Childhood Dreams

Year 5 of Dying

My mom just died. I don't know the truth, but they say it was suicide. I never saw her anymore, so I wouldn't know. The last time I saw her was a few months ago when I snuck into her room in the middle of the night because I couldn't take the loneliness anymore. I guess it was creepy, but this was just me, missing the person who I used to rely on for everything. I sat on the ground next to her bed and looked at her. I took in everything about her. Every pore, every hair, every curve. She'd aged so much. My young mother, who used to have her hair in the most beautiful shade of brown was now streaked with gray, like a painting that was left in the rain, and the paint dripped down, leaving only a dull shade in its wake. Wrinkles accented her face like children's doodles. Since then she went from working all day and sleeping at night to working all day and then coming home and sleeping while I was in school, then going to work again. I'm not even sure what work she was doing anymore.

Then, one time she didn't wake up by the time I came home. She was lying flat on her back, froth at the sides of her mouth. They found a bottle of pills and an empty glass in the closed cabinet later. And all I can do is stare at a wall numbly. I can't cry. I'm still in shock. I know she's dead but it hasn't quite sunk in. You know that feeling? When it's dancing around the top of your head, and you know you should be sad, but it hasn't reached your heart yet. What's wrong with me? I should be sad, I should be crying. I'm not "too old" or "too cool" for that. I'm not even 14 yet, and I'm most certainly not cool. I spend school huddled in strategic places: up against the wall, between two cabinets, any of those seats that you never seem to look at. Anything to avoid those eyes. Those cold, emotionless eyes, piercing into my very being. All of them the same, My school guidance counselor said that it was an illusion of mine, that time that I got sent to her because I started screaming in the middle of class because I felt that everyone in the class had turned to stare at me with that look in their eyes. They don't want to look at me anymore at all, pretending to ignore me, and I suppose it's just a well. I don't think I could deal with that feeling again.

I'm being shipped off to my father's place. I had no idea where he was until now, but apparently had had moved halfway across the country to Kansas, and lives with some woman named Alice. I can't believe it. After he beat my mother almost to death in his drunken rages, and depriving me of parents, and now I have to live with him and whatever whore he's living with now? No thank you.