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The first rays of sunlight lit up my room. I tossed and Turned in my bed as the light hit my face, even with my eyes closed the world around me was still awake. when I finally got up from bed I could see tiny specks of dust dancing in the sunlight that was coming from my bedroom window. ?I need curtains.? I mumbled to myself annoyed. Coffee was what I needed. I made my way out of my room and downstairs towards the kitchen where my mother would be.
she was sitting at the table with some toast and cut up fruit on her plate. She was eating happily in silence while reading one of her favorite books. ?Morning.? I said still feeling groggy. my Mom replied with a simple ?morning.? Without even looking up. I looked at the kitchen counter and luckily despite my mother being sucked into her book she remembered to brew some coffee.
The house was empty besides me and my mom. My dad hasn't been around since I was little. I don't really know where he is, but I don't have the heart to ask my mom. Any time someone brings up my father she always looks so miserable. Plus if he really is out there I doubt I would ever have the chance to find him, and he would never be able to find us.
We move a lot. almost yearly. my mothers job causes her to constantly relocate. Many would say that this is a struggle for a kid but I've gotten used to it. Infact I enjoy it. The way I see it is that there's people out there who never get to travel. I'm lucky. You see someday I will want to settle down and never leave. I haven't found that place yet. I have kept a record of all the places I've been to since I was 9, that's when I decided I would keep a lookout for a town or city I want to go to once I'm eighteen.
A knock on the front door caused me to jump out of my thoughts. I looked at my mother who was unbothered, her eyes still glued to her book. I took a quick sip of my coffee and brought over a second cup of coffee to my mother. as I placed the cup down beside her plate I heard a second knock on the door. ?I'll get it, it's probably the welcome wagon or something.? I said shrugging. Whenever we moved to a small town like this there was always some sort of welcome comity.
I opened the door before the person could knock again. a Moment of silence held as I stood there with the door in my hand. This persons face was unreadable. they had several emotions displaying on their face. She was tall, brunette, with beautiful light brown eyes. freckles glittered across her face passing her round slightly upturned nose. realization hit me hard and quick. I didn't have any time to react at all as she pulled me into a hard hug. Sobs escaped from her lips and my shirt was getting wet from her tears.
This woman looked almost entirely like my mother. Words escaped Between her sobs. ?My beautiful daughter.? I was confused, utterly confused and feeling suddenly sick. ?I've finally found you.? I stepped away from her while shaking my head. The resemblance was striking. ?who are you?? I said finally able to say something.
"Move, move!" screamed Henry at the top of his lungs, inside the supermarket. With age, he had become bored of people, thinking that everyone looked alike and had no personality. He had not always been rude, but loneliness had condemned him to become the worst version of himself. At sixty-three he was not very old, but loss had drained his motivation to live, he barely survived. Existence for Henry was made of frozen ready-meals, loads of boiled cabbage stench that soaked his clothes, and dust, that he didn't care to wipe away. His apartment was the precise mirror of his personal image, shabby and dirty. Henry believed that everything needed care to bloom, but since he lacked it, he had stopped to care about himself as well.
Henry smiled, his daughter's face made he remember the happy time when they were still a family, and Alina was still with them. Angela moved aside, breaking the eye contact in an attempt to escape from him. She wasn't ready to face the guilt that had risen in her chest as soon as she saw him. Henry was nothing like the man she knew. His skin had become wrinkly and dark, he had lost so much weight one would have not been able to recognize him for the happy man he had been, always giggling his round belly pretending to be Santa Clause. Angela had run away on her seventeenth birthday, leaving behind a note on the kitchen table that read: ?I have to find myself. This house has become linked to too many sad memories. I will be back.? Henry had no clue where she went, and she did not come back. Running away when challenges presented themselves was another characteristic of hers, she was not able to confront her fears, always preferring to run from them as far as she could.
?Angela, you are here, you have come back!? murmured Henry under his breath, before she could avoid him. He could not know that she had never truly gone very far from the town. Once she escaped, she refuged herself inside an abandoned hut, surviving on the food she was able to find in garbage cans. She had not considered how hard it was to live a respectable life, but she did not care to be respectable. Even if begging was all she could do for the first three years since she escaped, it was harder for her to come back home. The street had contributed to harden her character, since the only person she had around at the time was herself. She understood how important it was to take care of her persona, since she had not allowed anyone else to do it .
?This is what you think. You blame it all on me don't you?? Henry asked with incredulity in his voice. She resembled him more than he wanted to admit.
?Henry, I do not need this anymore. The fights, the screams. I am over all this. You have never liked me the way I was. Me not being your child anymore, is what you can't accept. I carved my way in this world, have a deeply satisfying life, the work of my dreams and I own an apartment,? she lied.
Before the screams, she considered if giving him a chance was worth the try, thinking that maybe he could have changed. She remembered the fun they had together when she was a child. However, back then, they were still ?the three musketeers?. Since her mother's death, Henry had remained irreversibly stuck in time, without realizing it. He could not see Angela for the woman she had become. She was still a wounded child in his eyes. The screams had brought back all of the memories of a childhood that carried the weight of a loss that could not be healed. Her father was still the one that had remained too concentrated on what he had lost to realize all he still had.
?In all these years, I have been able to discover that I am enough for myself. I can exist without others, happy with who I am and where I stand. It has been hard, but I have moved on. I won't look back to all the pain I have been through.? The warm feelings in her eyes had disappeared, giving room to a barrier she was not willing to break. Her mother's loss was something they both had trouble accepting, and now they both knew, they had not been able to face it as a family, but on her own, Angela had moved on Time had trapped them in their own bubble, preventing them from reaching each other again.
Angela turned around, facing the vegetables on the shelf, unable to confront Henry: "I wish you all the best, maybe we will meet again Goodbye." she was on the brink of tears. The meeting with her father had brought back all the feelings she had tried to avoid for so long, and was not ready to confront again. Ashe were all that was left of their relationship, just memories that were fading away. Henry remained in the vegetable isle, profoundly hurt by the meeting. Angela had moved on from a past she associated with him, getting away from Alina's death, and from her bad memories. She still believed Alina was all he missed, but he missed Angela's company more than ever. Even if she was alive, it was the second time he had to mourn her loss.
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