Eight Hundred Miles Away Was the Closest I Ever Felt to Home Chapter 09
It was late September.
College had been in session for a month.
Every three days, Mom called the student affairs adviser and asked about me.
Each time, the adviser relayed the same message from me.
“Mara is fine. She’s attending classes and doing well.”
I was fine. I was attending classes. I was doing well.
Those few words were the only information Mom could get about me.
She tried writing me a letter.
She mailed three handwritten pages to the campus mail center. I heard she had cried while writing them.
The letter came back unopened because I had refused delivery.
She also tried asking relatives to persuade me.
Aunt Rebecca called my new number, and I answered.
“Mara, your mom has lost more than ten pounds. She cries every day. At least call her back. She knows she
was wrong.”
“Aunt Rebecca, I never got to keep the $300 check you and Uncle Greg gave me at Piper’s acceptance party.
Mom counted it as a gift for Piper.”
The other end of the line went silent.
“This isn’t about the money,” I said. “I’m trying to tell you that this wasn’t an isolated incident.”
Aunt Rebecca sighed. “Then what are you planning to do? Never come home again?”
“I don’t know.”
It was the truth.
I really did not know.
I did not hate them. You had to care about someone to hate them.
I was simply tired.
I was too tired to keep explaining, too tired to keep fighting for their attention, and too tired to stand in a corner where the spotlight would never reach me and wait for someone to notice I was there.
October brought fall break.
I was no longer in the family group chat, but Mom
asked the student affairs adviser to pass along a message.
“Are you coming home for fall break? I’ll make your favorite food.”
The adviser repeated the message to me word for word.
“Did she say what my
favorite food was?” I asked.
The adviser hesitated. “She didn’t specify.”
Of course she had not.
Mom did not know what I liked to eat.
She knew Piper loved maple–glazed pork chops, garlic–butter shrimp, and lemon–herb salmon.
But she had no idea what I liked.
“Please tell her I already have plans and won’t be coming home.”
“All right.”
During the weeklong fall break, I spent six days in the
library and one day at a downtown museum with my roommate.
Her name was Willa Mercer. She had grown up locally
and spoke with a soft Southern drawl.
She knew about my family, but she never pried.
Whenever she went somewhere, she casually invited
me along. When she picked up food from the dining
hall, she would bring me an extra cup of soup.
“Mara, you’re really not going home for fall break?”
she asked me once.
“No.”
“Then do you want to go out for a seafood boil tonight? My treat.”
“Sure.”
While we were eating, Willa suddenly said, “You know,
I think you’re kind of incredible.”
“What?”
“You’re the kind of person who can handle everything
on your own. But honestly, that kind of strength is a little heartbreaking.”
I worked at cracking open a crab leg and said nothing.
“But now you have me.” She smiled and dropped a peeled shrimp onto my plate. “If you need anything, tell me. Don’t carry everything by yourself.”
I looked at the shrimp on my plate and nodded.
“Okay.”
That night, I lay awake in my dorm for a long time.
Willa had called me incredible.
But I knew I had not been born that way.
I had been forced to become that way.
A child who has never had anyone catch her has two
choices: shatter when she falls, or learn to stand on her own.
I chose the latter.
But learning to stand on my own did not mean I had stopped hurting.
After something hurts for long enough, you stop noticing the pain.
It was the phrase Mom always used for me: the easy one.
But the easy one isn’t a child who needs less care.
She’s the child everyone has decided not to care for.