You are a horrible child.
The words rang out in her head like the echo of a ringing bell. They burned her thoughts as if they’d been fired from a flamethrower – emptying her of all other thoughts but that one.
She was the cancer in the life of her mother, the thing that made her upset or angry or regretful... She was the reason her mom was unhappy. She was supposed to bring joy and love into her life, but she failed.
Parents expect many things of their children – some expect them to get straight A’s in school, others want their kids to be the most liked or sporty, but all parents want to be happy with the children they have. All hopes, dreams, plans – all of that sums up to a feeling of pride and happiness, and wherever that comes from, it’s good.
And she failed at that. The only thing she was really supposed to be.
If they were shouted out in an angry tone during an argument, she would have assumed they were just an emotional overreaction... But the words had been said in a measured tone, one that could be used by a person saying something that was bad, but couldn’t be helped. In the same tone cancer patients talked about their disease. And it wasn’t the first time she was hearing them.
You are heartless.
She wasn’t sure if those words didn’t hurt more. But they couldn’t hurt more, could they? What could be worse than finding out you disappointed the single person on this Earth that loved you the most?
And what does the word “heartless” even mean, she thought. Does it mean that I’m emotionless, like a stone, just looking at everything but never experiencing? That can’t be true, I have felt joy, love, sadness, pride, pain... Or did I really? Maybe it was just my brain pretending to be receiving information about all those things, to make me fit in? That would make my whole emotional life a lie. I cannot really be happy or sad if I don’t have a heart... But if I cannot be sad, why am I crying? Is even this moment fake? It could be, how am I to know, I was never a person who would be considered emotionally normal... Would anyone think about all this when their supposed heart had just been broken? Wouldn’t the emotions make it impossible to think?
She looked over at the essay that she had been writing earlier. If she really was heartless – and she assumed that was true, after all a parent was the person that knew their child best – she should probably stop pretending to feel something and go back to her homework. After all, she only had three more hours until it had to be sent in.
The battle of Legnano in 1176 was one of the final and most crucial points in the conflict between the Pope and the Emperor.
The flamethrower of dark thoughts in her mind didn’t let her focus on History. She thought it was rather an open tank of liquid nitrogen, imagining her mind to be a room like one from Andersen’s Snow Queen’s castle.
She was just as heartless as the Snow Queen. Only she didn’t try and ruin the lives of others.
Or did she?
Isn’t that just what she did with her mother’s life? The life of the one person she loved – well, until she found out she wasn’t capable of love – unconditionally and wholly? The person, who sacrificed so much over the years to make her daughter’s life much easier and better than her own had been? To allow for her daughter to take any class or course she wanted, spend time as she wished within reasonable bounds and travel wherever and as often as their financial situation allowed?
She wondered if the Snow Queen had been a terrible daughter. Had she been born to a family of Snow Emperors, or did she come from a loving and caring home, but grew up to be so heartless and cold, despite everyone’s best efforts?
The essay before her eyes seemed to quiver a bit. She realized it was because of the tears that were filling up her eyes. She was surprised – she couldn’t remember the last time she cried. That was surely another sign of her heartlessness. She never cried at movies and she didn’t like tears in general – to her, they were just salty and wet signs of weakness.
Why was she crying? Was her body rejecting her soul – if she even had one – because of its heartlessness? Was it refusing to morph into an ice cold shell?
She looked at the bar of chocolate that was laying on the edge of her desk. “If you feel bad, just eat some chocolate. It makes everything better,” her friend had once said. She picked it up and tore the wrapper, but her stomach twisted and she almost felt sick when the smell of nougat and cocoa reached her nose. She felt as if she was going to be sick if she as much as took a bite of anything.
But she needed the endorphins, to focus on the final stages of the New Roman Empire’s conflict with the papacy...
She thought about the
promise she had made to two good friends – one of them was dead now and the other was far away and she hadn’t talked to him in a long time. Those two moments, when she came out to the two people she trusted and they immediately made her promise to never do it again... They had made her feel so weak, so vulnerable, but it was nice to see someone care and not judge her for what she did.
But she had to be able to focus enough to write.
She looked down at her wrist and saw that her nails had already made a red mark on the ivory skin. Suddenly, she was furious at herself - she had promised to never do it again. She felt sick of her weakness, her vulnerability, her angst. Even to herself, she sounded like a horribly self-pitying character from a bad young adult story. It made her feel sick, and not just metaphorically.
She went to the bathroom and splashed some cold water on her face, but the feeling of dizziness and nausea didn’t go away. Breathing deeply through her nose was no help, either – her stomach gave a lurch and she just barely made it to the toilet bowl. Silently dry-heaving, but feeling as if her stomach was about to fall out through her mouth, she leaned on the toilet, thinking how pitiful she was now.
If all the people that thought she was so strong could see her now... They wouldn’t believe her eyes. Or they would, and would turn their backs on her – or worse, pity her.
She couldn’t stand pity. She had to be strong, brave, always happy. And she was, thanks to the fact that she suppressed every bad feeling that she supposed she may have felt. Or she just never experienced them...
Tired of herself, her attitude and the whole situation, she went back to her room. Most people would feel heartbroken, as if their very self had been torn into little pieces – but she didn’t.
In the greater picture, she told herself, this situation didn’t matter. The world would keep turning whether she had a heart or not, as long as she wouldn’t commit genocide or in some other way harm lots of people. So it really didn’t matter at all.
Perhaps it was because of that, or maybe it was not, but she felt both whole and incredibly insignificant. It gave her a sense of calmness – it really didn’t matter.
She didn’t know how it had happened or what part of her brain directed her physical actions during the time she thought all that, but when she looked down, a few drops of blood were rolling down her thumb. She was surprised and examined it more closely, tasting the liquid to make sure it wasn’t something that had dripped on – and only then she felt a stinging sensation.
Turning her hand over to examine her palm, she noticed three long gashes running across her forearm. She realized that she was holding a Swiss army knife in the other hand.
Only two thoughts were in her mind: how did this happen and why did I break the promise, the
only promise I’d ever made that I was so sure I would keep?
I’m sorry, she whispered, thinking about her mother, whom she had failed, and her friends, whom she had given her word, and her family, who would probably miss her. I’m sorry for failing you all.
I love you.
