You said you were going to be there for me

You said you were going to be there for me.

But time, time never forgets the course of life, the course of the universe. It knows it's supposed to move. To weave forgetfulness into our minds and silver in our hair. The universe wasn't made to last. Nothing out there was.

We humans survive off of hope, however. Despite this knowledge. We wake up every day and open our eyes to discover our lives a single day shorter, a single day closer to our unavoidable ends. We wake up, and we go through days filled with labour and love, with worry and relaxation, we go out there and fight for a survival made easier with the years passed.

We collect all of our hopes, like scooping all the seeds of a little garden of dandelions, trying to keep them between our fingers, trying to stop them from breaking free, from escaping, from scattering, leaving our souls barren and dark.

It happens eventually.

You said you loved me and wanted the best for me, and that I could share anything with you, any thought that crossed my mind, any of those fleeting hopes we pin our entire lives on and hold onto, that I could be anything I wanted. And when I'd become myself at last...

You turned your back on me.

...We were supposed to relocate to Mars. Just while the attack lasted. Earth was invaded by aliens we mistook for our allies, and they took over the planet. All our forces could only barely hold them back. We had to escape. I had to help people.

Then you stopped me.

Oh, mother. After all those years you had spent living in a world where father and my sister Sabine were still alive, you pretended I had died, too. When it suited you. When you saw I was headed the same path father had walked before, when I first sent you a letter from overseas telling you what exams I was about to pass, and the training. That I was going to become a doctor on a spacecraft.

Surely father had been a pilot - a far more courageous task lying on his shoulders. I was the helping hand. The shadow behind the scene. The force keeping everyone in check, making sure every mission went as smoothly as possible for them, in the most comfortable way, taking care of them in need.

But this was not just about walking in his steps. This was far greater, much more of a responsibility than my teenage self had thought it would be back when I first got interested in space as well as human anatomy.

I knew my place was going to be amongst the stars one day, just like father. He was my hero, the person who set it all in motion. My fate was to become his hero. The person he didn't have back when his heart failed him in space.

Sabine was taken by the aliens, in a moment I still suspected nothing. I had some clues about you. But they were still too weak. I was still holding onto hope, onto my dandelions. That you were out there somewhere, even though I couldn't find you.

You were out there, yes. I knew you were. At home, going through father and Sabine's things, hugging their clothes to yourself, breathing in their scent. Trying not to let the first tear roll down your cheek, or it would all be over, all those years of pretending everything was alright.

And then casting mine into a box, throwing them haphazardly one after the other, in a box you drop out on the street for the homeless to rummage through. Some of my most precious things, probably. The necklace from Sabine, the sweater with constellations from dad. Everything that was a sign of me.

You didn't expect this, did you? Everything I would do and say. You suspected it. But you didn't expect it. Not after you told me what had happened to father. And especially not after we watched what happened to Sabine. You forgot her. You forgot her, mother.

You knew they were coming, and you knew their intentions for us, what they wanted from Earth, from humankind. You had seen it in your sleep after you first got the message. Sabine's slender, beautiful dancer's body, crushed into a bloody mess on the ground, her eyes staring right at you. Knowing you would come back.

Came back for her. You did. Perfectly aware of what you would see when your eyes seek hers again. Your younger daughter, the usually favourite child between two sisters. Like it had been wit

h you and our aunt. Only, you tried to swear you were never going to become like your mother. Oh, mother. Fate comes back in the end.

You got up and walked away. As simple as that. Not running, not looking panicked or mortified, afraid for your life, for mine. You touched my sister's face one more time, closed her eyes. Giving up on her one last time, like you had given up on me once you knew I was going to travel away from your reach. Prey for later.

No, don't think you could fool me. You have tried. I have seen the way you throw looks at Sabine and me after you found out father was dead - after we all got informed of his untimely, merciless fate. I saw you. I saw you the first time, and I saw every other time after that. The look of someone wanting to get rid of their companions.

Like a bad reality TV series. Like we were in some survival game, and your life depended on our death. The more sure it was we were not going to make it, the more sure it was that you were. And, you know, I hate those kind of stories. Not to be a spoilsport, but... I'm a sucker for films with realistic endings. Good endings. And yes, good things can happen, and they do. And my survival is proof of this.

I saw you. I saw you the first time. And I saw you the last time. The last time our eyes met - the last time I doubted you. The last time I looked away, because, for once, reality was worse than a horror film, one of your favourite goddamn genres. Maybe this is why it hit me so hard, because I would keep connecting things to you. Because, until then, I had built myself off of all the tiny little chips and shreads you had left in your wake. Parts of you. Parts of me.

