17 Made Mistakes

⋆38༄ Aide-memoire

Hello everyone! I thought I'd update today because it's New Years Eve, so I wrote this chapter. I wish you all all the best, so that your dreams come true, less worries and more happiness! Thank you for making this year magnificent, thank you for your unceasing support towards my work, and thank you for making me feel like I should pursue the career of an author. Love you so much. Enjoy xx

𝓦𝓲𝓵𝓵

I wait until her body diminishes in size as she darts through the driveway. It's dark and raining. I shouldn't let her walk on her own, but I can't move my feet and force myself to halt her. She knows.

She knows about my father.

I wipe the tears off my face and finally drag my shaking legs towards the door. I close it.

The pain, once alleviated, or rather numbed by my actions, which sometimes were thought through, sometimes utterly impulsive, starts haunting me again. It's indomitable. I've never been a resilient person. I knew it the moment my father cheated. I knew it the moment Beverly jumped off the bridge. I can't recover from the past within days. I need time, and so I bought it. I bought as much of it as I only could just so I wouldn't ruin anything. Just so I wouldn't hurt her even more, which I know I would have done, considering the state I was in after it'd happened. After I'd wanted to leave for the gym and . . .

I called her. I called her right away because she was the person I trusted the most. I've never trusted anyone as much as I trusted Davina. I knew that she would have said the right words, which would have made the tragedy less unbearable and frightening, but she never picked up. I just wanted her to tell me that she loved me and that everything would be okay. I needed her so badly to flight back and help me through it, but then . . . I realized something. Something I wanted to tell her when the truth about my father's death is finally out to the public.

But now she knows. She found out prematurely, and now I can't stand the guilt. She wasn't supposed to be told by someone else. She was supposed to find out from me. Me, because I started this secret. The secret, which I had thought, would help me focus on everything that came after my dad passed on. And it did . . . somewhat at least, but it obviously didn't work out the way I wanted it to. Not fully.

I've made so many mistakes. Mistakes that I'll probably will never be able to fix. Mistakes that I can't take back regardless of how much I want to. It's done. He's gone, and I need to carry the burden of his death.

I trudge into the living room. I open the drawer of one of the black, glossed chests that I've recently bought. I call it the aide-memoire, only because it's filled with everything that belonged to my father or reminds me of him.

I kneel in front of the drawer and grab the first thing I see. It's his shirt. A white-and-pale-blue, checked shirt that I bought him for Christmas, nearly two years ago. He loved it, even though his job required him to dress formally. I remember the moment he instantly put it on. It made him happy, and the fact that he did put it on, made me happy, too.

I stick it back in the drawer and take another thing. His notebook — filled with songs that he's written. He was a lovely guitarist, but he got so engrossed and consumed by the art gallery that he played no more. His instruments are still in his bedroom, though. I had no heart to throw them away, and I'm too impatient when it comes to learning all the chords and notes that I didn't even try playing myself.

I take a deep breath. The memories are wistful. So fresh and vivid. I almost don't believe that he's gone. It feels like he's just away from home, sorting out another business matter.

I hook my fingers around a plastic bag, full of photographs. We've never bothered to organize them into albums, which for a family living as ideally as ours, well, used-to-live, I should say, is really peculiar. I delve into the bag and shuffle through a handful of pictures. My mum's and dad's wedding, me on my first birthday, blowing a candle on my very first cake. My dad with his guitar, wearing those flared jeans that used to be so popular back when he was a teenager. My father sleeping on a giant teddy bear, which he helped me win during one of the parties that were locally organized for children. I don't even remember what sort of competition we participated in to be rewarded such a massive toy. All I remember is that at some point, I just passed it on to a kid in the neighborhood, which we used to live in.

Tears flood my eyes. He might have made many, many mistakes, but don't we all? He loved me, I know it, even though I refused to show him that I loved him too after he'd cheated on my mum. I was angry. I didn't want to forgive him because . . . exactly. There was no because. I just felt resentful for the betrayal he inflicted upon my mother. I didn't hate him. She did, or at least that's what I always believed. Now I know I was wrong. She loved him, despite the infidelity. She loved him and me, but some things should never be forgiven. That's the only reason why they never made up. I was too young too understand, and then I was way too far into my hatred for him to see that the only reason why they still lived together . . . was me.

We definitely weren't the greatest family of all times, maybe when I was younger and my parents were still madly in love, but at least we were a family. And now my mother's gone, moved out to a different house, my father is six feet under, and I'm here . . . all on my own, haunted by the mistakes that I've made, abandoned by the girl, whom once again I pushed away, left with nothing but the aide-memoire and a chest, heavy from regrets and languishment.

I'm on my own.

___________

What do you think? ❤ More explanations, as always, will come.