It was
quiet. This quietness was strange. And it was not only the quiet; it was the stillness
of everything. The apartment was clean and of minimalistic design, nothing was
out of place or out of order. That is, besides the single converse sneaker
hidden beneath the couch and it’s counterpart, which hid beneath the curtains
that covered the clear windows on the white walls. The air was clear too, a
mixture of fresh mint, a hint of dish soap, and of course the smell of smoke
and wet air that blew in from the open shutters. It had just rained, and the
same raindrops that created speckled masterpieces on every window, showered the
concrete floor. It was Monday afternoon, and Elizabeth has just returned home
from the first day of her senior year.
She
surveyed her small home and exhaled a breath of immense relief. She could
finally rest. She kicked off her worn rain boots and found her way to the
kitchen. She picked up the last apple in the fruit basket, making a mental note to go
to the grocery store. After slicing it into exactly eight equal slices, she
retired to the couch and wrapped herself in her own thoughts. As she lay down,
light seeped through the open curtains, showering the room with cool tones of
blue and mystic shadows of flowing cumulous clouds. Days like today were
Elizabeth’s favorite.
The
rain, for her, had always been a symbol of renewal, growth, and change. It was
cleansing. How fitting it was that it was raining at the beginning of the end:
the first day of her last year.
Junior
year, however, had been a blur – a mixture of studying, anxiety, tears, and a
smidge of laughter and juvenile bliss. Senior year was on the road to becoming
something so much more – dark and complex and altogether foreign and new. The
foreign complexity was due to a number of reasons; the foremost being that the
past 4 months had been characterized by death.
Elizabeth
still remembered with chilling clarity the day she came home to find her aunt
cold and still, lying frozen in starched sheets. Despite the overwhelming expectation
that she would be grief stricken, she felt no need to meet this precedent. In
fact, she disappointed it greatly. She felt no grief; she barely felt
loss. This was in part due to the
pragmatic way she viewed her familial relations. Since she was a child her
family had continually reminded her that she was second place to everything
else. For her mom, she was second place to alcohol. For her dad, drugs took
precedence. To her grandparents, their goals and ideas for her life were more
important than the person she was actually becoming. And to her aunt, she was
just another chess piece to control, except her aunt didn’t actually want to
play the game. And so, she learned to view her family, not as a place to put
value or worth, but as an asset. If being with her aunt provided materialistic
stability, but sacrificed emotional soundness, that was a small price to pay in
order to live comfortably. In contrast, being with her mom meant more freedom,
but it also meant she could not afford to live a steady life, and that many
nights would be spent trying to control her mother’s long, drunken, emotional,
and occasionally violent ravings. So she shifted from family member to family
member, and eventually landed with her aunt: a selfish, lazy, and controlling
attorney who had an obsession with small dogs and designer shoes.
Now those
designer shoes were hers (the small dogs were put up for adoption shortly after
her aunt’s demise). Her financial issues had been solved without her so much as
lifting a finger. She had no need for her familial assets, she had income and
therefore she could be on her own. The emancipation process was messy of
course, but nothing more chaotic than she had already handled. And after
proving her financial stability and finding a more than suitable apartment, she
was her own woman.
If she were being honest, she would tell
anyone that she was not ready for this responsibility, but she had a habit of
forsaking what was realistic for what was functional. Functionally she was
living as an independent, unattached adult; realistically she was still the
same lonely and forgotten child that wanted a family. She had not discovered
that child yet, and could not admit that she existed.
Points: 1373
Reviews: 59
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