My heart… my heart hurt, I was still alive and breathing, I had failed once again. Why couldn’t I do this, why?
My body ached, buried in the bed. My body was reacting to every breath I took into my lungs. I thought of holding my breath to get rid of this pain, but in the end, I would give up and breathe again. I couldn’t stop breathing even though it hurt, I needed it to live.
I lay on my back on the bed, barely able to open my eyes. My eyes were fixed on the ceiling, staring at it. It was just an empty, white ceiling. It was pulling me to itself. I couldn’t recognize my eyes. I could see myself on that white ceiling. I was standing up. I could jump down at any moment. I had to take a step. It was not a difficult thing to do. One step… It was just one step.
I could feel my heart squeezing. I knew the feeling well. I was hurting for a step I hadn’t taken. My eyes started to fill with tears. Why, why couldn’t I take that step, what was holding me back? My eyes continued to fill up. I wasn’t going to get what I wanted in this life. I wasn’t going to see my mother again. I felt tears in a single stripe from both sides of my eyes. It was like a piece of me breaking off.
I closed my eyes. I couldn’t do anything but lie on my back. I was in darkness. I wasn’t going to open my eyes. My tears were flowing faster. A light appeared ahead. I couldn’t understand what it was, it was getting bigger and bigger, surrounding me. It gave me peace in the darkness.
“Theodore…” That voice was her voice. “Don’t cry anymore.”
I wiped my tears with the back of my sleeve. Through the lights I saw her beautiful face looking at me. She was looking at me. I couldn’t get enough time to look at her. She slowly raised her hands to her chest and gestured for me to come towards her.
When I opened my eyes, I found myself staring at the ceiling again. I wasn’t crying anymore. With a small movement of my head, I looked out the window. From the corner of the window, I could see as much blue sky as the buildings would allow. A panic swept through me. It was lighting out and I was lying in my bed. I didn’t go to work today. The panic that was gripping me was diminishing instead of growing. I was relieved to be lying in my bed. It didn’t matter what day it was or what time it was. I was just lying here right now. I continued to look outside for a while.
Slowly I got up from the bed, and as I let my feet dangle off the bed, I felt discomfort, and it was caused by the clothes I was wearing. I realized that I had slept in the clothes I was wearing when I went outside… Once on the roof… I immediately covered my face with my hands. My mind was flooded with what happened on the roof. I remembered looking over the edge, I remembered people down there, oblivious to everything. I was about to take a step, and after that… I didn’t remember. When I got home, I must have gone to bed and sleep without changing my clothes.
I spread my hands and looked at my mother in the single seat. “Good morning, mom.”
I watched the water fill my palm and soon I couldn’t hold it back. It started overflowing over the edge, through the gaps they could find. I quickly brought my palm full of water to my face. A handful of water was not enough to regain consciousness. I put my hands under the fountain and took another handful of water and another handful of water. As the water ran down my face, I looked in the mirror. I was looking at the person in the mirror, straight into their eyes. I wanted to know if this was real. I was trying to accept that I was still here. I couldn’t get over my failure. As I continued to look into my eyes, the only sound I heard was the water flowing from the fountain. It was flowing in vain. When I turned off the tap, there was a great silence in the bathroom. The silence was becoming unbearable.
I picked up the comb in front of the mirror and started combing my messy hair. I was unhappy with the messiness of my hair. I finally parted my hair in the middle. The silence had become uncomfortable, and I couldn’t bear it anymore. I was going to leave the bathroom and go back to my room. As I put the comb back, I saw him in the mirror.
She was the one who broke the silence. “I’m here for you.”
My eyes were wide open, I was frozen in front of him. He was the one thing I didn’t want to see. There was no way he could be here. What I saw belied me, he was right behind me, staring at me. How could this be? I couldn’t move for fear, I could feel my heart beating madly, my mind was struggling to comprehend what was happening. He was here, right behind me. I was staring at him with ragged breaths. He started to put his hand on my shoulder. At that moment everything started to recede. He kept reaching out to me. It was getting longer and longer, and the distance between him and me was widening. He could touch my shoulder at any moment. This thought galvanized me into action. I left the bathroom without even looking back. I was running up the corridor. I wanted to get as far away from him as possible, but I was stuck in this house. I quickly stepped on the stairs, leaving the steps behind me two or three at a time. I reached the top floor and saw the slightly ajar door to my room. I closed the door behind me as I threw myself into my room. I was still breathing deeply behind the door. I didn’t know if he was coming after me, but I couldn’t imagine he wasn’t. He was climbing the stairs slowly now. He was in no hurry to get me. There was no point in running away. He was in front of the door and about to open it. I closed my eyes tightly and waited for him to open the door.
