A Safe Place
I don’t think I have misunderstood anything.”
She spat the words with enough vile to DT, she actually felt him recoil at the end of the wooden bed they were lying in.
“I could explain what happened before. But you didn’t give me a chance to explain,-- you just disappeared from my life,” his words were laced with bitterness.
She closed her and tried to remember what happened that night. The memories of that night and what happened prior to that event were already blurry in her head. She tried so hard in the past two years to shove it at the farthest part of her brain.
The image of that night may be unclear but the pain in her heart wasn’t. But she kept her mouth shut for she knew she got no right. He didn’t give her the right. Not then, nor now. She smiled bitterly.
"I don't need an explanation when you already told the world your reason." she sat up from the wooden bed. She looked down on her feet trying to find her slippers in the dimly lit garden.
What if I told you the reason the world knows was a lie.”
She stopped in the middle of the stone pathway, without looking at DT, she said, “Well, that just makes it worse, for I died for that lie.” she hurried back to the house with her heart thumping on her chest.
‘What could be he talking about now? Lies? Him dating Asya was a lie? What a bastard! How could he think that she would buy those bullshit?’ She thought, he must have forgotten the fact that they knew each other because she caught them sleeping around.
She wiped the tears she didn’t know fall on her cheeks. ‘Stop crying!’ she scolded herself as she went back to her own room.
When she entered her room she didn’t bother turning on the lights. She dropped herself on the floor and leaned on the door. In the quietness and stillness of her dark bedroom, she listened to the wild pumping of her heart on her chest.
A fit of unexplainable anger rose from her chest. “The pain of those years wasn’t a lie,” she mumbled in the dark as she let herself cry. “If you also lie to me, who else could I trust?” she said in between sobbing.
One of the many reasons why she was comfortable with DT from the past was because he never sugarcoats things for her. He would scold her whenever he thought she was crossing the line.
Her problem was alcohol, it was DT who first called her out of it. Other people, even her own mother turned a blind eye to it. Some, just like her grandparents thought she was doing it just to spite them. She was just being a pain in the arse! That was all they were thinking.
No one saw that she was in pain. That she was drinking too much alcohol because she was in pain and she wanted to numb those pain that was like a monster with sharp teeth that kept on gnawing on her heart until there was nothing left but a hole.
And she had a hard time keeping up with her monster. Despite desperately trying to fill the hole, neither her efforts nor money could help her close the gap. It just gets bigger and bigger as time passes, and it hurts.
So, she did the only thing that she thought could help her. She drowned herself in alcohol to numb the excruciating pain.
No one gives a fuck then, not until her aunt found out about it and intervene. The gaping hole in her was still there. It is now bearable, however, there is still time that it overwhelmed her, -- but it is different now. She is no longer alone.
But it doesn’t mean it no longer hurts!
A lot of times she questioned her decision to come back, yet Shanghai feels like home. And Madame Bae is warmer and more understanding than her mother. She truly likes CTF, also apparently there are people that consider her as a friend.
The concept of friendship is still foreign to her. She never had a friend! The closes thing to having a friend was Jess and Dana. But they stuck up on her because of the woman who wasn’t their blood relatives. She was the only one who actually cares about her when no one else does.
She snapped out of her senses when she heard a soft knocking on her door, and heard DT’s voice on the other side of her door. She covered her mouth with her hands to stifle the sob that was about to escape her.
She doesn’t want him to see her in the sorry state she is in now. She slowly crawled on the floor in the dark. She tried not to make any sound that would indicate that she knew he was on her door.
She stretched her arm in front of her to have an idea of where she was for she could barely see anything in the dark. She found the foot of her bed, and she slowly climbed on it. She crawled to the headboard to get her pillows.
After grabbing her pillows she slowly got off the bed, tugging the blanket with her. She then again crawled in the direction of the closet this time. Along with the sheet, she dragged the pillows with her to the closet.
She carefully opened the closet for it not to make a sound. She doesn’t hear any more knocking from the door, but she wasn’t sure if DT had already left.
Her suitcase was inside the closet, she had to pull it out so she could stuff the thick comforter inside. She had a hard time pulling the suitcase out for it was so damned heavy. She took a deep breath when after much difficulty she successfully had the suitcase out without making any sound.
She threw the comforter inside the closet, together with the pillows, and let herself inside, closing the closet door.
She easily closed the closet door for she already had the trick mastered on how to close it from the inside. She hugged the pillow and pulled the blanket closer to her chest as she closed her eyes and tried to fight her brain taking memory lane.
Those memories were too painful. She doesn’t want those. With her eyes tightly shut, she listened to her heart’s erratic breathing until it finally calmed down. Dark, confined spaces always do the trick.
She fell asleep and forgot the world in the safety of a dark closet.