Giving part of yourself to someone else.
It worried me that I wasn’t more terrified of the idea.
So here I was, trying to relax while I forced myself not to think of the things I should be doing. Plans I should be making. Lies I should be living.
Instead I was giving myself a day where none of that existed. Before I had to see him and it all started again. The careful deliberation. The excitement I felt when he looked at me and the intense denial that I felt anything.
It was exhausting.
I deserved this moment of quiet. I couldn’t remember the last time I had allowed myself to indulge in a day like this. A day that didn’t involve me hunched over a computer until my brain wanted to pack up and die.
When I had gotten up that morning, I had poured myself a cup of coffee and fired up the laptop, prepared to spend the day doing what I always did. But then I stopped. I turned off the computer. I walked away. And I hadn’t looked at it since.
When I had started my online life, it had been daring. Exciting. I had a purpose. A mission. A clear idea of what I was doing and why.
The thrill was still present at times. The exploits were daring and dangerous, and I was still the master of my own contrived universe.
But…
I stuffed my mouth with popcorn and tried to focus on the movie I had been aimlessly watching.
I loved being Freedom Overdrive. It consumed me. Motivated me. It had given me an outlet when I had been lost and floundering.
Yet I couldn’t help wondering what sort of person Hannah Whelan was without the shadowy alter ego.
What sort of person could she be?
Did I dare to find out?
What would happen if I liked what I found? The idea scared me. I didn’t want to think about it too closely. Not with my current crowded headspace.
For now, though, I could enjoy this taste of what normal felt like.
I stretched out my legs and smiled to myself. It was almost perfect.
Almost…
A knock on my door had me sitting up in surprise. I didn’t get visitors. I didn’t have people in my life who dropped by randomly.
It must be a mistake. Or an encyclopedia salesman. Did they have those anymore?
I ignored it, waiting for whoever it was to go away.
“Hannah Marie Whelan, I know you’re in there. I can see your car in the driveway.”
My stomach dropped.
It was my mother.
I slowly got up and made my way to the front door, wondering why she was here. I hadn’t seen her in over a month. We had never had the sort of relationship that allowed for spontaneous lunches and random girl talk.
When I was growing up, I had wanted more from her. I had made an effort. So had she. But the distance that existed between us was a strange thing. It was as though we were strangers who just happened to be in the same family. It had always been there. The wall. Even as a small child I had gravitated toward my father over my mother.
We had never experienced the mother/daughter bond that came so naturally to her and Charlotte. I had even been envious of it. Once. When I was a different girl with a different life. When I wasn’t a woman who had shut herself off from attachments.
Charlotte had always been my only exception.
After losing Dad, Mom tried harder. With Charlotte hospitalized, we were all each other had. She attempted to cling to this idea of how she thought we should be. She tried calling me. Tried to show an interest in my life.
