What I have forgotten is that my father once loved my mother.

I have forgotten my mother once loved me.

But most of all, I seem to have forgotten that my mother must have loved my father as well, some distant time ago.

I have forgotten that I once loved my mother.

I have forgotten that I was once blind.

I have forgotten that I was once content in that life.

Because it wasn’t really my life, not really.

It was all in my head, that perfect, joyful life I once lived.

The life I can’t recall but am aware existed.

What I have forgotten is what my life was before old paper laced with spice.

Rain peppering my face with long-awaited, absent kisses.

Acid burning my throat and tongue.

What I have forgotten is that love once engulfed me, while now it simply taunts me.

What I know now is routine. 

What I know now is safety.

What I know is an insignificant number of insignificant people. I know a cramped hiding place that I will never call home. It took a lot of maturing, a lot of thinking, but I know now that I do not believe in the term 'home’.

I know now that ‘home’ is such a subjective term, open to interpretation that, most of the time, is completely inaccurate and totally misleading. 

I know how to go through the motions of life. 

I do not yet know how to truly live. I will not bother to lie, it is a waste of my time as well as a waste of energy.

Most lies are.

So instead of lying, I do what I know must be done if I would like to live–or pretend to live–my life in a fulfilling and supposedly successful manner.

I wake up. I go to school. I do my homework. I go to work. I go home. I squeeze in a meal or two. I go to bed.

I try to find my way through the misleading ideas people have made to try to make sense of life.

What I know is routine.

What I know is monotony.

There were two offices in that house. One for each parent. One open and honest, with doors open and inviting, books with their spines turned out, papers sprawled across the wooden desk and bathing in the golden sunlight. The other reserved and questionable, the books with their pages out, papers stacked neatly into locked drawers, only a lonely pen laying on the desk. The blinds would be drawn and the doors would always be closed. 

My mother would regularly leave me inside the once familiar and welcoming house to talk with our neighbors. I do not remember their names. I have a vague recollection of their faces. I recall the scent of herbal tea whenever I try to remember and whenever I smell herbal tea I think of the faceless figure of my past. I detest the stench of herbal tea.

I had wandered into the forbidden office and looked at the books, the yellowed pages that stuck out while keeping the spines tucked in. The desk was cleared, the blinds open with harsh sun drowning the peculiar sight of the barren office in light. I had curiously, naively stumbled to the other side of the room and closed the blinds. The blinds being open was unnatural, and I couldn’t stand it somehow. 

As I closed the blinds, a pastel purple envelope laid on the desk, smug and defiant. Like my mother, purple was my favorite color.

The only thing I had in common with my mother. That, and her free spirit.

For some unfathomable reason, I picked up the beautiful envelope.

The smell of spice bit my nose, yet I still opened the paper.

In one swift, unthinkable moment, I became the catalyst for all the horrid yet unavoidable things that would follow.

I read the letter. I was overwhelmed with words, words that I vaguely understood and words I had never heard before. Phrases I didn’t comprehend then but that makes my skin crawl now. Whether I knew what the words meant or if they only left me with a sensation, I knew my father’s name. I knew how to read. 

And I knew that the letter was not signed by him.

I was naive. I was stupid. Common sense eluded me.

So I took the letter. I simply took it off of the desk. I never showed it to my father.

He will never see those words. He will never be burdened with the ghosts of what my mother wrote and read with a ring on her wedding finger.

I heard it from upstairs. I knelt like a child on the mezzanine, leaning my forehead against the railing. 

So many things were said that night. I can’t even begin to remember every word. 

I heard my mother’s voice like shattered glass sliding across the kitchen floor.

I heard my father’s voice like a gun being fired, over and over again. I heard the bullets rip through the air and hit the walls, ricocheting into my mother’s soul.

“I know you have it!” my mother cried.

“I don’t have a goddamn thing of yours and you know it!”

“The letter.” Mother extends her hand, watching my father silently. My father stands straight as a soldier and just as stoic. “I–I’ll write back. Tell him it’s over.”

“I don’t have your letter, Miriam.” 

She sobs, the bullet wounds finally hitting her.

At the time, I was sorry for her. 

At the time, I was horrified. 

I knew the letter that I had in my room, on my own desk in plain sight, had started this.

I was the reason that this was happening. I split this family apart.

I heard my father’s footsteps like thunder. I slipped the letter underneath my homework.

The thunder seized. 

“Ashley.” He sighed loudly, like winter’s wind. “Did you hear all of that?”

I shook my head. “I was reading.”

My father knew I could only hear what was in the book, only see what was in the book. All I knew at that moment was what was in the book.

I heard my father retreat into his room.

I heard my family divide.

What I said is what brought upon all of the hurt that came next. 

I was laying out in the moonlight with my mother, rocking on the porch swing while laying in her lap, letting her deceiving fingers brush through my hair, her cheating lips pressing gentle kisses against the side of my head.

“How much do you love your mommy?” she asked, almost in a daze.

“More than anything in the world,” I answered immediately.

What I said took no thought. 

“Would you go on an adventure with me?”

