APRIL 2006
During the month of April of my final year, things came crashing down. Daisy was starting to get worried about why I wouldn’t talk to her. Normally I loved talking to her, but now if she asked for me to come over, I would decline and say I was busy. If she came over to see me, I would pretend to be asleep in my room. The only time we talked was over call. But even with that, she was asking too many questions and it was stressing me out. It was already stressing me out that I was making her worry. The whole plan had been to not make her worry, but here I was making her worry.
One day, I just got off from school. Mum was in the kitchen preparing dinner. She heard me come in and listed off the chores I had to do for the day. This was how she did it everyday. The minute I got home, she would list off a bunch of chores I had to do. She didn’t understand I didn’t have time for that. She seemed to think I was slacking off a bunch and though giving me something to do would keep me out of trouble.
“Mum, I don’t have time for all that!” I said in a very annoyed tone. I had a huge test the next day and a couple projects I needed to get done as soon as I could. I was stressed, and didn’t mean to give her the tone I did. “I have so much school work to do!”
“Get it done, boy.” She growled. “You and I both know you’re slacking.”
“I can’t!” I was reaching the end of my rope. Everything that I had been bottling up was starting to come to the surface. I was getting irritated and upset. That was the thing with not having Daisy around. I always talked to her about how I felt. But now I couldn’t, I was bottling things up. I knew that was always a bad idea since it always led to me having an outburst if someone got on my nerves.
“I don’t care if you can’t or not!” Mum turned my way and glared at me. “Get them done!”
“Why don’t you?!” I spat as I got in her face a bit. Despite being a couple inches taller than Mum, she didn’t look intimidated in the least.
“What did you say to me?” Mum hissed. “Repeat that again and I’ll have your head.”
“I said, do it yourself!” I turned around and stormed down the hallway. I had to stop myself before I really blew up. I was too close to that and I didn’t want to risk it.
“OH I’M SORRY, DO YOU HAVE A JOB THAT PAYS THE BILLS?!” Mum yelled at me. That’s when I broke. I wasn’t one to get angry, but I had suppressed so many feelings for so long that it was all coming out at once.
“NO, BUT I DO HAVE SCHOOL!!” I shouted back. “AND I WOULD LIKE TO PASS SO I CAN GET A JOB THAT PAYS MY OWN BILLS!!”
I went in my room and slammed the door behind me. Thankfully Mum didn’t bother following me. She was probably tired too. I threw myself onto my bed, grabbed my pillow and screamed into it. Not too long after, I started having a mental breakdown. I didn’t know what to do anymore. I was so done with being treated like garbage, but I didn’t want to hurt people I cared about either. Either way, I didn’t have time to think about it. I had to study and get my work done. Like the many times before, I pushed down my feelings and tried to move on with my life.
The next day went much worse. I was pretty sure I failed the test I had because I was so stressed out. When I got home, Mum wanted me to finish up dinner. Despite being irritated and upset, I did as I was told without any arguments. By the time I finished making it, I was more tired than irritated. I was going through so many emotion switches it was crazy. One second I was depressed and then the next I was ready to blow up at someone. They were getting harder to handle by the day and I knew it was because I was bottling up things.
“This is pretty good.” Dad said as he took a bite of dinner.
“Thank you.” Of course Mum took full credit. Whatever. I picked at my food a bit before deciding I didn’t want it. I got up, and tossed it.
“Not going to eat?” Mum asked suspiciously.
“Not hungry.” I mumbled.
“No? Why?”
I shrugged. “I’m going to go take a nap. I’m exhausted.”
I headed straight to my room. Despite being down the hallway, I could hear Mum and Dad chatting about me.
“Is he alright?” Dad asked. “He seems a bit off lately.”
“Claims he’s busy with schoolwork.” Mum grumbled. “As if.”
“Everytime I check on him, he’s usually doing homework.” Dad pointed out. “You really shouldn’t give him so many chores to do. He’s probably stressed.”
“I’m keeping him out of trouble by keeping him busy.”
