0 comments

General

He´s sitting right here, in front of me. His hands are doing a little fun, anxious dance while he waits for a chance to come inside. I hold my hands tight, they ´re usually also an anxious dancer but not today. Today they sit here as still as I am, waiting for a chance to burn everything down. My mother always warned me about people who talked with their hands, "they´re only trying to show you something different then the thing they´re really saying".

That´s why I hide my hands today, they might try to say the opposite thing I´m trying to say and I can´t punish them by cutting them off like I do with him. Him. He´s still here looking at me with petty eyes and clearly a wondering mouth trying to find the right words.

He left when I was six, then he came back. Then he left again and came back a few times, enough times for me to know that I should´ve stop counting. So, I did. I stopped counting on him to come to my birthday parties and to take me to watch new movies on theaters. I stopped counting so badly, that I never count on him for anything in my life.

And now he´s here, in front of me. His mouth is opening, and I´m not sure I want to hear it.

“Should I say I´m sorry?” Is he real? Is this real? A bad dream is only bad when imitates reality so this must be real.

“Are you real?”

“I don´t think I understand the question, I´m sorry”

           I´m sorry – the most hurtful phrase in the world. I am sorry. You shouldn´t be. I wish you weren´t. I wish you had nothing to be sorry about, I wish you had played with me when I asked instead of saying later because there was no later. I wish you had gone pick me up from the playground like the other parents did to their kids instead of forcing me to grow up so fast. What if they had got me in the way home? Would you be sorry too? Then we would both be sorry, and the point is that I don´t want to be sorry. If I´m sorry it means it hurts. If I´m sorry for not having you to receive all the paints and little gifts that I made in school it means it hurts, and if it hurts it means it matters. And it really does not matter. It doesn’t matter because I don´t need any one to get that pretty pink bag the I wanted so bad for Christmas, I don´t need any one to go see my plays at school and take me to eat ice cream after it.

           Maybe I am sorry, I am sorry for not letting it hurt anymore. For not pointing out everything you did and scream to the world how much it hurts, and that it will never cease to hurt. Because now I´m a fake product of fate, wondering around with a wound that has not healed. And maybe it will never heal.

“I don´t understand why you´re here”

“Maybe because I have never been. Isn´t that enough to be in a place? Never have being there before”

           And this is how I know he´s not here for forgiveness, he´s here to repair himself. To be able to say I went, and I did, and I tried. It doesn´t take too much to turn the hero into the villain, all it takes is motive and circumstance. And, sometimes, a little bit of anger. But all I feel right now is anger and if that makes me the bad one, the broken one… then I´m the villain.

           So, I took this anger and I turned it into loneliness.

“I´m glad you here now”

           He doesn´t understand this love and neither do I, but he takes me into his arms and somehow I´m fulfilled. The anger and the loneliness is now sadness and it weights so much more. I figure this is the reason he takes me into his arms because he knows, he knows I couldn´t carry it alone. So, is this kindness or just a superhero move? It´s funny because fathers are always portrait as superheroes. Mine was simply so busy trying to save everyone else, he forgot about me.

           I don´t feel like he´s saving me right now, he´s pushing me down with him because he also have this sadness inside him. So, we cry, and I don´t know who´s started and who´s going to finish but right now this might go forever. This moment might never end and every time we see each other we´re going to be dragged to this very same moment. As if we were in a loop. We can´t save ourselves, there was so many things left unsaid and some many other spoken out of term and we can´t take them back.

           It´s not impossible to relive the past, we´ve been doing for so long. But it is impossible to change it.

“Are you going to go this time? Or are you staying?”

“Did anything change? Did you forgive me?”

           We were so close and it hits me again, this is not an apology. Is his way of getting to me to forgive him without ever saying he was wrong. He thinks it was necessary, but when do pain and sadness are necessary? They´re always there but not necessarily in bad times.

I had had happy times before and I´ll have plenty more. I´ll have days that I won´t be able to stop laughing and I´ll roll on the ground and maybe stay there for a while. It will be okay. Because I´ll have days I´ll try and I won´t be able to achieve, it might break me in some way but never enough for me not to recover. So, no. This is not me forgiving you, this is me forgiving myself for all the sadness I collected because I thought I had to. For all the times I thought I had to be lonely because that´s how it should be. But that´s not me, and you don´t know it. I won´t explain, I won´t say anything. I´ll get up from your arms and shed the tears away, put my jacket on and open the door. I´ll look back. I´ll look back so this moment can have an end, finally. And when I look forward again, I´ll have my beginning.


May 29, 2020 02:00

You must sign up or log in to submit a comment.

0 comments

RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

Bring your short stories to life

Fuse character, story, and conflict with tools in Reedsy Studio. 100% free.