night. Instead I lay awake in bed crying and staring at the ceiling while thinking about Mom, my life and sometimes deeper stuff my mind wandered to in the middle of all the confusion and sadness. One night a few years back I nearly had a panic attack as I started to think about what happens after death and it had been too much for my stressed and anxious brain.
I walked over to my window and opened it, letting the cool night air in. I took a deep breath as the cold air hit my face. Leaving the window open I crawled back under covers and hugged my stuffed panda. Mom's parents had bought it for me from a zoo's gift shop when I was little. Ever since it had been very important for me and I used it to comfort me whenever I needed comforting. Mom's parents were the only ones who had made me feel loved and cared for as a child and therefore a gift from them reminded me I was loved. The panda had also always been my comforter as when I hugged it, I felt less alone.
I rolled over to face the wall as my mind wandered back to the nightmare. The same questions as always started to pop into my mind. The same things I had been wondering ever since Mom left. And yet my mind still went back to them after each nightmare.
Why did Mom leave in the first place? It was clear she had been unhappy, at least if any of the things she said in my dreams were true. But it wasn't only the nightmares I was relying on. A lot of the memories from the time Mom had been with us consisted of her shouting at Dad or crying. She had always been really distant and there had been times when she left somewhere and was gone for the whole day. I couldn't remember her ever smiling at me, hugging me or telling me she loved me. And Dad either hadn't received any affection from her.
Had Dad and I really made her so unhappy that she had decided to leave? And it couldn't have been only unhappiness. It had to be something more to make her actually leave her child. Weren't all moms supposed to love their children more than anything in the world? Then why did mine leave me?
It felt horrible as I didn't know what had made her leave us. I didn't know what had been going on in her life and if there had been other factors that led to her making that decision. And because I didn't know, it was really easy to think it was all my fault. That I was somehow so unlovable and made her life such a hell that she decided it was better for her to leave.
Or had there maybe been something, or someone, that made her want to be somewhere else? What if it hadn't been wanting so desperately to get away from Dad and me but rather wanting to be somewhere else more. Maybe she had really wanted to go to college in another state. But wasn't she a high school dropout?
Maybe there had been another man, then. That could make sense. It didn't seem like she had loved Dad that much. If she was able to leave him, she couldn't have truly loved him.
Poor Dad. He, on the contrary, seemed to have really loved Mom. It had broken him when Mom had left. I didn't remember much of the time before she had left but I remembered a different Dad back then. He would talk to me and take care of me and even play with me. But after Mom had left he had become very distant and quiet. It seemed he started to avoid me. And once he had started to heal it was already too late to form a proper connection between us.
I rolled to my back and stared at the ceiling. I could hear Dad's snoring from the room next to mine. I didn't know whether I would've wanted us to be closer or not. I didn't know what it would be like if we were close. All I knew was that I wanted to have someone to care for me and someone to show me they loved me. When I had been younger, it would've been more important to have a caring parent. But now I was already used to not having one. And Sasha, Kenzie and Mikey made me feel cared for and loved so I was fine even without a loving parent.
Though sometimes it hurt to know that I had never had nor would I ever have one. Like when I went to Sasha's and saw the tight-knit family and the loving parents she had. Or when I was on the beach and saw a mom walking by holding her child's hand and smiling lovingly at their enthusiasm. Basically whenever I got a reminder of what could've been but what I would never have.
It was starting to get a bit cold now that the sweat had dried and the window had been open for a while. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and walked over to the window. Shivering as the cold night air hit me I pushed it shut. I quickly jumped back to my bed curling into a ball under the covers and squeezing the panda against my chest. My mind went instantly back to Mom.
What would my life have been like if Mom had never left? That was something I had been thinking about a lot. I would've had a loving and caring parent. Two, in fact, as Dad wouldn't have broken. What would it have been like to grow up with two parents? The thought of growing up with a mom was really weird. That meant I would've had someone to come home to and tell about my day. I would've had someone to turn to when I had my first crush or when I got my period for the first time. I wasn't sure if I missed Mom but I sure missed the life I imagined I could've had if she had loved me.
I wondered if she ever thought about me. Did she ever think about what her life could have been like if she hadn't left? Was she happy with her decision to leave? Was she happy with how her life had turned out? Where was she even? It felt so absurd that somewhere in this world was the person who had carried me for nine months. My mom was somewhere in this world, doing something at this exact same moment. Yet I barely remembered what she looked like.
I felt anger build up inside me as I thought of her. She had been in my life for such a short time yet she had such a huge influence on it. I had suffered in countless ways because of her. Because of her decision to not love me and to leave me.
Tears had started to stream down my cheeks without me noticing it. My nose was stuffy and starting to run so I got out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom through the darkness. After blowing my nose and drying my tears I turned the tap on and tried to get as cold water as possible to throw on my face. I knew it would wake me up properly but there wasn't a big chance I would get sleep for the rest of the night anyway.
I dried my face and my hands and turned to look at myself in the mirror. I looked horrible though it didn't really surprise me. I had dark circles under my eyes which were red and swollen from crying.
I sighed. How did I look so old and tired although I was only seventeen? Wait. I was seventeen. My parents had been seventeen when they got me. That's what Mom's parents had told me. I was the same age Mom had been when she had given birth to me. It was hard to wrap my head around the new realization. Only now did it occur to me, they had been really young.
It slowly dawned on me I could understand Mom's reasons to leave a bit better now. I was still a child myself. If I were pregnant I would be terrified. How could I raise a child when I was still a teenager trying to navigate through growing up? And would I want to tie myself down at this age? Commit myself to someone? Would I want to lose the next twenty years of my life to being a parent and taking care of someone else? I probably wouldn't. No matter how much the baby would be mine.
But even if I wouldn't want to do that it was a different question would I still do it. With the history I had, yes, I probably would as I wouldn't want anyone else to have to go through what I went through because my mom left. But without this history... I wasn't so sure and it made me shiver.
I went back to my room and crawled into bed. I knew I should try to get some sleep as Mikey and I were supposed to go look at a flat in the afternoon. That required me to be able to stay awake and concentrate on what was happening. September was getting closer and closer and we really needed to find a flat we would want to rent if I wanted to be able to stay. And we needed to get enough money to be able to rent a flat in the first place.
I hugged the stuffed panda tighter and closed my eyes trying to force nice thoughts into my head. Mikey. My friends. Memories of happy times. But Mom kept popping into my head.
Eventually I managed to drift off into restless sleep.