“Trouble? The poor kid is so tired I think he would rather sleep than cause trouble.” Dad chuckled. “Do you think maybe something is going on between him and Daisy? The two haven’t been talking too much.”
“I did notice that.” Mum said. “He’s stressing poor Daisy out. She wants to talk to him for some reason, but he’s never available to talk. Sounds like he’s trying to upset her to me.”
After that, I stopped listening. I didn’t want to hear about Mum’s views on the situation. I went to bed and slept right up until the next morning.
I didn’t want to get out of bed to go to school. I wanted to sleep all day. But I knew I couldn’t, so I forced myself out of bed and headed to the kitchen to grab breakfast.
“Morning.” Dad said as I entered the kitchen. As usual, he was there with his coffee.
“Morning.” I grumbled.
“You sound tired.” Dad pointed out. “You feeling ok?”
“I wanna go back to bed. I’m exhausted.”
“Why don’t you? I think you deserve a break at this point.”
“Mum wouldn’t be happy.”
“Tell you what. I’ll talk to her and say you’re sick. She should leave you alone.”
“You sure??”
“I can’t guarantee anything, but I’ll do my best. So why don’t you head back to bed?”
“Thanks Dad.” I smiled tiredly as I went back to bed. It was nice when he did things like that for me. They meant a lot. I headed to bed and was about to fall asleep when I heard Mum wake up and head to the kitchen. I heard them talking, and Dad told her I was sick. I guess she didn’t believe him and had to come see for herself.
“Get up.” She demanded. “Let’s see how sick you really are.”
Quietly, I sat up. She took my temperature and scoffed.
“Liar.” She said. “You just want an excuse to stay home. Get your ass ready for school.”
“Mum, I’m tired…” I mumbled. “I need a break…”
“Tired from what? Slacking?” Mum shot me a glare. “Yeah right.”
“I’ve been working non stop!” I cried as I pointed at the mountain of schoolwork I had on my desk. “I haven’t had time to slack!”
“You’re going to school. You have no reason to be staying home.”
“Just this one day?” I begged. That set her off for some reason.
She immediately went off about how lazy I was and how I needed to work harder and so on. She yelled the whole speech which set off an anxiety attack. Fears of her bringing out the belt set in, and I started shaking. But at the same time, my feelings were coming to the surface again, making me want to fight back and get her to leave me alone. It was all so confusing and I didn’t know what to act on. Dad heard the yelling and came over to see what was going on. Unfortunately, he couldn’t do much because once Mum was in a mood, there was no stopping her. So I just sat there and took it. But when Mum brought up Daisy and said something about how Daisy was worrying about me for nothing and how it was affecting her studies, I snapped. That wasn’t what I wanted or needed to hear at that moment.
We ended up in a huge argument. Dad only managed to break it up later in the argument. He wasn’t one to intervene with these things, nor did he have the presence to do so. But after the argument, I know I pushed things too far.
“Belt.” Mum demanded and she stuck out her hand.
“Dear, this isn’t necessary-” Dad started to say.
“Stay out of it, Thomas.” She glared at him.
“Please! I’m sorry!” I cried. “I didn’t meant to yell-”
“Give it to me.” Mum growled so coldly it froze me in my tracks. I had no choice. I did as I was told. I turned around and once again, I felt the familiar whip of the belt. It wasn’t a feeling I missed in the slightest. Mum only hit me a couple times, but they were deep. She didn’t hold back at all. She put all her strength into it.
“Don’t you ever talk back to me like that.” Mum was seething with anger. Dad had to hold her back from hitting me too many more times. He could see how deep the cuts were and they were only getting deeper. He didn’t want to risk a hospital trip.
“Calm down Emilia.” Dad took hold of the belt and kept it away from her after she got her last hit in. “I think you’ve hit him enough.”
“Enough?! The amount of disrespect and-”
“I know, I know. But you’re going to hurt him really badly.” Dad said. “Let’s not have a repeat of that one time, ok?”
