People will never have an inkling why I did it.
They will listen to the news, responding expectedly with pity and disappointment.
Pity-- for I had so much life to live ahead of me, for I had so many to know.
Disappointment--for I was weak, for I should have looked for other ways to overcome what I was going through.
All these bare surfaces of an unprecedented loss of one’s young life taken by one’s own little hands while probably under despair and solitary struggle. No one knows. Or cares.
I finally had the courage to do it. I cut my self and watched the own blood gush from my wrist, creating a sheet of red silk, underneath my body, being draining of life.
Until the very last day, I had to face the world. I had to be what I am used to. In the facets of my personality, there is that certain ambiguity that is actually crude, embedded in me by years filled with constant pretensions and stage-ups.
I was the best actress I've known.
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It’s two in the morning and the dark part of the day doesn’t seem to end. I’m in an infinite loop, reminiscing; I love him, with every broken piece of my fragile wholeness that got shattered by his insincere apology and empty good bye earlier today, pricks me with pain to remind me of the reason why I cry and cry all over again.
Darcy, I loved him and I always will. Damn you.
In the comfort of my bed, I frown for my broken heart and the death of a love story I thought I could keep.
I hear my door open, he crawls. “Is your mom home?” He whispered with malevolence in thin breath, checking if I was awake. It was obvious that he didn’t care if I really was.
“What are you doing?” I asked in fear, with the hoarseness of my begging.
"Please, Da- " He shushed my protest, pushing his palm upward from just above my chin, forcing my mouth shut, my tired throat didn’t even manage to groan at all.
My flesh has been meddled with hands I've always known to comfort me with gentleness; hands that I have known to be immaculate. I can still feel his breath tingling through my neck; I can feel his weight and his skin rubbing against my entirety-- his fingers surveying every inch of my unmarred body, harming even my sanity. I can sense the reeks, with that repugnant fetor. I can feel the invisible scar that reminds me of my impurity.
I am disgusted with myself.
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It was my seventeenth birthday. The sun shined so cheerfully bright. After I blew the pink candles of my chocolate cake, with scribbles of my little sister, some letters smudged, in her efforts to make the last words readable said, “Happy birthday, big sis! ”My mother, holding the cake, tilted her head, staring like that of an aging mom, bitter sweet - proud with how her first born is turning to a lady faster than she imagined. She then hugged me tightly; her lavender smell reminded me of my childhood. She held my hand and walked me outside. She didn't let go, her hold tightens as we approach the porch that I can literally feel her heartbeat.
She looked me straight in the eye, I've never seen those lovely eyes with sadness and hesitance.
"Lorina, I loved you from the very first time I held you in my arms and heard your cry. I cradled you until you fell asleep and I never wanted to let you go on the first night and that will never ever change"
It felt like her word pounded me. Every time a syllable comes out from her trembling lips, I saw what seemed fear and relief in her eyes.
She told me love is the most beautiful thing. When you love someone you should be able to stand for it. It wouldn’t matter who you love as long as the intentions are pure. And if you should fight for it, gamble with absolutely everything you have.
Love is the bond that knows no reason to discriminate.
The promise of love will never go wrong and it’s is the very reason why I’m with them.
I know where she was going. She was in tears; genuine—the most heartbreaking tears I've seen.
The face of my reality became vivid. The world caved in and I became claustrophobic in the world that was a wild lie. The biggest lie ever.
It wasn't rocket science, believe me. I always have this intuition of inadequacy and that I was just a piece forced to fit a puzzle. But that very day, when everything was put into words, that unreasonable hate that I felt all through these years for being different from this group of people who is supposedly my family, transformed to a kind of pure rage against the life I’m living. All these years, I have the gut feel which I really paid no mind, because there was a part of me that didn’t want to ruin the beautiful set up that I have been given. I started to doubt, was it really love that these people showed me? Or is everything just a manifestation of their unsolicited pity and guilt? They were living in affluence while I was crying in a trash bin when I was seven months old along a dark alley where vagabonds literally kill each other to scram for scarce food.
I felt alone. I was an outsider. I lost trust in everyone. I lost trust even in the person whose reflection I see every day; seemingly deceiving me that everything is okay. I convinced myself that I needed no one and nothing but my acts to walk me through a life through a road of fake pavements. I am used to pretending because I have lived with the truth clearly laid down in bold words, I have more reason to live that way.