Her words spurred me on. I was still at the age when I thought it was possible to go on epic quests and be special. Before life took me by the throat and forced me to swallow the bitter pill of reality.

“I would go on an adventure with you.”

She grinned, pressed another kiss. This one on my forehead.

I remember shivering, but I know how unreliable the mind can be. 

I never was religious, and neither was my family, but I recall my father telling me the story of Jesus. How Judas betrayed him with a kiss.

I remember that kiss in my unreliable and erratic mind that the kiss she gave me was cold like ice.

What I said is what prompted that kiss. What prompted that betrayal.

What woke me up was my mother urging me to go on that adventure, a sense of urgency I never detected lurking beneath her voice. Through my drowsy state of mind I couldn’t detect all that was wrong with the situation. 

What woke me up was only the beginning.

Quietly leaving the house with the grace and power of a tsunami, I never got to see my father, sleeping in his bedroom.

The things I wish I told him.

The things that went through my head after I finally figured out what was going on. The words I longed to say to him, now that I am back with him, seem impossible to say out loud. 

The weight of my thoughts have begun to crush me beneath their weight, holding me underwater, where my screams will be silent no matter how badly my lungs burn.

What woke me up was a nightmare.

I was sleeping through life, peacefully living in a dream. I was in a surreal version of the world.

What woke me up was reality.

Where I went will always be a bit of a mystery. 

I went in the car with my mother. I slept, still unaware of what was happening.

I let my mother lift me out of the car, into the house of a stranger.

I went to a house that looked like a fortress.

The house was a prison. I didn’t know that.

I went to become a part of a family that I didn’t want to be a part of.

I went away from my father, from the one man I always felt safe with.

I went away from the man who always loved me.

What I did was nothing.

What I did was wait.

What I did was all I thought I could do.

What I did was live. 

What I did was try my best to fit into whatever mold my mother had shaped for me, in hopes that I could become that girl.

What I did was try to put out the blazing fire of yearning to see my father again.

What I did was shut down from the inside so that only my bones and muscles and skin would move and stretch and pull, so that nobody would see anything was wrong from the outside.

What I did was try to adjust.

In truth, I am sure that the man whom I lived with for a period of time was fine. He treated me well enough, and for that I am lucky.

In experience, I could never love him. 

What I did was keep my fear and longing under control.

What I wanted was to stop smelling spice. 

What I wanted was to make my mother love my father again.

What I wanted was my family back.

What I wanted was my father.

What I waited through is my only measurement of time.

What I waited through were two birthdays, one Christmas, a horrible Father’s Day, and a summer.

What I waited through was nearly a year of an empty life with an empty family that was simply a set-up; a twisted game of house that I believed would never end. 

How I was freed was just a lucky circumstance.

How I was freed was by a sudden outreach of a familiar hand.

How I was freed was by a phone call I answered when nobody was in the house.

How I was freed was by a persistence love provides, a series of phone calls my mother quickly declined, trying to defuse a fire that was too powerful to ignore.

It took me a while, but I memorized the number. 

And as I held the weapon that I could conquer my mother with, as I dialed the number I should have known all along, the smell of spice was nullified for only a few fleeting moments.

I heard the familiar voice I had been trying to keep vivid in my mind, the sound much more delightful than it ever was when I tried to conjure it up in my head.

“Hello?” The sound, like a smooth, dark pebble rolling across the ground, made my own voice quiver.

“Dad.” My own voice, a combination of my father’s raspy one and my mother’s soft one, like the same pebble falling into the water gracefully, carried over so softly I thought he wouldn’t hear it. 

Instead of my father’s usual calm, composed voice comforting me like a gentle soldier, I heard the pebble in his voice dip into the water as well, sinking into the bottom.

“Where are you? Are you okay? Are you hurt? I’m coming–” He said between tears. I had never heard his voice so small before.

“Dad,” I repeated, but my voice is brittle and weak. “I’m not hurt. I’m in Windham, and I’m with mom–”

“I’m going to come and get you.”

And I knew he would.

That was the longest phone call I’ve ever been on.

I told him more details about where I was living, how dreary it was without him. We talked for hours, and when we didn’t know what to say we sat in silence, listening to the breathing on the other side of the line and remembering this was real, this was happening. This was almost over.

My mother’s car pulled up into the driveway.

“Mom is here.”

“I love you. Stay strong. I’m coming for you.”

What turmoil feels like is lugging a large, unwieldy object up a huge hill to a place you aren't sure exists.

What turmoil feels like is a thing growing in your gut, devouring your insides.

What turmoil feels like is falling into a dark, never-ending pit that sits wide open like a hungry pair of jaws.

When I picture myself, pulling that object up that steep incline, I imagine myself pulling my hope, my desperation, my fear up that mountain. I imagine a church on the other side. Again, I was never a very religious person, but people seem to act like the church is the big haven for safety when you need it, so I picture a glorious cathedral with fancy decoration and pearly white walls.

That thing growing in my gut would whisper things to me, tell me how it was all my fault in the first place. It told me that my mother was slowly losing interest in me, that one day I would simply not exist in her mind.

I didn’t need a voice to tell me that.

