Foreword They tell me my parents were on the verge of divorce until my mother found out she was pregnant. I wonder how she must have felt at that moment — so tantalizingly close to the freedom she had desired for twenty years, only to be set back by this parasite flowing with her wretched husband’s blood. They tell me she went to the abortion clinic. It wasn’t legal in Canada to abort a fetus older than five months, so she had to go back home to do it. Her family convinced her not to — “This is no longer just an embryo. The baby has already grown arms and legs at this stage. You’ll regret it if you’re not sure.” And maybe she wasn’t certain, seeing as how she clenched her teeth and turned back around, reminding herself that this child’s blood was just as much her own as it was the father’s. She convinces herself that this is a person, not a leech that siphons any hope of ever being able to leave this arrangement. She will be forced to take care of it. She will be forced to love it. She will suck it up and pretend she knows how to love someone despite never being taught how. She thinks that if she fools herself for now, she’ll fool herself forever. The child is born and she is seven pounds and four ounces of nearly pure white skin. Pale, just like her. In the moment where she holds her for the first time, she does not think about how much the paleness resembles herself. Instead, she is reminded of the snow coating the ground outside of the hospital. How pure. Love does not exist. That is the lesson I learned when I was six years old, sitting on the staircase and listening to my parents in the kitchen. They fight about something, anything. The yellow lights glare into my eyes. The tears make everything seem brighter. Love does not exist because my mom doesn’t smile as she cooks and cleans. My dad doesn’t give me piggy-back rides and hugs when he gets home from work. They do not call each other dear or love and they do not hug or kiss. They don’t sleep on the same bed and they don’t look each other in the eye. At six years old I knew this — I knew it was only their children who were keeping them forcibly bound, and I knew my mother was breaking. I saw her crying on the couch one time, and even my funny faces could not make her laugh. My mother doesn’t cry. “Do you want a massage?” In my mind, I knew it wasn’t physical pain that was hurting her. I played dumb like I always do. She couldn’t even look at me, as if I was something disgusting keeping her bound to that man. “I’m not uncomfortable.” She was lying, and it was obvious. The shaky hands that tucked away a lock of hair behind her ear were what gave her away. I haven't noticed her weathered palms or her heavy eyebags yet, but eight years later I will. We find ourselves in the kitchen again. My mom wants my dad to leave. She’s sad, she’s tired and she wants him gone. I’m six years old and I know my sister and I are the only things keeping them together. The emotions bubble up, and suddenly — “If you get divorced, I’m going to kill myself!” And all that’s left of my memory is my mother’s disappointed voice, for her love for me overpowered the love she had for herself: “Then we won’t.” I didn’t change anything. A few mornings later, my father was gone when I woke up for school. *** My sister has always looked more like Dad, with her dark, pronounced eyebrows and upturned nose. Her rage looks like his too — the kind that destroys everything around her. The kind that turns everybody away except for my mother. I’m more like Mom, with pale skin and a tolerance for those who hurt me. That anger didn’t turn me away either. I think my mother is realizing how similar her children are to their parents. One is born to be the destroyer, the other the destroyed. My sister gets angry and then she cries. She turns to my mother, the one who rebuilds the bridge ceaselessly every time after it’s been burned. My mother spends her nights patting my sister’s back, telling her that it’s okay. She sees my father in her eyes, but it’s impossible not to love her. I listen to the muffled sound of my sister’s sobs and incomprehensible words of affirmation from the closed doors of my mother’s bedroom. My mother turns a blind eye to my sister’s actions because she sees herself in my eyes, another unwilling subject to another’s rage. She tries to control everything within her power — she tries to find something, anything that she can still do to fix this. She finds solace in me. I’m nine years old, and she knows that I am exactly like her. I don’t cry. She begged me to be the one person in her life who would not mistreat her. She made me promise her that I would not be like her mother, her husband or her first daughter – all the ones who have hurt her in the past. She begged me to be different. And how could I say no when I could see her hands shaking again? My mother is strong. She doesn’t cry. So when it gets bad enough for me to be able to see the tears, I have to listen. I