You said you were going to be there for me.

But family isn't made through blood. Family isn't what we call our parents and grandparents and all the odd, lonely aunts and embarrassed, shut-off uncles. Family isn't all the greyed photos that fill the albums in the cupboards where you keep your favourite china, passed down from generations. Family isn't in your name; that's just your origin.

Family is made through sticking together, through supporting each other even through the biggest differences that tear our worlds apart and make them seem like they're thousands of light years from each other. Family is loving each other even when you forget to wake them up after you've promised because you like to sleep in late. Family is buying them one of their favourite things for their birthday even after they have told you that you are the only gift they have ever wanted.

Family is made through everything you did not give me. Through the care you tried to put up for me, until it fell down with the click of one hand's fingers, like domino pieces that you have merely blown on. Through the love you tried to fake for me - the love some girls in my class gave me at highschool, a love stricken through with jealousy for someone they will never be, and with a desire to be noticed by the teachers as much as I would be sometimes. Through the actions you gave me, pretense at a family, like you were six again playing with your dolls in the old dollhouse.

But, mother, you cannot make someone love you against their will. You cannot teach a fish to survive a fire; hell, nobody can. It's not in their nature. It's not in anybody's nature to be able to go through a fire. There are but few animals who can do this, and, alas, we are not one of them. Humans succumb to fires easily, to fires in nature, or inside their hearts and minds. And they often see things through a broken lens, and they don't ask whether their friends or supporters have a clear lens.

Yours was broken right from the start. You were one of them. One of the aliens that touched down to take the lives of people like me and my sister. Thank goodness father was already out of reach, already dead. I cannot begin to imagine what you would have put him through had he landed safely and come back to our little home in the suburbs.

You said you were going to be there for me.

Did that mean you were going to be there to watch me die, like it happened with Sabine? Who knows. She figured out what you are much too late. We had had no information about the attack that was going to shake our entire worlds in mere minutes. I was out, I was not there to protect her. I had left her with you. I had cast my doubts and suspicions aside.

For hell's sake, I had thought, my own mother. It can't possibly be. They had told us about all kinds of aliens, intelligent life forms that were not limited to the green-blue of our little planet. They had warned us not all of those creatures were on our side, not all of them thought of us as weird, too-loud-for-their-taste yet harmless space neighbours. At first I hadn't believed - almost.

Then all the puzzle pieces fell into place. They will behave and speak exactly like your family member. I could remember the words from one of the few, and the most important, lectures on extra-terrestrial lifeforms. At least some of them. Those that wish you ill. They will infiltrate your family, kill off one of your beloved. And slide into their skin. Scheming to kill all of you.

I bit my lip. Then my hand. Then I cried. I had known you for so long, ever since I had been born. You had raised my sister, and you had looked after me. You had married my father and loved him, and moved in with him. You had plans for us, what we would study and where we would move to and start our new lives. You knew us like the back of your hand. Why would you do this?...

That was when I knew, you see. The Eureka moment, only much sadder, much more bitter, making my heart heavy as lead instead of light as helium. Father was out of the question, likely thanks to the works of your kinsmen, of your fellow aliens. Sister, too. And I had seen her get taken away by them. Loaded into one of their ships - no, your ships. Like cargo. Pulled and shoved and shouted at and thrown around like a toy. And you simply stood there.

You weren't wearing their clothes, of course. No, you still had your mom outfit on - hair in a messy bun, comfy worn-out leggings half a size bigger, an old t-shirt that almost had its colour washed out from being on your back. Then... my heart suddenly twitches in agony. Always, you'd always buy us the best clothes. And toys. And gadgets. Anything we'd say we wanted, you and dad would get for us, in one way or another. Even if it was second-hand.

And you'd wear your clothes until they became rags. Just so we could have what we wanted, exactly when we wanted it. Ah.

But you were still one of them. With the mom clothes on. And with the laser gun in your hand.

So I shot you. Just when I saw you. The last time I saw you. The last time I looked you in the eyes. I looked away. Not because I couldn't hold your gaze, but because I knew what I was going to find there - and it repulsed me. Scared me. Shook me to my very core. The entire life I had lead, I had been lied to, played along with a game, in which nothing was what it seemed like.

It was going to be either you, or me. And just like you had taught me when I was little, I chose myself. Because I always would.

You said you were going to be there for me.

You were. You taught me what betrayal tasted like, and how sweet survival was.

You were. And you weren't. And I will never be like you. Ever.