I felt enervated. It wasn’t so much the insane amount of work I had impinged myself upon but rather the incessant grey clouds that loom in the skies I call my mind.
“We need to start new. So many things have happened to us in this city- everyone knows too much about us. We need to start fresh.”
That was my mother. Always thinking about reputation and how it is the sole and most integral aspect of life. I was often obliged to acquiesce even if it meant packing my bags and moving to a whole different place right now.
I had everything packed neatly in several boxes. A man working for the relocation service we hired was busy sealing the boxes with duct tape.
I was sitting on my sheet –less bed which I have slept on for the last 17 years of my life for the last time while looking at my things disappearing box my box as they got sealed. One box right beside me remained unsealed however, and on top of it was a picture of my dad and me when I was ten and when things were a million times different from present day.
Sure things have been difficult; all those long nights waiting for him to come back home, and when he did, often smelling the lusty noxious scent of cigarette smoke and alcohol, had to mean something. Mum always waited for him to come back before she started yelling regardless of whether he was conscious or not, listening or not. Mum was never patient with Dad, but I on the other hand, waited patiently in my room for him to enter and tell me that everything was going to be all right.
I worshipped my dad to such great extents and still do now, even after he decided to just walk out on my mother and me, one day, with no letter, no note, no remnant of his existence except some of his old clothes behind.
My mother called him a Selfish Bastard,
But my dad to me was still my dad; nothing more, nothing less.
He was just going through a hard time, and I believed with all my heart that he would come back.
That was why moving became so difficult.
What if dad decided to come back?
Would he know where to find us?