quash the big feelings inside of me. I hold back any tears threatening to leak out. I avert my mother’s gaze yet I grab her hand to let her know that I am still here. That I always will be. “I promise.” I start bottling things up, because I know it’s going to hurt my mother if I don’t. I can see how tired she gets when my sister has another temper tantrum. I see the pride in her eyes when she begins to compare her daughters to her friends – the eldest is so sensitive, yet I hardly ever see the younger one cry! My sister throws punches at me, literal and metaphorical. You chew too loud! So I no longer make a sound. Your breathing is annoying me! So I hold my breath when I get too close. Even as her anger left, these habits did not leave me. I eat quickly and silently and I breathe so shallowly I get lightheaded. The anger left her, but it stayed in me. Unbeknownst to my mother, the effect of suppressing my emotions for so long resulted in a different type of anger. An anger that was so cold, so sad, and so driven by hatred, grew inside of me over the years and eventually blossomed when I became the same age my sister was. The sadness could be suppressed, which I continued to do, but the rage was explosive. My anger could not be controlled. I grew to be someone who hurt my mother. These hands were made to be beautiful, I think. Fair skin and long, slender fingers. The middle knuckle sticks out a little more than the rest. These hands were made to be beautiful, but I covered them in bruises and calluses, scars reminding me of when I tried being something I couldn’t. These hands were made to be gentle, but I have ruined them by throwing punches at walls I knew I was not strong enough to puncture. I am good for nothing now. If I try to be gentle, my dry, flaky skin will prick and hook itself onto things that do not want an attachment. I have already tried to be violent, and I know that I cannot be kind. Time and time again, life sends a painful reminder that I am my mother’s child. The more I grow up, the more noticeable it becomes. My father told me once that by the time my mother was eighteen, her entire world was gray. I am twelve and my world is already leached of brightness. The January snow is dirtied and impure. The May showers only drowned the dandelions in the front yard. Summer is too hot and winter is far, far too cold. I know my mother saw the world in the exact same way. The only difference between the two of us was that I knew how to imitate rage. Slammed doors, throats raw from screaming — my picture-perfect imitation of my sister’s anger only filled my mother’s mind with one single, petrifying thought: Maybe she is also her father’s child. At some point, I began to realize that being a person just didn’t seem to come naturally to me. I watched as other people went about their days — got out of bed, studied for hours at a time. I tried to mimic their ease. I pretended to be in love with the idea of being alive and made a point not to stare at the person in the mirror. That pretense lingered until it became ignorance, and then I understood — living will always be unnatural to me. I will never understand what it is like to be truly happy. Life slowed to a stop after that. I often sat in the car tracing the path of raindrops, watching the lights zip by. Someone is taking shelter from the rain in the bus stop. Someone is riding a bicycle with a delivery bag strapped to the end of it. Where is his umbrella? These people, I wonder — how can they understand what it is to be alive? I’ve always been a smart kid — I could read chapter books and recite multiplication tables since I was in kindergarten. So why couldn’t I understand this concept that everybody else seemed to? I stare at my reflection and see purple eyebags highlighting the bottom of my almond eyes. I see skin so pale it is almost green. I look sickly, barely capable of holding myself up, and I want to be loved so, so badly. But I have lived a decade and a half with nothing but my spine holding me up — I do not have to be wanted to prove that I am real. So many years have passed, but the sound of muffled crying through closed doors still resonates through the walls of my house. The sound continues into the late hours of night until the doors open — now I stay up late enough to witness the end of it — and the sound of footsteps shuffle out, followed by sniffles. “Goodnight Mama.” “Goodnight.” No one said goodnight to me on any of those nights. I lived like a ghost in my own house, but that was okay. I was tired of wanting. There was no reason why I should want when it was so blatantly obvious that I was not wanted. Wanting is what makes me weak – it proves that I am at the mercy of something I cannot hold. Indulging in this weakness would make me no better than my sister. I have understood that she is weak for as long as I can remember and that has never changed, not since she was twelve years old. Even as years passed and I became the