The Break-Up Retreat(30)

“A gift?” Martina says. It’s not really a question.

I flash back to when my father gave it to me.

My fourteenth birthday party. High, squealing laughter, the taste of chocolate and strawberries in my mouth; candles twinkling on the table, the cheap, sparkly nail polish I had sloppily applied glittering whenever I moved my hands.

My mother had spent weeks putting that party together. Inviting my friends, ordering the cake. She didn’t bake, wasn’t that kind of mom, but she still wanted me to have a good cake.

And yet, the moment my dad brought the box out of his pocket, all that ceased to matter.

My mom had bought me presents. Of course she had. An iPod, in exactly the teal color I’d coveted, a fuzzy sweater like the one I’d seen on TV.

But the necklace was a different kind of gift. It was a grown-up gift. Real jewelry, made from real white gold; and a rose, meant to tie me to my father. A reference to the last name we both shared, that my mother didn’t.

It was meant to make me feel special, while shutting my mother out. As always.

And it worked. Of course, it worked. I idolized my father; I thought he hung the moon and the stars. I wanted to be just like him. A truly great journalist. A truth teller and trailblazer.

Until the day he was arrested.

I clear my throat.

“Yes,” I say. “It was a birthday present.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?” Martina asks.

When I look at her, I get the strong feeling that she’s offering me an opportunity. Yet another gift, this time from her to me.

Somehow, it feels like she already knows who gave me the necklace; the combined weight and relief of wearing it.

“My dad gave it to me,” I admit, and it doesn’t quite feel like I’m the one talking. It feels like she’s pulling the words out of me, effortlessly.

“On my fourteenth birthday.”

“Before he left,” Martina says, barely louder than a whisper, and I nod, like I’m in a trance.

“So now, you do the leaving,” she continues.

I feel trapped by the eye contact. I couldn’t look away, even if I wanted to.

And I think I do.

I must.

“Now you do the leaving, and it makes you feel powerful,” she continues. “You make sure never to love anyone the way you loved when you were a child, because you know, in your heart, that loving someone that way always leads to being left behind. It’s inevitable. Every relationship has a winner, and you are determined to win, every time. To make sure it never happens again.”

“Yes.”

I have to get out of here. This is some trick she is playing on me.

Don’t let yourself get sucked in , Sandra told me, before I left. Promise me .

I promised, and I laughed, thinking I would never get sucked in, never be vulnerable to something or someone like this.

“You must have felt so very, very small.” Martina’s voice has grown very quiet. “You must have felt so little, and so scared. The person who was supposed to take care of you, the person you looked up to. Gone. And no matter what you did, no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t bring him back. You could never be good enough for him to come back.”

I press my eyelids together in a feeble attempt at shutting down, hiding.

“I don’t want to . . .” I don’t know how to finish the sentence. “May I go, please?”

I hear the sound of Martina standing up from her chair and then feel the shifting of the couch under me as she sits down next to me. The solid weight of her arm around my shoulders.

“I’m not going anywhere, Isobel,” her voice says, in the dark, and I draw a deep, shuddering breath.

“But you have to trust me. You have to trust that all I do is because I care about you. Because I want you to get better. Because I want you to know that you deserve to never, ever get left behind, ever again. Can you do that? Can you listen to me? Can you trust me, the way you trusted back before you had ever been hurt?”

Yes.

I hate myself for thinking it.

But Martina pulls my head down on her shoulder, like a mother, and I let her, only for a second.

r/MomForAMinute

mom, I need some support

posted by: u/throwawayduckling123

04:56 05/12/2023

I just found this subreddit. I don’t really use reddit that much, but my partner does. I hope I’m not breaking any rules by posting this. I’ve removed any identifying details in case they read this.

My mom passed away a few years ago, and I have really been missing her lately. I never knew my dad, as he left my mom before I was born. She died from cancer. I feel really guilty, because sometimes I’m still angry with her for not being here. I feel like she has abandoned me, even though I know it’s not true. I’m sorry. I know that makes me a bad person. I was a better person when she was still around.

I’ve always struggled with interacting with other people. I was good at school growing up, but it was a stupid kind of smart, if that makes sense. I was good at memorizing things, and understand things like math and physics and grammar, but I couldn’t really understand why people did the things they did. It led to me being bullied, but I was na?ve. A lot of times I didn’t even understand that I was being teased or taken advantage of. (And before you ask, I am not neurodivergent. My mother had the doctors do a full work-up. I have some anxiety, but other than that, I’m fully neurotypical. I’m just . . . dumb, I guess. Like a stupid person masquerading as a smart person.)