I will live in lies.
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I wouldn’t lie about one thing: I had to hold onto something, for some reason, the love they showed me lingered in me. It made me want the same warm feeling, it created that inquisitive thirst in my head of what real love would have felt.
I only remember Darcy. He was everything to me. If only what he showed me was real love, it would make all these things bearable. It would not feel as if I have to keep my world running like a hamster’s wheel, only a billion times heavier.
I will live alone.
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There he was, barely careful in opening the door. The slim light slipping through my door made me realize that I was still awake. I knew he would come, this time I was even waiting for him. But, I still coy to be oblivious with the animal that is about to maul me. I acted like I am in deep slumber. He shut the door. He crawled to my bed; slowly slipped off the blanket, thinking maybe it would stop him. I felt his breath on my skin. The stench of his inebriation makes me sick. In the dark, I imagine him drooling like a hyena. He straightened my position with ease. I showed no resentment. Why now?
He undressed me and caressed my body once again. This night will be just like the others, we have been in pleasure sharing our bodies.
I offer all of me just to feel that I belong to someone. I will never throw away this secure feeling of having to share a part of you and be fully united to a warm being that saw you differently from before. He gave me love that felt different. He gave me something that made sense. He was a part of what I was used to and a personification of what I wanted to have. I worked hard to be loved and not pitied. I crafted a love that breeds an insatiable need for me.
He loves me. Not as a fake daughter, but as Lorina, the one who gives him what he wants.
I love him and when you love someone you should be able to stand for it and it should know no reason to discriminate.
You taught me well about love, Mom. I’ll fight for it with absolutely everything I have.
I have earned love. All mine.
She saw us. Me and Dad. Her husband and adopted daughter. After all the deeds, the world finally had the decency to give her the intuition that something was going wrong inside our home. Inside her very home-- the only place she devoted herself to stay and serve aside from the church every Sunday, where she had faithfully done the laundry, washed the dishes, feed the family; the place where she is a wonderful mother, and a loving wife.
How painful was it to see them naked one on top of the other?
It was painful enough to tear the family, my family, apart.
It was a pain that stroked my heart with an incomparable pang.
Probably it would’ve been how it felt like if I was crucified with the nails driven deep down my chest with much less benevolent reason than Jesus’.
I saw the look in her eyes. She blinked her eyes many times, hoping that the effort will wipe off the image of what she had just witnessed. She fell to her knees, no tears flowed, a sign of detestation. After pulling herself up, she picked up the baseball bat resting beside my door.
She was the gentlest person I know—correction, used to.
Charging towards us with the intention to batter us inside out, Dad reacted with his arms pushed front and hands wide open, as if trying to stop a train at full steam. He should have known better. She swung the bat hard, like a home run play in a championship game.
His head was the giveaway ball. No strike made. She bludgeoned him without hesitation.
I sit there at the corner of my bed, thinking it was the safest place to stay, staring in horror as his blood splattered all over. Then she was taking deep breathes, each one meant anger and a terrifying kind of it. Then she looked at me,
“Mom?” I was certain how my fate will turn out at that point.
Then she finally spoke, walking towards the cradle of our sin.
“Lorina, my baby, are you okay?” She was terrified. She said it as if, she just saved me from a criminal. With her trembling hands dripping with blood, she lifted my chin and looked straight to my eyes.” I’m sorry, baby”
She is still my mother.
When I thought I’ve already broken everything fragile, my heart crippled slowly with her apology.
How could have I possible done this to my mother? To this family?
She hugged me, and despite of the smell of blood, I can still sense the hint of lavender in her dress. It took me to a stream of my memory: I was wearing a sweater knitted tightly by her own hands, walking around like what any six year-old would do with a new dress. Every turn, I always thanked her and told her that I love her, feeling all happy with the pink gift she did all summer.
“I . . love you, mom”
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What must one do when the comfort of crying does not suffice any longer? How must someone handle sadness when the relief of tears falters? To what should one turn to when even the human’s natural mechanism to succor itself from the misery of life fails to its purpose?
My answer is to end everything, starting with my own worthless life.
I will never forgive myself—it’s the last thing I’ll grant myself.