Falling Apart

• Annabel Vivarelli, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2017

Dreams are like the horizon, the closer you get the further away it runs. That’s what Mum said anyway. I never got the chance to ask her what she meant before she was gone. Ran away with another man. You thought I was going to say dead, didn’t you? I wish that was the case.
“Where’s your Mum?” Everyone would ask and every time I would be filled with shame as I replied. My lip trembles just thinking about it and anger fills me. There would be an awkward silence followed by something like, “Oh” or “Sorry”. What do I say to that? Then the worst part would come, the bit where they asked why and I would have no answer. I dream every day, for an answer to the question that has been haunting me every step for four years now. Why? Why’d she just pack up and leave? Everything was so perfect. My family was whole and I was so happy, so content and it never occurred to me that my support would be shattered, that everything would fall apart. I take a deep breath to calm myself. I can’t get worked up about this. It’s been forever since she cheated on not only my Dad, but my family too. It all reminds me why I hate being alone in my head and how much I wish I didn’t have this hovering cloud that spews out memories and thoughts about Mum whenever it can, hanging above me. I want it to go away. I want to be able to lie on the grass in my backyard as the sun beats down but the shade of the apple tree covers me, with the rich blue sky spreading across the world like a cosy blanket and not a single white puff of cloud in sight. That’d be perfect, but instead I’m lying here, my thoughts eating up my mind in small, torturous nibbles. Not a short period of grief but a long, drawn out, slow period of a swirl of emotions. Kind of like when you mix colours together but instead of getting purple, you get a brown slush. Well, for me, the worst of the turmoil is over and I’m left with the brown slush that I try so hard to mix other colours with, make it brighter, make it a happy colour, but no, it just gets darker and it scares me, so much. It scares me that I can’t stop this…this mourning that seems to get better only to plunge back down to bedrock. I try, I try so hard to talk to people about it but I always end up opening my mouth only to end up in tears. Nothing works and I feel like nothing will. I want to see the light at the end of the tunnel that everyone talks about, only I fear that there is no light for me. All because of one simple abandonment, my world has been tipped upside down.