The Mourning After The Night Before

[swahilimonkfish]

Just a short one-off I wrote ages ago. Not much WG, but about body positivity and size acceptance so I think qualifies within the parameters on this forum. 

 

The Mourning After The Night Before

 

I am waiting for my parents to pick me up from university. For Christmas. I am excited. I love that feeling the most. Of being excited for Christmas.

 

My parents are late. My other room-mates had now said their see you laters and gone. My excitement is growing. I love Christmas.

 

My parents are late. It is starting to get dark. My excitement is beginning to wane.

 

My parents are dead. Car-crash on the way here. Died on impact. Dead.

 

The police are telling me this. Does this room have a draft? It suddenly feels very cold in here. My cheeks are wet. I hate Christmas.

 

I am an orphan now.

 

 

The funeral is nice. I know this because everyone saying so. I don’t remember thinking ‘this is nice’.

 

People hug me and cry. I hug them back by rote.

 

 

I am back at university. Back amongst friends. They’re not back yet. Not back amongst friend. I lie in bed and sleep. If I’m lucky, I won’t wake up.

 

 

The university recommends seeing someone. I don’t want to see anyone. My friends will arrive soon. I wonder if their parents are still alive. I don’t want to see anyone.

 

 

My best friend hugs me and calls me strong. I’m not strong. Having dead parents is a funny definition of strong.

 

She says I look thin. Am I eating? I’m not. I say I am.

 

It’s 3pm. Time for bed, I reckon.

 

 

My friends are smiling. I wouldn't do that if I were you. Last time I did that, I lost everything.

 

 

My friends are having a party. They are playing going-out music. I can hear it through the walls.

 

It’s giving me a headache. I wish the world just leave me alone. Like my parents did.

 

My friends knock on my door. They are going to invite me to the night-time plans. I am going to ignore the door and wait until they go away. Like my parents did.

 

 

My friend says she’s concerned about me. She says I need to look after myself. She doesn’t say why.

 

She says I should eat something. Build up my strength. Last week she said I was so strong. She needs to make up her mind.

 

I say I’m fine. I’ll just have some water.

 

She says something else but I’m no longer listening.

 

 

My friends say they’re concerned about me. They say that I need to talk to someone.

 

I come out. They try not to stare. At my sunken cheekbones. Jutting collarbones. The shadows of the dead around my eyes.

 

They offer me food. No. Food is for happy people. I go back to bed.

 

 

Gravity is strong today. Not going to be able to get out of bed today. No reason to anyway.

 

 

I’m eating a sandwich. As per my best friend’s instructions. It scratches my throat as it goes down. That pain is the best bit about it.

 

I look like a skeleton, she says. I tell her it runs in the family. She asks if my parents were thin, then. That wasn’t what I meant.

 

 

I hate my best friend. She is damaging her studies by committing to supporting me. I’m not worth it.

 

I wish she wouldn’t fight for me.

 

She’s making me feel guilty for not fighting too.

 

 

I’m having another sandwich. At her behest. My stomach is treating it with suspicion.

 

My shoulders ache. I don’t know why. They just do.

 

 

I try to smile. It feels weak. Like the muscles around my face atrophied.

 

And now I feel guilty for smiling.

 

Last time I smiled, my parents died.

 

Smiling. This is how I remember them? I should be mourning not celebrating. Smiling is for people who don’t have dead parents.

 

 

I keep forgetting I have nothing to live for. And now I am eating a cupcake. It feels disrespectful. It feels like forgetting. I don’t want to keep forgetting. I spit the cupcake out.

 

 

My best friend is sitting on the end of my bed while I lie in it.

 

She says I look a bit better.

 

This hurts. I don’t want to look better. A loyal daughter would continue looking worse.

 

 

They say my parents would want me continue my studies.

 

I say, they should have thought about that then, before they decided to leave me then.

 

I try attending a lecture anyway.

 

It smells of not being in my flat. It’s not a smell I like.

 

 

My best friend bought me a doughnut. As a pick-me-up. Which is what my parents were on their way that day.

 

I bite the doughnut.

 

Red haemorrhages from its side.

 

 

Another lecture. I’m not listening. I’m just waiting for it to be over. Life that is.

 

 

My friend keeps helping me. I ask her why. She says, because she’s my friends silly, that’s what friends do.

 

But I’m not helping her. I’m only an inconvenience to her. Am I a bad friend?

 

 

I’m getting to re-take some of my tests. Orphaning falls under special circumstances apparently.

 

I’m having to study. Focus. Concentrate. On something other the drone of loneliness reverberating in my head. Studying helps.

 

 

When did I start to want to get better?

 

Am I moving on?

 

I don’t want to move on.

 

The guilt of living stabs my in the gut.

 

Or the convex vacuum were guts should be.

 

Wait, do I look less gaunt?

 

I look healthier. I look like I’m moving on. I feel like a monster for looking like this.

 

 

I turn down the sandwich my friend offers me.

 

She sighs and says she thought we were past this.

 

I just stay silent.

 

She says, she’s trying so hard but I need to give something back.

 

I just stay silent.

 

She storms out of my room angrily.

 

Alone at last. Alone again. All alone.

 

 

She apologises for yesterday.

 

It was my fault.

 

She strokes my hair and says she has to be more understanding.

 

I’ll have that sandwich, if it’s still going.

 

 

She says I need vegetables in my diet.

 

She makes me a roast dinner.

 

My parents would have insisted I eat vegetables.

 

Maybe I’m not as alone as I thought.

 

 

It’s my dad’s birthday today.

 

It says so on my phone.

 

I had forgotten, shamefully.

 

I was just getting up thinking normal thoughts, glance at my phone and then the tsunami hits.

 

I mope all day. Today is hard.

 

My friend gives me a cupcake with a candle on it. To celebrate.

 

I say, how does that help?

 

It actually helps a lot. I miss you dad.

 

 

My trousers pinched today. They were no longer like over-sized clown trousers. They pinched.

 

When did that happen?

 

Had I been enjoying myself?

 

Am I allowed to?

 

I feel like I am now

 

Right?

 

The pinch hurts. It hurts like guilt. I’ll skip dinner today.

 

 

My trousers keep pinching. Different ones.

 

I can’t change them. I can’t get knew ones.

 

These are the ones my parents would recognise.

 

I want my parents to be able to recognise me.

 

 

I’ve put on weight. People say I look healthier. That I’m doing better.

 

Maybe I am. I’m not entirely sure what better means.

 

 

New trousers, new me?

 

New me.

 

What would my parents have said?

 

I don’t know. I can’t even imagine what they would say in my head. There words are quieter now.

 

Are they leaving me?

 

I’ll eat these chips before they’re cold. The chips that is. My parents are long cold.

 

 

New academic year. New me?

 

I look like new.

 

My skeleton is now hiding. Cupcakes and sandwiches now conceal it. I have friends and studies and cupcakes.

 

But no parents.

 

Everyday is difficult. It will never stop being difficult. But I’m learning how to march through regardless.

[xandercroft]

and then they became batman.  Hey batman, what do you think of this one anyway?