Page 93 of Shine Bright
“Neither do I. You care even less about me than Mom does! Neither of you gives a shit about how I’m doing or how my life is going. As long as I’m quiet and well behaved and perfect, everything’s fine, right?” My voice has shot up two octaves, racing along with my heart.
“Lia, calm down.” Mom reaches out to me again. Apparently, no one has ever told her to calm down when she was about to lose her composure. It’s really not helpful.
“I don’t want to calm down,” I say, exploding. “I’m always calm. I always pull myself together! Where has that gotten me? Nowhere! You’re so preoccupied with yourselves that you don’t have time for anyone else. Except for Jase, of course.” Tears burn in my eyes as I glare at my brother, who has gone pale as a ghost and is staring at me with a look of horror that I’ve never seen before. “But he’s only important because he doesn’t do what he’s supposed to do, right? Because he’d rather live his own dream than yours. You were so obsessed with the idea of Jase studying medicine that you never considered me for it, right?”
“Lia, you never wanted to be a doctor,” Mom objects.
“It’s not about whether I wanted to!” I angrily scrub the tears off my cheeks. She doesn’t understand.
“Then what is it about?” There’s a hint of despair in her voice.
“It’s about the fact that you never even considered it! You never asked me once. First it was Sam who was supposed to take over the practice, and then Jase. Never me.”
She frowns. “Did you want to study medicine?”
“God, Mom!” I give a cry of frustration. “That’s not the point!”
“Why didn’t you say anything if that’s what you wanted?” Dad interjects, and no, he’s not really listening either. Why isn’t anyone listening to me?
“Because I didn’t want it! I just wanted you to want it!”
“That’s extremely illogical.”
“Congratulations, Dad, you got it. It’s about emotions. They have nothing to do with logic,” I hiss.
“You’re overreacting,” he states matter-of-factly.
“No, I’m not. I’m just telling you what I think and feel for the first time ever.” Trembling all over, I wrap my arms around myself and try somehow to stop myself from falling apart. “You never cared what I did. You didn’t care who I hung out with or how I was doing in school, or what I wanted to study. You didn’t care about me.”
Mom stands up and comes around the table toward me. She has that look on her face that she always has when she’s about to give a patient bad news. Except I’m not one of her patients. I’m her daughter. “What’s all this about, sweetheart?” she asks, unable to think of anything else but unnecessary questions. She reaches out to me again, and again I pull away.
“Mom,” I plead, “just listen to me.”
“I am listening,” she says. “I just don’t understand why you’re acting this way today.”
“Because you forgot about me!” I blurt out. “Because you always forget about me. You’re so used to me always being there on your birthday that you didn’t even think to invite me. You just assume that I’ll always be here. But you’re never there for me, Mom. Never.”
“That’s not true. I’m always there for you when you need me,” Mom objects. She sounds genuinely hurt.
“You’re not! Have you noticed how little we’ve talked in the last few months? Probably not. How could you? But do you know why? Because I stopped contacting you. I stopped chasing you. I didn’t have the strength for your constant excuses anymore. The empty promises. My life is shit, Mom, and you have no idea how much, because you don’t care! You have no idea!”
Dad stands up now too, the legs of his chair scraping loudly across the parquet floor. “Ophelia, calm down now,” he orders me. “Your life isn’t shit.” He practically spits the word at my feet; after all, Winslows don’t swear.
Especially not me, because I’m good little Lia. Daddy’s princess. Except that I never was. And I don’t want to be.
“We’ve always made everything possible for you. You do what you want and get our full financial support.”
“Maybe I need something else.” I look from him to Mom; she must understand. Everything in me urges me to stop, to let it be, to not make everything worse, but I can’t. It’s too late. “I called you when Archie broke up with me, but you couldn’t talk because you had an appointment with a patient. You never called me back. I called you when you were supposed to pick me up from the airport, but you weren’t there because you thought I was coming back a week later, even though I called you two days before to tell you that my original flight had been postponed. Instead, you were out with friends. You said you’d call me the next day to chat about London, but you never did. I called you when I didn’t get the lead role in the Christmas performance because I was devastated and I needed you. You didn’t even know what I was talking about, even though I’ve been telling you for the last three years how important this role is to me. But you were on your way to some stupid concert with Dad. Once again, you had something better to do than be there for me.”
“Lia, you—”
“No, I’m not done yet,” I interrupt her. I have to finish this now. For myself, and for the girl who wanted nothing more than to be seen. To be truly and genuinely seen. “I took care of everything after Sam died, Mom. Everything. Dad was never there because he was always working, and you weren’t in any condition to do it. And neither of you cared how I was doing. Not then, and never again.”
“Then tell us. How are you?” Dad asks. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand anything at all. He doesn’t want to either. He’s overwhelmed, and that’s why he reacts this way.
I answer him anyway. Not for him, but because I need to get it off my chest.
“I’m sad and lonely. I’m lonely because I don’t have anyone who cares how I am or what I think. My friends don’t know who I am because I’ve learned to pretend in front of everyone and act like I’m someone else, because that’s the only way our family worked. Just because I always pretended that I was fine. As if I hadn’t also lost a brother. None of you cared about me when Sam died. But he was my little brother. I lost him too. I missed him every damn day too.”
