There’s something almost a little poetic about that, isn’t there?
After everything, after the distance, the routines, the dinners that probably didn’t mean anything anymore, they ended up right back together. There’s this line from a song, System Of A Down if I remember correctly… damn, what was the lyrics now… fuck, I can’t remember. Anyway, you should look it up, it’s quite fitting and really romantic. They were basically living all metalhead’s own version of Romeo and Juliet.
Anyway, where was I?... Yes, that’s right.
I thought a lot during those days, more than I expected to. Not about them, not really, they didn’t bother me. It was more about everything else. Childhood has a way of sticking in places you don’t realize until much later. Little things. Moments that don’tfeel important when they happen but end up shaping something inside you anyway.
I used to think there was a clear point where things went wrong, a before and after, something you could point to. But reality is not like that, it’s more spread out. A series of small adjustments until you don’t recognize who you used to be. I caught myself staring out the window more than once, not really looking at anything, just replaying things.
Rooms I hadn’t thought about in years. Voices. The way certain words felt when they were said to you as a kid, like they carved something into you without asking. It led somewhere, it always does. I found him in the kitchen one evening, leaning against the counter like he’d been there for a while, doing nothing in particular. I didn’t think about the question before I asked it. It just came out.
“Did you ever find him?”He didn’t react immediately, just looked at me, head tilting like he was trying to understand what I meant.
“Find who?”
“My father.”The word felt strange, like it didn’t belong in my mouth. His expression didn’t change much. That was the first thing I noticed.
“No,”he said after a second.“I never said I would.”I frowned.
“You did,”I said, certain.“You said you’d look for him.”
He took a second before answering.
“No,”he repeated, and this time there was more force behind it.“I didn’t.”
For a second, I just looked at him. I tried desperately to make it make sense in my head. To find something I could hold onto, something that could prove what he’d said. But no matter how hard I tried, I found nothing, and the longer I sat there thinking about it, the less sure I became of what he had actually said. Was I going crazy?
“Can you?”I asked instead.“Find him, I mean.”
That got a different response. For a moment he almost looked interested.
“Most likely,”he answered. I nodded once.
“Let me know when you do.”
“I will.”
That was it, clean and simple. Like everything else, or maybe nothing else, had been lately. Funny, isn’t it? How easy things become when you stop fighting them. You’re still here, though.
I can feel your attention, little Ghost, don’t you ever forget that. Still listening, still trying to understand me. Do you understand what that says about you? Don’t answer that, I already know. Because people like to believe there’s a line. Something clear and clean, you cross it and everything changes. Alarms go off, something inside you breaks or screams or begs you to stop.
It didn’t, that’s the truth.
It didn’t feel like falling, it felt like settling. Like something in me had been restless for years without me realizing it, and then suddenly, it wasn’t anymore. The days that followed blurred together exactly the way I expected them to, without any real resistance from me. I think that was the first time it truly hit me how little I actually felt. I was in a constant state of panic over the fact that I felt nothing at all.
I could justify Bartosz to myself somehow. I mean, all I’d really done was give him the same thing he’d given me, except instead of spreading it out over years, he got all of it in a single night. Sadly for him, it ended in death, but like Zwierek had said, death is merciful.
I had a harder time justifying Krystyna to myself, but at the same time I couldn’t deny there was a kind of poetic justice in her being choked by something she’d hungered for, for so many years.
Anna, the psychiatrist’s wife, was… technically not my fault. Zwierek was the one who lost his patience. At least that was one thing my conscience could stay clear of, one less thing for my broken moral compass to try and place somewhere.
The psychiatrist… I mean, looking at the bigger picture, I hadn’t really done anything to anyone that they hadn’t done to me first. Okay, he hadn’t literally given me a lobotomy, but he might as well have.
That was one of the things I struggled with the most.
When I looked at everything that had happened from the outside, I could understand how it must’ve looked. I wasn’t stupid. I knew I should’ve been feeling something. Maybe not grief or regret, but… something other than this overwhelming feeling that I was freer than I’d ever been before. Nothing pulled me back anymore, and the worst part? I didn’t miss it. You think you would’ve. You’re sitting there telling yourself that, aren’t you?
Thatyouwould’ve felt. That something in you would’ve pushed against it. Maybe. But I do think, little Ghost, that if you tell yourself that, you’re lying. Because I can feel it. You’ve been in a situation before where you felt that voice of reason could disappear. And when it does, it’s quiet,God, it’s quiet.
