A Thousand Moments

Special Chapter 3

Astrid Summer Flores

May 1st 2020

It's my birthday tomorrow and also my brother's death anniversary, a day I long to forget. Alanna once said I was great at finding most people miss, maybe it's because since my life fell into this sheer mess I've always wanted to get lost. I want to lose my way just like how my life lost it's direction. Directions. I was never good at it I could never memorize roads or directions to places I've been because I never look ahead, what I do is stare out the window and wish something would run over me and then my life would be over, and my misery would disappear along with it. In my journey of losing myself everytime, I find untouched treasures and I guess that was the only good thing about it.

Whenever May 2nd came I am filled with sorrow, guilt, regret, remorse, basically everything that sums up a horrible hot mess until there's no more room for happiness or even just a needle of light. Nothing gets through anymore, not even music, which I love, all I feel is sadness and it's so overwhelming that you feel nothing anymore, I heaved a sigh of relief yet there was no relief.

I woke up, and there's this immediate pain in me that rose as I sat down my bed, I knew what was happening, it was all too familiar. Every year a whole week before my birthday is dedicated to me wishing that somehow I was just a cold corpse, I hoped I wouldn't wake up anymore whenever May comes. Here I am again crying, wishing I could just somehow change the past but we all know that is far from possible, it would take a miracle to do so.

I stood up and fixed my bed, and after, immediately went to the shower. I turned on the hot water and drenched myself in it, mist filled the bathroom making everything hard to discern. As I finished my long hot bath I stood in front of the sink and wiped the fog-filled mirror, I saw myself, and there it was again, my eyes shows every bit of guilt I feel in my body.

You shouldn't be alive

Terrence is gone

It was your fault

If only you didn't fall asleep

If only you had watch over your brother

Everything is your fault

I quickly looked away, I was horrible to myself again yet I know it's all true, it's all my fault. I rushed to my bedroom and put on my pale pink shirt pairing it with my black shorts and topping it all off with my cardigan, and I also wore my sneakers today.

I walked to the living room and it was no surprise anymore that mom wasn't there. Ever since Terrence passed it's like she erased May from her life, even my birthday I guess. I couldn't even remember the last time we celebrated my birthday, it's either she gets home really late at night or doesn't come home at all. Dad, he would also only send gifts yet never a letter asking how I was or even just telling me about his life. I was a kid back then, I didn't realize how far apart this family has drifted away from each other, it felt as if we were on separate boats paddling across this ocean. I lost Terrence, and lost all of them as well.

It's been a week since I last went to school, Maddison and Addy would both be worried again, yet they already knew it was coming, and Alanna... I don't think she cares about me anymore, the one person who understood all of me. I entered my car and drove out of town. I noticed that the sun was barely in the sky yet, I must've woken up really early today. Slowly, the sky was painted with bright colors of orange and yellow, I opened my window and immediately the cool breeze entered the car as I shiver in its embrace.

Everything was so beautiful but inside me was the total opposite of it, I was in disarray, an utter dishevelment plainly placed across this confusing life.