Just once.
Just one more time.
I lost it when I couldn’t see the caskets anymore. It was as if someone had forcibly sucked all the air from my lungs, and the most intense, crushing anguish began grinding down on me until I was on my hands and knees, trying to inhale between choked sobs as I screamed.
I didn’t even know what I was screaming through my tears, and I guessed it didn’t really matter, but Dad had to drag me away.
I didn’t remember much about the next week, the next month, the next year.
Life took on a hazy, dreamlike quality where nothing felt real after that. I was trapped behind an impenetrable warped glass wall looking out at the world and listening to the muffled sounds of everyone else’s lives while mine fragmented and crumbled around me, dry as dust.
I was watching myself disappear, one moment at a time, and there was no one there to reach for me, no one to save me.
I didn’t perform anymore. Not on a stage. I’d tried, once. I hadn’t wanted to but Dad had guilt-tripped me into getting on that stage by saying it was what Mom and Lauren would’ve wanted.
It was because of this stupid fucking violin that they were dead.
As I’d stared out at the sea of people watching me and realizing I’d never see my mom’s face in that crowd ever again, I broke down and ran off stage.
But I’d promised her I’d be the first in the family to go to college. I promised I’d do something with my life. Make something of my life.
If I broke that promise…it was like I’d be killing her a second time, and I wouldn’t survive that.
I didn’t understand how other people could go about their lives like everything was fine. Like the worst hadn’t happened.I couldn’t stand watching happy families and other moms with their kids. I hated all the pitying smiles and every murmuredI’m so sorry. I hated all of it.
Most of all, I hated the awful truth I discovered, the illusion ripped away like velcro—that I was worth nothing to Dad without Mom and Lauren. I wasn’t enough for him, and he’d never loved me like he loved them.
And that…
Well. After that, I loved him and I hated him, and I wasn’t sure which was the greater burden to bear.
I still carried that burden even after he got so drunk he drove off a bridge and broke his neck.
After that, I had to go live with my grandma, who was as cold and uncaring as my dad became in the end.
I was fifteen when I learned what true pain was.
True pain was love.
Because once the person you loved was gone, you were stuck with all those feelings. There was no one to give them to anymore. They sat there inside of you, a bitter, corrosive amalgam of a past that could never be undone. A constant reminder of everything you didn’t have anymore.
Death created a distance both insurmountable and infinitesimal; it broke things apart and pulled them together. It was a touch that could shatter or bond—it just depended on the strength of who it touched.
I wasn’t strong. Not at all.
I just refused to break completely.
FIRST SEMESTER
1
I WISH I DIDN’T HAVE A FACE
REESE
Iwould go back if I could.
Way, way back.
