The Places I Learned to Stand Half-Seen

After swallowing down two bottles of wine with my best friend yesterday, my gaze reflected a calm spark, with a stillness that stung.
While I told her how happy I was to fund my writing course with the money I earned, her follow-up question brought a familiar ache I had been trying to avoid since the day I asked my mother to casually mention this step to my father.
A step that felt like my greatest achievement.

“Bravo.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
“He said that twice,” she replied.

I shook my head, as if the motion itself would clear the fog I had been carrying for days.
“No,” I told my friend, “he didn’t call me when he found out.”

That sentence stirred something unprocessed, a memory I had carried quietly since I was five years old, standing in front of my sister’s room.
When I heard her crying, I wanted to go give her a hug until I heard her words that came after.

“If Imi asked our mother for chocolate at midnight, she would try every shop to find one,” my sister said, just before a storm of tears broke out.

Her gaze met mine, and she started screaming.
“Get out of here. Take her away. I don’t want you here.”

My hands started to shake while my gaze fixed itself on the ceiling, but my tears had a way of declaring their own freedom, even when I tried to silence them.

A childhood spent trying to be seen by my sisters, while the cost became losing myself.
I grew up forcing myself to hide my mother’s affection from them, and eventually from myself.

The learning stayed.
I wasn’t worthy of love if I didn’t deserve my significant other’s in the first place.

“Please don’t defend me, mother. They’ll cast me out again,” turned itself into a manifesto that I eventually began to practice, not only toward my sisters, but toward the world itself.

While I was trapped inside my inner world, my friend told me she had to go, and I was left with my presence that felt too heavy to carry on my own.
My nervous system rang its alarm, and once again I found myself waiting for a different ending to the same story as I pulled out my phone and texted William.

“How was Lisbon?”

I stared at the screen for three minutes, then archived the conversation.

The next morning there were no notifications.

As I opened my laptop to check the instructions the art therapist had sent after our induction meeting, a vibration startled me from beneath the cushion.

“It was great, Imi. Imi. Imi.”

My attention snapped back when the notifications doubled.

“How is your mood today to suck my dick?” William texted.

My hand reached for the Marlboro pack on the table.