Akane

By Anonymous.

Page 1 of 9

Books. They are my lifeline. The only thing that binds me to myself. Books that spoke of ages past, or rumors of dreams being blessings from ancient gods that left me wanting to know what it was like to dream. Books that spoke of herbs, and medicines, and people’s determination to create something new. Something real, something true to them. Those ones left me particularly sad seeing that I often feel devoid of any sort of wanting. The thought brings a frown to my face and I turn to look at our large bookshelf.

I can’t remember a time when the books weren’t there, dusty and in alphabetical order. Books of research and science and diaries of love and turmoil. I’ve read all of them although I pretend I didn’t so that I won’t get bored. I pretend a lot. I pretend to sleep when my mother’s panicked murmurs keep me up all night. I pretend to enjoy cooking us whatever meals I can, stealing and thieving off others while my mother stays here in our little cottage home, stored away in a patch of forest. I pretend to understand and know the feeling of the words that I read over in the dictionary. Love, pain, hate, anger.

There are so so many and yet I can’t remember a time I’ve ever felt strongly enough to truly understand. Going off of the dictionary, I feel disconnected. Detached. Lonely? No, I think. I have my mother, so how could I ever feel lonely?

Suddenly a crash that echoes through the thin walls of our cottage stirs me out of my thoughts. I hurry to get up, dragging my cold barren feet across dirty wooden floorboards. I walk out of the room and into our living room, and find what I’d been expecting. My mother is sitting on the floor with one of our knives. She’s smiling gleefully at it, and the sharp shine of the cold metal makes me feel like it’s smiling back. It matches the empty gleam in her smile.

Thinking back to the crash, I assume she must’ve knocked something over in the kitchen while getting it. I walk over to her where she had settled herself on the floor and sat next to her. This happens every week nowadays. It used to feel special, caring, loving. Now the practice just feels empty somehow. I wish it didn’t. I had felt so much joy in the past from experiencing her show of love. Love, she once called it. I roll up the sleeve of my cardigan revealing my pale scarred skin underneath. She smiles at me. Smiles that smile. The one that haunts my dreams and taunts my nightmares. The one that I associate with love and emptiness. Somehow though, I don’t think any words in the dictionary will ever really fit.

“Smile!” My mother says in her hoarse, honeyed voice. It reminds me of scraping a fork across a plate. It makes you shudder and you start to recoil, only to bring the fork to your mouth and taste the last remnant of the meal. The meal that once gave you pleasure to be eating, has been long since gone, yet you get a snippet of what it felt like, echoes of flavors on the tip of your tongue. Like seeing snow and remembering the sun beating down on you. Yet the sun never really was. It was always cold and barren.

Page 2 of 9

I search for the right example to associate her voice with in my mind. Books say doing that helps with the disconnection. For me, it’s just habit. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the moonlight's soft glow through the window and I turn my head. Dark, dark blue fills my vision when I look past the cracks in the trees. Ah yes. My mother, including her smile, reminds me of the ocean. Beautiful yet dangerous, cold yet inviting, warm if you get lucky, only to swim deeper down and eventually meet frigid cold. I feel a hand shake my shoulder, nails digging in deep. I turn my head back to my mother who is frowning at me expectantly.

Right. I smile. I smile with the ocean in mind, trying to mimic my mother’s smile. I know I do it right since she responds with another smile of hers and then she grabs my arm with a strength I forget she has. I’m barely able to regain my former relaxed position, when I feel the cold cut of metal and a trickle of liquid. I look down and am met with a new scar, dark red blood oozing out of it. The scar resembles a heart. Hearts represent love. My smile gradually widens. My mother loves me. She loves me. I love her. Although, as my mother continues to carve scars onto me like a painter making what they're sure is their best work, I can’t help but feel a chill.

Whether I feel a chill because I feel something arising or because of the cool night air seeping in through the thin wood of our house. It taunts me as I remember the first time I flicked through the dictionary, my eyes resting on the word love. I remember being confused, for what exactly is affection? Despite the dictionary definition, it can be shown in many ways. That's what a book I read said at least. Perhaps my mother just has her own unique way of expressing love. I had left it at that, but I remember laying in bed wondering why my mother’s way of loving was so different from parent’s affection in the books. Their children got hugged and kissed. Scientists said that hugging and expressing care for the children was a solid practice that works well when raising a kid. Examples of how different children might best be raised and things to keep in mind were littered throughout some of these books. The children used to reference different types of parenting never had their mother stab them with a kitchen knife, the cold blade sinking into their thigh. They never felt what it was like to smile through stitches until the feeling of it eventually felt normal and the act of smiling through it felt natural. Such an exhilarating thing never came across in books. Such a strong feeling of exhilaration remains only in my memories now. Once I had felt what the dictionary defined as joy when the blade sunk into my skin, and now I just feel nothing. I remember thinking that I was lucky to have a mother who loved me, and that therefore, our type of love was just special.

Page 3 of 9

Still, my emotions started to drain and I started to feel the drought. She loved me, yet as deep as I searched, my love for her didn’t appear. No bubbling warmth rising in my chest, and I started to doubt that I could feel any to begin with. I told myself, I just need fixing and then I would feel the joy and warmth of love like I’m sure I once had. I just need to experience it more, that’s all. I’ve retained a vague memory of feeling sharp, exploding emotions that got trapped and tangled in my rib cage. Those feelings were uncanny to most books' depiction of fear, but no. No. That feeling I had felt before was love, I was sure of it. All I needed to do was find it again. That's what I repeated and repeated to myself until I fell asleep to my mothers soft murmurs.

Now, I sit still as my mother goes through the motions and I feel nothing at all. It’s been three years. And despite my smile, as bright as the sun and as dangerous as the ocean, there’s no joy to be had. Sometimes I wonder why I feel so numb. Numb is a feeling too after all, so why can’t I feel anything else as strongly? If I imagine what it might feel like to feel joy, anger, sadness, loneliness; I can almost feel them. Almost. I pretend, pretend, and pretend, but I can’t help but think that maybe the only emotion I’ll ever be able to truly feel is emptiness. I sift through the memories of past times, my memory only retaining so much. In my memories I remember feeling joy, exhilaration, and that sharp, thumping, love, but now I can’t help but think that maybe I’ve been fooling myself all along. Perhaps I was just imagining what it would be like to feel exhilaration in such a situation. Maybe it’s been an act of convincing myself that I’ve ever felt such emotions after all. But no, I think to myself. I feel. The chill of the night air, I feel differently about my mother’s show of affection than I once had.

The problem is that the emotions are so vague and barely there. Like I can see them and reach them for but a moment before they dissipate, and I’m left racing after the traces left behind. A sharp bout of laughter brings me back to the present and I realize I’m alone with only the blood coating my arm, my mother and the kitchen knife nowhere to be seen. No pang of fear rings in my chest. No worry coats my insides causing my nerves to jitter and jump. I feel a tiny swirl of what I think is sadness in the pit of my stomach although I find it hard to believe. It’s hard to differentiate the feelings, if they even arise at all. I get up slowly, in no hurry. My mother’s random fits are normal. Huge mood swings from anger where she would throw our measly plates against the walls, to sadness where she’d start sobbing in her sleep, to fear when she would wave around anything she could find, fending off things that weren’t there, to a joyful giggling mess sprawled on the aged floor. I follow the sound of giggling and laughter into our room, stifling a yawn. When was the last time I slept? I blink blearily trying to regain my composure. Somehow I end up in my mothers arms, spinning around and around and around. Ah. It’s one of