daughter of a stranger

For me, pure fear has a name. He smells a peculiar smell, tastes a particular taste, speaks a certain way. He is lethal and vertiginous, he waits for the window where I finally surrender my walls just to come whipping at me again. He bides his time, prowls in the darkness, overjoys in the steady rhythm of my heart before it comes back, sends my serene soul out the window. And, it pains me to say, I know him so well.

Fear tastes like lukewarm coffee while out the window, it pours. I knew him at its worst back in April. And it isn’t the unsavory taste or the lack of sweetness which bothers me. No, not that. It is the peace I sometimes find in the comforting taste, the way my lips sometimes crave to drink that coffee, forget the sour taste from yesterday, forgive its lack of sugar. And just when I have, when I’m about to, the milk turns sloppy, sour again, and I’m back to square one.

He smells rather strong, if I must say so myself. Cheap cologne he couldn’t waste the time on picking, showering on it every day in the morning before going to that vile workplace I can’t find the strength to step on, even after all these months. Particularly, he smells like rubbing alcohol mixed with after shave. A pungent, strong odor I would, unfortunately, recognize everywhere.

Fear speaks to me, always, in a low yell. Sometimes that yell heightens its intensity, but most time it is only a warning, a whisper of something that will happen if I so dare to let things go, to pursue my happiness. It is there, able to be heard in the heavy slam of doors and the rattling cups in the cupboard. In the thrown dishes, the broken chairs, the desperate yells of a dying man who just won’t give up. And I understand the need for resistance, resilience. I haven’t given up either, despite half of me being incomplete, torn, buried. But his duty has been twice corrupted and now, with no moral, no love but the one left in crumpled flowers upon a marble grave, it would be a smart surrender, a white flag, to just give this all up.

I see him every morning and every night, like a clock. Button up shirts, gray pants, a strong smell, a non existent maternal instinct. I saw him at his weakest, and to some extent, he still remains there, on the tip of the mountain, about to fall. Some nights I pray he does. He waves his fears in veiled threats and hateful, budging eyes, with spit going every which way whenever he yells. He is the sole reason my soul is so battered, so bruised and thin enough to shatter with the heavy wind in the autumn season.

I could never excuse his sins, no matter how good my heart is. He has taken advantage of my pain, of my glory, used it to mock me, to wound me. I have pronounced words twice as poisonous, and I think I mean them. No matter how good mother taught me ethics, this man is a lost case without her, and it is not my duty to mend his lost heart. Remorse is slowly building up inside me, a vile, disgusting piece of hatred and resentment I ache over, one I cannot extirpate like a cancer, one I mull over every night.

Of course, he has his bright days. Where he offers the world to me, behaves like a man his age should. Responsible, educated, civil. Even jolly, some days. Peaceful. Those days are always the hardest because I almost forget. Almost. The day after his eruptions, when he carves insults into my soul that are nothing if not a mere reflection of what he feels toward himself, the day after he makes my best friend cry, he comes back with a smile. Nothing has happened. The water is peaceful again. But I don’t forget the bruises in my best friend’s arms, I don’t forget the hurtful words, the blame misplaced and tossed at me, the empty threats and the hatred his words have had, enough to wilt my little flowers.

Sometimes I wonder, has he forgotten? Can his morale be so low, so shattered, he has forgotten the agony he put me through just months ago? When he was hurting, but not as bad as I, when he blamed me for an illness, when he told me the world would stop spinning and I deserved to stop with it? Has he forgotten I wished I was there, next to mom, instead of seeing this personified animal yelling at me? Has he erased the tears I cried because I didn’t understand why I was so doomed by an unforgiving god to hear his screams rattle the entire rickety house at three a.m? No, I realize, he hasn’t forgotten. But for him they never meant anything, they didn’t wound him as much as they did me. For me, they weakened my resolve, made me crave to be rid of this purposeless existence, cry and scream and write, but never get anywhere, because I’d never be able to escape from him.

So, no, I haven’t forgiven him. I know I perhaps should. Perhaps I’m speaking too soon. But can anybody blame me for holding him accountable for so much pain that came only and only from him? I should’ve found safety in his smell, love in his words, just like I once did with her. Instead, I found disgust, blame. Was this all really my fault?

Just this night, I was wondering if it had all been a dream–or rather, a nightmare. Had I imagined all that rage to compensate for my rotting pain? Could that kind human be the harbinger of so much unattended ire, so much reckless hatred? I sighed, shook my head, my eyes rounded with fear, with relief. The monster was gone, hidden. Stashed away in a closet. If I was lucky, it’d never come back.

But he did. Ironically, just two hours later. And I expected it, I had only hoped otherwise. That foolishness is no one’s blame but my own. I sat in bed, comforted my brother, went back to mine, curled up in a ball and wondered why the skies couldn’t take him instead. The woman we all yearn after, the one who cut all our wounds, she was too good of a soul, too much happiness, too much unsolicited peace, humility. There was no inch in her that would ever inflict pain upon me. I know that, I vow to that. I know beyond a doubt she would judge his actions, file a divorce if she knew what we’ve been through. Her two loves, brother and sister, first and second born, reduced to scared puppies, astray dogs. God, she’d be utterly upset, completely enraged, fangs and claws out at our defense. But with the past being twice gone and never to return, what good does it do to dwell upon it?

For now, I just swallow my unwanted remorse, mitigate my guilty resentment. I am not wrong for feeling it, but I still feel so. In my mind, none of this exists. I live with the woman, hearing her sing in the kitchen, her soft snores next door. I live in a reality no longer possible. Being a ghost is better than being the daughter of a stranger.