No one had opened the door. I was leaning against the door with my eyes closed. When I opened my eyes, the deep fear I had just felt was gradually fading. I left the door and went over to my unmade bed. After a quick glance out the window, I lay down on my bed. I quickly pulled the blanket over my head. When I closed my eyes, even the light seeping under the blanket bothered me. I had no other choice. I turned to my right and tried to ignore the light. Apart from the disturbing light, I couldn’t get rid of the thoughts swirling in my mind. I wanted to sleep; I wanted to relax a little. They wouldn’t leave me alone. I turned left, they were in front of my eyes. My mother was looking at me. Right behind her was him. He was touching my mother’s shoulder, slowly pulling her away from me. I turned to my right once more. My mother’s hands and face were covered in bruises. My heart was breaking at what I saw. I knew what each bruise was like, her work… And I saw him behind her, glaring at me. I was being crushed and crushed under that furious gaze. I turned to my left and ran away from that horrible gaze… I was wrong, I couldn’t escape him in any way. He went everywhere with me, never leaving my side for a moment. I was looking into his eyes. He had a distinct smile on his face. He seemed quite satisfied with everything he was doing. I couldn’t see my mom in the darkness. It was just her and me. She kept looking at me.
I threw off the blanket and sat up, covering my face with my hands, thinking about my mother. She should have been with me. I took my hands away from my face and looked at the single seat. I wanted to see my mother. I wanted her to be with me. None of this was going to happen. He had taken everything from me. My mom died when he should have died. It wasn’t fair.
I felt trapped between four walls. I looked out the window. Where could I go? I had nowhere to go, not one place. I got out of bed. I opened the closed door of the room and went out into the hallway. I put on a jacket and went outside. I was standing in front of the apartment door. I couldn’t leave the apartment. I had nowhere to step outside. All I knew was that I looked on the right side. Every day I went to the café, killed my time and came back. I did all this to pay my rent and eat.
I continued to stand in front of the apartment building as people walked past me. The sidewalk and the road looked half wet. I looked up at the sky and it was clear, with a few wispy clouds. When I got tired of thinking about where to go, I started walking in the opposite direction to the way I traveled every day. I blended in with the people… I was walking beside them, trying to blend in more, confused, unaware of anyone. They were running to their jobs that they ran every day. Was life just running? That was the only thing I saw. When I become like them, everything would be solved for me, all I would think about was getting to and from work.
I started to speed up my steps, I was passing people fast on the sidewalk, I had to be like them. I had to go a little faster. Where I was going started to lose importance. I had to speed up, I had to be like them, I had to go even faster.
“Watch where you’re going!”
I recovered quickly and went on my way without looking back. I had to go on to be like them. “Watch where you’re going!”
I had to move on… “Your mother’s dead.”
I was stunned by what I heard. The person who said that had just walked past me. I turned around and followed him with my eyes. He was walking away from me.
“You should never have run away from home.”
I couldn’t understand what people were saying, why were they saying such things? Another person passed by me. “You should have stayed with your father.”
One by one, the people who had passed me by as I was being told more and more, now started to surround me. I was crushed by every word they said. I was just trying to be like them, looking for a solution to my bad life. What they did was to exclude me. More and more of them were around me.
The word I didn’t understand where it came from managed to reach the deepest part of my heart. “Go back to your mom!”
It was the last thing I heard amid the mingled words and at that moment I didn’t want to be around anyone. I was somehow trying to get out of the crowd of people. My tears were flowing, I couldn’t hold them back. I had to get out of the crowd of people, I had to get out of here. The people were clinging and clinging to each other so that I couldn’t get out. They were determined to keep me between them. I was trying to move forward, rubbing against the people on each side of me. When I left one person behind, I was dealing with another. It was like digging a tunnel in a dark cave. The more I dug, the more it went on. Every time I thought I had reached the end; I realized it wasn’t the end.
“Go back to your mom!”
“You think I haven’t tried!”
Tears were making it hard for me to see. As the last word kept ringing in my head, I kept struggling in this dark tunnel. There was no end to it. I was stuck between people and losing hope.
“Help me, mom!”
Everyone reached out their hands and grabbed me where they could. They started pulling me towards them. I was trying to resist them. I was dependent on my mother; I needed her help as always. I was stuck here, there was no way out. She had always been there for me, and she would be there for me this time too. I was sure of it. I tried to defy all the people, but my mother would not respond to my pleas. When I lost my last hope, I watched people pulling me into the darkness. I had no strength left to fight back. My mother was the last thing I saw among the people all around me.
After my eyes closed, I fell into a big void. I hit the hard ground in the darkness and rolled several times on the ground. As I was lying face down, I heard footsteps approaching me. There was a big noise with every step. It was in vain that I raised my head a little and tried to see who was coming. Nothing could be seen but darkness. Suddenly someone grabbed my hair and hung my head hard. I clenched my teeth and squeezed my eyes, even though it hurt. It was hurting me; I opened my eyes to see who was hanging my hair. It was him; his disgusting body was right next to me. I could barely see his mouth moving in the darkness, he must have been screaming and cursing at me. There was nothing else I learned from him.