That shut Mum up. Dad dragged her out of my room and managed to get her to her room so she could cool off. I remained curled up in a little ball. I had to deal with the cuts myself and I didn’t know how at all. I half expected Daisy to walk in through the door, but she never did. I needed her so badly. I needed someone to talk to. I couldn’t keep doing this.
“Alright… Now to get you somewhere safe.” Dad suddenly walked into my room. He came up to me and with a saddened expression he helped me up. “Come on. Get up.”
“W-where?” I asked shakily.
“I’m dropping you off at Daisy’s. You and your mother shouldn’t be around each other right now and I don’t know how to deal with these cuts.”
“B-but!” I cried. I couldn’t let Daisy see this!
“Look. Daisy already knows you’re coming and why you’re coming.” Dad sighed. “I know there’s something going on between you two, but you’re going to have to just sort it out.”
Tired and defeated, I did what I was told. Dad helped me to the car and then packed me a small bag of my things to take with me. Seeing as things were so tense between Mum and I lately, Dad figured it would be best if I stayed at Daisy’s for a bit. It was a painful ride. Not only was my back stinging horribly, but I was not looking forward to facing Daisy at all. But in the end, I guess I did get my wish of not wanting to go to school.
We got there, and Daisy was waiting outside for us. She looked very anxious. When she saw us park, she ran over to the car and immediately helped me out and into her apartment. Dad had to deal with Mum, so he headed back home. Before he left, he apologized for not being able to stop Mum from going too far to both me and Daisy. I honestly felt bad for the guy. It was probably tough being in his position.
“Oh gosh, these are really deep.” Daisy mumbled to herself as she grabbed a cloth. She already had everything prepared in the washroom when I got there. She had me sit on the edge of the tub so she could clean everything. I made sure to not look at her too much. I was already in trouble. I didn’t need another anxiety attack because I hallucinated and thought Daisy was Mum.
“This is going to sting.” She set the cloth on the wound, and it stung terribly. I knew that wasn’t going to be the worst of it though. Iodine was always the worst.
“So. What happened.” Daisy demanded to know.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I mumbled.
“Kevin, I know you haven’t been talking about a lot of things.” Daisy said. “I’m not stupid. You need to open up before all those bottled up feelings explode on you.”
“Too late.”
“Well then there you go! This is why you need to talk!”
I stayed silent. I didn’t want to talk about anything. Daisy didn’t like my silence. She wanted to know everything. She stopped cleaning my wound and came up from behind me to face me directly. I immediately looked down and avoided looking at her.
Daisy sighed. She knelt down in front of me and got in my field of view. I flinched when I saw her and her face flickered between her own and Mum’s. Once again, I looked away as quickly as I could.
“Kevin?” Daisy asked gently. “Look at me.”
“I can’t.” I mumbled.
“Yes you can.”
I kept looking away. Daisy didn’t move.
“Look. I know you’re scared.” She said gently as she put her hand on my knee. “I would be too if I was in your shoes. I know Mum’s actions are affecting you more than psychically. I’ve noticed you won’t even look at me anymore and I have a feeling it’s because you see Mum when you look at me. Right?”
I was stunned. She paid a lot more attention to things than I thought she did.
“You know I’m not her. I would never hit you with a belt, let alone yell at you.” Daisy sighed. “You know this. Please, just look at me.”
Slowly, I looked down at her. I kept seeing Mum again, and quickly looked away.
“Keep looking.” Daisy said. “Please.”
“I-I can’t.”
“Just try.”
Again, I looked and saw Mum. I couldn’t unsee it. It was making me scared and angry at the same time.
“I’m not Mum.” Daisy stated. The confidence at which she said that somehow made the image of Mum go away and I was able to see Daisy. Just Daisy. I looked at her before starting to cry. I didn't know why I hadn’t told her everything before. She cared and knew how to help. She always did.
“C’mere.” Daisy smiled as she gave me a hug. “It’s ok. You’re safe here ok?”
I was too busy crying to answer. I hated being such a baby around her, but I couldn’t help it. After I stopped crying and she got my wound cleaned up, I told her everything. Nothing was left out.
Comments (1)
See all