Page 127 of Sunset Catchers

“If I could spackle the wounds on your heart myself, I would Win. But it’s something you have to do on your own.”

“I know. I wish you could, too.”

“Have another meeting with your hippocampus, then tell me what you want to do. I’ll wait for you.”

32

The grey sky is cloudy over the abrasive and loud waves of Lake Ontario, matching the tempest of emotions swirling inside me. My skin prickles under my thick sweater.

I miss Levi; his warmth at my side. I left him asleep in his bed while I reluctantly slipped away. As he said—I need to do this part on my own.

The cold air puffs out from my lungs in a long sigh.

Ten years ago, almost to the day, my mother washed her hands of me as if I was dirt caked under her nails. I will always remember how the scene played out.

When I got back from school, she was waiting for me at the dining table, where too few meals were shared between the both of us over the years.

Table for one, alright.

She was smiling, and though it was odd, I was still hopeful back then that we’d get on the other side of her resentment of me. That she’d grow up to love me.

A silly girl’s dream.

Turns out, she was smiling, big and bright, because my eighteen birthday was just shy of two months away. My first year in Cegep would be over in even less time than that, but mostly, she was cheerful because her parental duties could legally and morally come to an end.

I was becoming an adult, and therefore, just as she had been forced to do by my untimely birth; “It’s time you do this on your own, kid.”

That’s the day my mother announced that she was moving on with her life, without me. I was that box with the big miscellaneous tag written in black sharpie that got left in the apartment by the previous owners, because it’s all stuff they don’t need anymore.

My heart was irrevocably shattered. Wounded beyond measures. It still hurt, even ten years later—as cuttingly as it did back then.

I don’t think that I’ll ever get over it.

How do I explain to my aching heart that it’s more than alright to heal and move on? How do I convince my mind that it was never my fault that my mother resents me for deciding to keep me? How the fuck do I shed this layer of skin that keeps me feeling grimy and, ultimately, unwanted?

Knowing how a situation makes you feel and how to remedy it isn’t the epiphany you think it is. I could sit here for another decade, knowing that it’d be better if I cut ties with my mother, and still be unable to slam the scissors close. I am allowing my own demise by keeping waiting for her call.

But it feels impossible for me to stop hoping because it is what feeds and keeps my anger alive. And I’m afraid that, without it, I will descend into a dark pit of despair. I can’t have that, knowing I might never find the ledge to pull myself out. So, how do I stop these heavy feelings that are keeping the good ones away?

I want them oozing out of my pores until they are nothing more than a puddle on the ground that I can just wipe my feet clean of. I want to pry the toxic thoughts out of my brain with steel thongs and throw them away in a hazardous bin.

I need to move on.

That’s why I’m here.

Sitting alone at dawn.

To try.

I’ve always felt that my traumas amounted to a scratchy, ill-fitting sweater. One that shrank with time until it clung to my skin and left no air to breathe. But that sweater is old and threadbare.

It is cracking at the seams.

So, what if I just pull on a thread, what would happen then?

In my mind, I do, and the sweater begins unraveling. The more I pull on the thread, the more all these knots rip apart. All the bad memories with my mother, all the hurtful words she said; the missed calls and the missing calls, the one she should’ve made but never did, leaving me staring at my phone, hoping it would ring.

All the happy memories too, they are unmade.