“Theodore, throw us the ball.”
I looked at the four boys standing in front of me. The ball they wanted me to throw was rolling slowly in front of me. I couldn’t take my eyes off the ball, and finally it stopped at my feet. I stared at the ball at my feet for a long time, undecided whether to throw it to the boys or not. I vaguely remembered who they were. We were in the same class in middle school. I spent my time on my own in a corner of the schoolyard. They only called out to me when their ball ran here. Not once did they let me join them. The kids were trying to get me to throw the ball. Finally, the boy at the front got tired of waiting and came to pick it up. I saw his mouth moving as he bent down to pick it up. I couldn’t hear what he was saying. He was going to badmouth me like he always did. His last look before he left was full of anger that I didn’t throw the ball.
“Shall we go home?”
I looked in the direction of the sound. My mother was waiting just to my left, holding out her hand to me. Without thinking, I took my mother’s hand. Together we went beyond the schoolyard. I looked at my mother’s beautiful face to see the smile that gave meaning to my life, but she was not smiling. She had the dullest expression possible. Her mouth was moving, I couldn’t hear what she was saying, and anxiety was rapidly enveloping my whole body. Not being able to hear my mother was much worse than not being able to hear the others. My mother kept saying something, but I couldn’t hear her.
“Mother… mother-”
At that moment my eyes opened wide. Poking her or trying to pull my hand away was useless. Even though my mom was with me, she wasn’t responding to me. She was just holding my hand and pulling me behind her like a robot. She wasn’t my mom. If she was my mom, she would never act like this. I didn’t know where we were going, I was just trying to save my hand as we walked through the darkness. She looked at me with a sudden head movement. Her mouth kept moving. And her eyes had that angry look in them that scared me.
Where my mother’s hand should have been, I was now holding a knife. I saw a flickering light beyond the darkness. I started walking towards the light with the knife in my hand. I could see that I was in a corridor, as far as the light allowed. As I continued to walk slowly, I started to hear gibberish from the room where the light was. Whoever was there would suddenly stop talking and start talking again. As I continued walking down the corridor, I noticed a staircase going up to my right. Now I knew where this place was.
When I got to the top of the stairs, I saw the light source. The light from the television was not enough to illuminate the room. There was someone sprawling on a single armchair directly opposite the TV. I looked up the stairs before going to him, the television’s light disappearing halfway up the stairs.
I turned around determined; I was going to use the knife this time. I started to move towards the chair. The man I had seen on the TV was shifting from shape to shape as he continued his gibberish, and when he stopped talking, the man’s mouth kept moving. I moved closer to the couch, sprawled out, staring at him, the remote in one hand, his eyes closed as he turned the channel to sleep. My shadow loomed over him as I stepped in front of him. I was looking at his face, feeling the knife in my hand. This was it. I raised the knife against the burning sensation in my eyes.
He had taken my childhood from me. He had taken my mother from me. He had taken everything from me. He had taken… He should have died instead of my mother.
I ran my eyes over the children in the playground. Some were sliding down the slide, some were swinging on the swings. Each of them had a parent with them. I wiped the tear running down my cheek with the back of my hand. I could have been with them, but I wasn’t. And I never will be. I left the playground and started looking for an empty bench in the park. I was asking myself why I came to this park. The answer was very simple. I had nowhere else to go. I could sit on a bench and spend hours, it was better than staying at home in four walls.
I finally found a bench in the greenery. I sat on the edge of the bench and started people-watching. There was a woman on either side of a dog with golden hair. They were chatting with each other while walking the dog. It was obvious from their smiling faces that they were happy. They looked at the couple of athletes running past them. After looking at them a little longer, I saw a group of young men coming ahead. They were laughing and laughing. I could hear them talking about a part of the game they were playing as they passed me. Although I didn’t know the game they were playing, I wanted to go over and talk to them. I wanted to accompany their laughter. They were getting away from me, alone. I would never be with them; I could only watch them.
Everyone I saw in the park had someone with them. They were chatting, laughing, and having fun. I looked at myself sitting alone on the bench. I was the only one alone. Everyone in the park was staring at me. They weren’t looking anywhere else, they weren’t blinking, they were only looking at me. It was a big mistake for me to come here. I immediately stood up and started running towards the exit of the park. Everyone I saw kept looking at me. I was uncomfortable with the eyes on me. As I ran, the people I passed turned their heads and looked at me. There were things in their eyes that I couldn’t make sense of terrible things. The children in the playground I had just watched were now looking at me. I locked eyes with the boy who was swinging back and forth on the swing. I couldn’t look at those horrible eyes for long. I quickly averted my eyes and left everything behind.