The Fate Of Broken Hearts

Chapter 4

I fell in love with the idea of romance at the age of twelve. The mere thought of being loved despite your shamed flaws and so unconditionally, filled my heart with the hope of normality that was taken away from me as a young girl.

Before he left us, my mother wasn't an alcoholic or depressed woman who couldn't get out of bed. She was happy with her only daughter and what she thought was the person who loved her just as much as she loved him. She too, believed in happy endings and a forever, but he didn't. My father left and disappeared. He didn't say a word that day. He didn't even say goodbye.

I was the one left to care for my mother. I took away as much pain as I could. I watched her fall into depression and alcohol. I was the only one who stayed with her through the bad days in bed, while he just left... I was only eleven and I was scared.

She spent years like this, and all that time I couldn't do anything. I was only a small girl who hid the bottles of vodka in the yard or tipped them out in the sink. She could barely take care of me after she nearly overdosed a few years back. Everything was so dark for a while and it didn't seem to get better, until she met Mark.

Mark was a close co-worker of my mom's and he began coming around more often. He cared for my mother more than I ever could. He slowly guided her to get up from bed in the mornings. He taught her a way out of the alcohol. She began to forgive even though it meant letting go of all the memories and promises.

After a few hard months, Mark was able to completely take away the bad things in our life, and replace them with better ones. He made jokes, and even when they were terrible, he made us laugh. He became like a second father to me after many days of driving me to school, making me breakfast and helping me out with homework even though he never graduated high school.

My mother found sobriety and when she realised what she had done, she apologised to me. She knew words were never enough to compensate for the things that happened, but at least she was able to focus on my future and be there for me.

For my first birthday without my father, my mother didn't know what to get me. I wasn't a happy girl with lots of friends. I was alone and forgotten in a town that never really loved us. So my mother rummaged through old boxes to see if she could give me anything from my father, and that was when my plans for a real future and hopes surfaced.

Since my first romance novel I was trapped between a world of dreams and the narrow path of my own life story. My mother took my love for reading and expanded it by scavenging any little savings from that month to buy me another dream, another hope, and the pages of turning literature. My collection only grew from there and so did my plans. I had drawn out a future to get into a good college followed by a good job. Then when the time was right, I'd find my own forever after and build a family of my full of love.

After eight long years of moving on and forgetting, he was here in Berkeley and he wanted to talk to me. The blood pounded in my ears and I could barely notice that inside my chest, was a heart that beat faster with each breath I took.

"I- what am I supposed to say to him? I can't talk to him," I was mumbling out words, words that even I didn't know were coming out of my mouth.

"I know, I know." She tried to ease me through the line but it wasn't helping in the way she wanted it to. After all, how can one person help another when both are hurting from the same pain?

"Why is he here? After all this time, why would he be back?"

I remember that one phone call a few years ago. It was a quiet night when the phone rang. We found out that he had a child with a woman he met. A boy. I never met him, even though I wanted to, but he never contacted us after that.