To the Forest that Bargains Life

My story started here. 

When my mother died, I've been crying all the time. All I did was mourn, and mourn, blaming myself that whatever happened to her that made her meet death was my fault. 

I couldn’t understand why my heart drenched, a turmoil inside me stirred up to make me feel the suffering more. 

Crying in the dull, forlornness room with things that weren't in their proper places, stygian lights, and curtains that hindered light from the sun. There on the somber side, I would condemn myself for what had happened to her years ago. 

I felt like I was dying, too. I was lost in the glacial, abysmal vastness of the ocean as my floating feet aloft it was excruciatingly with a slow rapid-fire hauled by its tremendous mouth, sending me to its bottomless body and engulfing me to die and to be part of its blue salty water. I’d remain there. 

For it's a metaphor I wanted to escape. It's like I wish I were on a concrete canoe that would never make me drown in the deep ocean that was waiting for my end. As if it was only fated to be my own cage never-ending. 

The other day, I woke up. Staring at the wall, smelling the attar of the rose from the place but in the alternate way. A wilted flower that was blown by the wind while it faded away. Then I would voyage on my mind as I blame myself again. 

I couldn't esteem of anything. It seemed like a void was unclasping me and whispering to my ears. Death, too. They were teasing me, mocking me, killing me, and dragging me to the forest of confusion and misery. 

It became a habit. While my tears, there weren't one of them left like my eyes were tired to make one. 

My Dad would knock three times on my door and he would say, "Sweetheart, aren't you coming out?" and I would mutter, "Leave me alone!" Then I would hear footsteps fading away. 

Right there in the house, it was only me and him, my father. I couldn't blame him for what had happened to my mother, but I somehow knew that he'd remain in the picture. He would evermore be in the picture and not merely me . . . However, did it even matter before? 

I never wished for it. 

When school had begun again, I didn’t do anything instead I frequently prepared myself before I went to our campus: waking up early in the morning, doing my morning rituals, eating breakfast quietly, and hopping in Dad's Subaru car as he would drive all the way to the parking lot of my university. 

It was what occasionally happened as if it was a typical thing to do, even though my Dad and I after the burial of my Mom years ago haven’t had that talk, a talk so casual and so happy that I couldn’t long for. I have to be at ease, at peace, and I didn’t desire to ruin my day by sheer conversing with someone that I loathed for years. 

I drowned in my studies, doing my best to graduate, to enter college. I focused and never befriended anyone. . . Well, there was one that I had before but he moved to a foreign country and lived his life there for a lifetime, and of course, he came back only for me to realize that he was. . . escaping home. I wanted to escape too like him, but could I handle it? 

With my possible expenses. . . With everything. I couldn’t. 

I needed to have an urge, a potent to make me get away from my home. 

I still have to rely on my father. It kind of sucked, but whatever I was thinking remained inside my head. I was locked in my bedroom, crying all the time endlessly, and that's the pill to make me sleep at night only to have nightmares, to have bad dreams. 

Despite that tale of mine, it was never the darkest part. 

When I graduated senior high school, I was the valedictorian of my class, a top-tier student in my batch. Like what happened when I was a ninth-grader student, because that time I had attained the highest honor, ranking first in my class. Everyone looked at me with respect because of that. 

But those years that I spent, those years where I felt like I was punishing myself, those entire years. . . I despised still myself and my father even more. Whenever I think of my mother, I couldn’t accept it. The scar stilled in me, engraved deeply that it touched my darkest side, my darkest fear. 

And still, it was never the darkest part. 

My story was kind of boring but it started there. It was cliché for all I did was to mourn and mourn, and I badly wanted to hurt myself to the pits of the hell inside me, burning my heart alive, torturing my every bone. But that despise was in me, and even if my head whispered to hurt myself, I feared to hurt myself. 

The scar was enough for me to suffer. 

Until now. 

Sitting in front of a mirror, criticizing how I look based on the reflection that I am staring at, feeling weirded out for how strange she looks. My eyes are sore, the wavy black hair of mine is a mess, cheeks, and nose reddish, and this pale skin of mine even paler than before. . . My lips are faded pink. 

What makes me glare is the eyes that I own in which I didn’t deserve, that I want to take off myself. These blue eyes of mine are similar to the attribute of my mother's. They remind me of her and of what I did to her. 

I flinched when I heard a loud thud. 

And when I looked beside me, I saw how the door is cracked open, my father barging inside my room. 

I gazed at him as I can’t remember who he is and what is my memories with him, a blank look it may have been, wanting to push him away as he rushed toward me with that filthy face—a worried look. I hate seeing him as he pitied me most of the time. It makes me want to shout at his face so that he can leave me alone. 

He grabbed my wrist which makes me look at his hand and winced. 

“Let’s go, Avery,” he said, pulling me from my seat and make me stand on my feet. Gripping my hand, plunging me away from my bedroom. 

“Dad, stop.” Two words they are, the only words that I can say. 

It makes me contemplate. It is so sudden. Whatever the reason he got to access and unlock the door of my room seems off, but somehow, I can’t remember that I locked it after eating dinner with him silently earlier. 

I want to ask what on earth is going on and why does he has to do this to me, hence, I can’t. Why do I have to be pulled this way anyway? 

I halted and forcedly took his hand off me. “Explain.” I creased my forehead. “Why?” 

I can’t believe that I'm talking to him! Of all people that I have to speak myself for, why the hell should it be my father? 

I feel a stinging pain inside me, tickling every bit of my soul, wrecking the tranquility that I hunger for. This is chaos, and I must leave. 

We're almost in the staircases, thank goodness that I stopped him in front of the stairs. 

As I look at his face with knitted eyebrows and twitched lips, it seems like he's thinking it's ridiculous of me to utter words, to question him. It makes me go burst and be mad, or punch him on his face, but I have to remain calm as I should be. 

He fixed his stand and said, “We are going to states.” 

“No,” I blatantly replied, shaking my head. 

He's got to be kidding me. He's doing it already. He wants me away like he always has back then. 

I heard it for the second time. 

“We need to get out of this place as soon as possible,” he continued. 

“No,” I said, stern. 

He won’t make me. 

He sighed. “Avery, I know that this place never contributed good health to your condition. You have to grow and live your life.” 

“No.” 

He has to spill the real reason, his evil intent. He has to say them, and I may have forgiven him for that. 

That’s why I heard them.