age she was then, I could not understand that weakness. How could someone be so utterly vulnerable in front of another person? But my mother thinks I’m strong. I have never cried to her in the middle of the night for comfort. She thinks I’m stone-hearted and emotionless and I have never gotten the chance to tell her that that wasn’t true. Every time she commends me for being strong and logical, unlike my sister, pride swells in my heart. I cannot tell her. I cannot tell her that I am so deeply tired of pretending that I am placid because everything touches me, and I am never indifferent. There is a hole in my heart in a shape that I can’t quite make out — I fill it with friends and fleeting crushes but it always seems to fall through. I just can’t find someone who can heal me. If you asked me about love, I would tell you that I love many things. I love baking. I love drawing. I love writing. I leave doors open for people who will never walk in again. But to call that feeling love is an overstatement. Someone who is blind cannot describe colour. Someone who has only witnessed the pain of love cannot dream to understand it. More nights than not, I lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling and sadness eats away at my heart. Nothing is wrong, I tell myself. Nothing is wrong, but nothing is right either. My happiness never lasts. I only smile when I am caught up in the moment. I can’t stop myself from feeling nothing at all. The hole in my heart only keeps growing the longer I acknowledge its presence; and I can’t stop thinking about it. My soul, which used to be pure, has a black cloud surrounding it. The darkness grows and grows and never quite stops growing. There is always a darker dark than the dark you know. I think some part of me doesn’t want to be fixed. Some part of me believes that I am not sick enough for other people to notice — that I need to get even sicker until somebody realizes how bad it is. But how could I justify that? I was not damaged enough to be broken. Things keep getting worse and I let them. There is no point in trying to rescue someone who wants to drown. People start leaving once you get too sad for them. My friends would all rather be happily ignorant than stand by me. No one can see how bad it is. Every time I try to explain myself to someone, my emotions — these emotions that are eating me up from the inside — are brushed off as trivial. It is the biggest curse of all to understand but to never be understood. No one will understand how truly demeaning it is to finally develop the courage to cry for help, only to be ignored by those you thought you could rely on. I describe horrible things that happened to me, but it is still too difficult for others to infer that such a thing could hurt me. I am used to not being taken seriously — I am always the butt of the joke. People say that I’m an easy target — maybe they intrinsically know that I will never leave no matter how many times they beat me down. I am my mother’s child. I am never indifferent, but I am also not the type of person that is able to break down in tears and beg for somebody to comfort me. My sadness has a habit of going undetected. I am trying so hard to be heard, but all the breakage is on the inside and the only thing I can do is pray that my words can convey the extent to which I am damaged. People are quick to tell you that they care but are not so great at staying when it really matters — it is never as easy as you’d expect. These feelings are much more complex than that. Being lonely is a gradual process — you don’t realize everyone has slowly left you until you reach out for someone and grasp helplessly at empty air. Suddenly all I have are people who cannot love me and a will that cannot save me. I am talked over, so I don’t speak as much now. I fear that if I open my mouth, I will never stop screaming. I have so many words inside of me that if I try to talk, it will fall out in a jumbled mess and I will still leave the conversation without being understood. Even my family is not by my side. The sadness presented itself in anger and irritability which was so easily brushed off as teenage angst. I’m sorry my sadness isn’t what you wanted it to be. In truth, this anger was never once beautiful. It is never like it is in the movies, and there is no protagonist to save me. I don’t know if I am too sensitive or if life is simply unbearable. It feels like I am running in place, nowhere fast. I do not envy the dead, but I wonder about them — their days have already ended, and I still don’t know how I’m going to get through mine. I am completely and utterly alone in this world. This loneliness and desperation are the strongest emotions I’ve ever known, so my subconscious tells me that it’s my destiny. And maybe it is, seeing as how every time something good happens, something bad follows. I am told that it’s just the way life goes, so I wind up believing that this sadness is a norm. I mistake