The voicemail.
Almost my whole life spent in that house trying to bridge the gap between my parents, and all of the effort I spent, all of the blood I shed, and all of the tears I cried had come down to one minute-long voicemail of my father asking for money to fund their divorce. I didn't know why they hadn't gotten it much sooner. They'd been arguing since I was young, and their arguments had smoldered into silence years before I moved out of that house.
The silence.
It unnerved me, and perhaps that was because I'd lived in silence for years due to my parents' falling out. I'd moved to a big city just to hear the constant hustle and bustle of everyone living their lives and to avoid even one moment of silence that would bring all the memories and the pain of living with my parents flooding back until I was completely consumed by them, dragged under the surface by a riptide that I wouldn't have been able to avoid even if I'd tried.
The suffocation.
Even now, I was still as cornered as I was in my parents' house, destined to a life in which I was forever avoiding my past. I was constantly moving toward a future in which I would finally be free, but somehow the past would chase me and catch up to me. I couldn't even hold on to the precious little moments of fleeting happiness that were few and far between for fear of the darker memories lurking about. Sometimes I missed the good bits of my past, but that longing was never strong enough to make me want to go back.
The song.
The haunting melody startled me as a girl and I walked past each other. She offered me a smile that was filled with nothing but emptiness, void of everything a smile was supposed to contain. I returned it with a similarly empty smile because I had no happiness to fill it with. I only had a broken life and a broken future and a broken heart to offer, and I didn't think anyone would accept those gifts. So, as most people do, I continued on my way with a lifetime of sadness weighing me down.
ns 15.158.61.54da2