the wrong thing for love, time and time again. I do nothing but wait for things with no guarantee of returning. I have been waiting for my old self to come back, but it seems that even she has failed me. My mother keeps asking me where her little girl went — I am never sure what to say when she says that. I am never sure what she wants from me. I know she loves me sometimes. Perhaps when I am obedient — certainly not when I am angry. She loves me sometimes, but not always. I think she is consumed by the thought that I am her and often forgets that I am my own person. She does not know me nearly as well as she believes she does. Somewhere in between growing up and trying to free myself from this association to her, I have developed my own, unique kind of sadness. I beg for her to see me and, as if to prove a point, she looks the other way. She believes I am ignorant of the fact that I have grown into something despicable — I would have to be blind to not see that I am nothing short of disgusting, yet I cannot hold back my unsightliness. Believe me — if I could be different, I would be. If I could find a way to take away this anger, this sadness, I would fall to my knees and scrape myself raw for it. But I believe I am cursed to be this way. My sister, who grew up under the same conditions as me, has never questioned whether my mother loved her or not. She has never been alone because my mother has always been there when things were difficult for her. In my heart, I know that my mother will always be there for me. I know that from watching my sister. But it puzzles me — why is it that, when things were tough for me, I felt so incomprehensibly alone? When people took their grimy hands and poked and squeezed at my heart, where was she? If I showed her my heart, I am sure she would have regretted her decision seven years ago when she begged me to be different from my sister. Maybe she would have realized how much I was hurting if I was also the type to wear my heart on my sleeve, and how wrong it was to make an eight-year old build cages around her heart. “I didn’t know you were sad. Why didn’t you come to me?” You should have noticed I was sad long before I had to make it known to you. If I really am you, how could you not see the damage before I had to suck it up and fix it myself? It is not like you say — I was not brought into this world to ruin your life. You brought me into this world. This was your choice. Why can’t you help me understand how I ended up this way? Why can’t you love me? My mother always says that it’s easier to get sick when you’re not happy. In my sadness, I would get sick every month, often three weeks at a time, but never once did that indicate to my mother that I was unwell. I had pills shoved in my mouth and was told to swallow, but I never stopped getting sick. I visited countless doctors, but no one could figure out what was wrong with me. “Since people started taking off their masks, it’s been normal to get sick more frequently than before. You might want to eat more vitamins and order a blood test, but that’s really all you can do.” Normal — such a simple diagnosis but so incredibly demeaning. It was even further proof that I was not sick enough to ask for help — after all, you can’t heal someone who doesn’t need healing. I ate my vitamins and had needles jabbed into my veins but none of it made me feel any better. I begged for someone to find something wrong with me, but the tests always showed that I was in perfect health. I needed to see that it wasn’t all in my head — if nobody else could tell that I was hurting, then maybe I wasn’t hurting at all. Maybe I was being dramatic and maybe I was fine as the doctors said, but if I could just find something — anything — on these tests that could prove that I wasn’t okay, I would be able to validate this sadness. But my white blood cell count was normal. My blood sugar was fine. My iron, which used to be low, was actually going back up. So what was this twisting in my heart? The darkness closes in and I begin to accept it because I can no longer sit here and wait for things to get better when there may, in fact, be nothing wrong with me at all. In my mind, I am floating alone in a swimming pool, hair waving, ears covered — my eyes are open but I am not seeing, only looking. I can tell that it is bright. Blindingly so. I can feel the cold water surrounding me and seeping into my bones — it sends chills across my limp body but I affirm that this frigid, chlorinated water is the same kind that keeps me alive. I learn to be complacent with what is happening to me because acceptance is the next best thing, but inside, there is always the sinking knowledge: I will never feel that warmth. I will never be okay again. And suddenly — a drop of sun. In my mind, I am at the bottom of the ocean. I am in a place where no rays of sunlight dare to creep. What floats around me in this vacant water is plastic, debris, and monsters like me.