It started with her never leaving my side, clinging to me all the time like cigarette smoke on an addict, intoxicating my lungs and making every breath stifling. What started as a borderline obsession with her daughter dwindled down to a passive acknowledgement.

It was a crippling doubt that my father would ever find me.

Watching my back wherever I turned, I called my father late at night on the phone in the furthest room from my mother’s bedroom she shared with the new man. I no longer remember his name, so I will call him Dave, as the name is plain and not outgoing and friendly or harsh and mean either way.

Dave was an atrocious actor, unsure of himself and like mist. You could tell he was there, and you could look at him if you wanted, but he blended into his surroundings, maybe made his surroundings seem more interesting to look at. Though I rarely got to know him, he tried to be my father. I think he tried to be my father, that is. But my father was full of life and joy and his love spilled over whenever I laid eyes on him, while Dave simply attempted to muster up an imitation of excitement and delight. His disinterest may have been a disease which infected my mother.

Or it may have been that my mother had simply gotten bored of me, as she often did to a lesser extent at our own home, before spice made its way through the windows and clung to the walls and the air around us.

My father finally made it less than a week later.

“I’m at a nearby hotel, I’ll drive over tonight and take you home.” His voice had gained strength since the first phone call we had. It had even stiffened, filled with aggression and determination. It gave me strength every moment I listened. “Be up tonight, be listening at your window. Go down to the front door and leave like you normally would, I don’t want you to get hurt. I’ll wait outside for you in the car.”

That night was a dark one, the moonlight was hidden beneath thick clouds and the tree that stood almost directly in the way stopped the little brightness that attempted to shine through. In the background, the sound of rain tapping against the windows like fingers made an inconsistent rhythm to pass the time and keep me acutely aware through the lethargy. 

He came, of course, late at night when Dave was snoring and my mother was laying limp in her bedroom, I assume, as she always did when I had come in because of horrid dreams that I could not shake when I first arrived.

I did not think to carry anything with me, I simply picked up my own body and ran, skipping the steps on the stairs that creaked and letting my weight fall as carefully as I could.

I flung the door open, drowned in the headlights of my father’s black car, seeping into the inky darkness of the night. Rain fell down on my face, peppering me with long-awaited kisses that I had slowly been deprived of, driving me to the car door, the wind pushing me back into the house, strong and stubborn.

But I was stronger.

The figure, the tall, broad shouldered, loving figure standing in the rain with his arms outstretched beckoned me, his voice carrying out stronger than the wind, stronger than waves of the sea.

“Ashley!”

I threw myself into his arms with as much force as I could muster, taking in the smell of forest and nature and dampness, tears falling down my face because human touch is so wonderful and so sacred. I laid limp in his devoted arms while he peppered me with kisses with his kind lips. I took in the scent of his aftershave, the mintiness keeping my sense keen throughout it all, assuring me it wasn’t a dream.

I wish the story could end there, sweet and short. But life isn’t sweet and short. Life is a long, winding, tiring road with no end in sight. It’s not over until you suddenly look down and realize you have found a dead end, that you have met your demise.

How I was haunted was by forgiveness my father has tried to teach me that still remains unlearned.

How I was haunted was by my own silence.

How I was haunted was by an idea that served as poison to my mind.

I was haunted by dreams.

Dreams that were really memories that I stuffed down until they bubbled over when my guard was down, in my subconscious mind.

My father always was gallant, always tried to treat everyone equally no matter what he endured at their treacherous hands.

A holiday would go by, but not without my father reaching out to my mother and Dave first. 

A holiday would go by, but not without my stomach tying itself into knots, not without my throat closing in on me.

I asked once why he had to do such things, why he had to still treat them like they were good people; why he had to treat them as people at all.

“Because of respect,” he said, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose, letting the newspaper dip slightly while his eyes focused on me. “For them and for me.”

A holiday would go by, but not without my father’s kind offer being turned down.

Until it wasn’t.

Fear tastes like acid burning as it slides up your throat and burns your tongue.

Fear tastes sour and takes a long time to surface and lingers for just as long.

Fear tastes like lies crawling up your throat, forcing their way out of your mouth.

Fear leaves your mouth dry and your throat raw.

It was Thanksgiving, everything was crisp. Cold was beginning to seep its way into the world again, little by little, battle by battle. Everything was orange and red and yellow.

Everything was spice.

My father had emerged from yet another phone call to Maine, yet he stood up straighter and wore a grin of self-satisfaction, believing that kindness had truly won.

“Incredible,” he said, fixing his dark, unruly hair. “They’ve agreed to visit for Thanksgiving. Isn’t that great?”

My gut sank. “I don’t know how you did it,” I managed to say.

“It wasn’t me, it was their choice anyhow.” He put a finger to his chin, tapping erratically for a couple silent moments when the air was stiff but not stiff enough for him to notice. “I’d better find some good recipes for the occasion now that we have company.”

Fear is a living thing. It lived inside of me for the next month. It grew and grew and grew until it had to spill out from my body somehow.

Thanksgiving morning I woke up with my tongue burning and my throat closing. With shaky hands I ripped off the covers and ran on unsteady feet to the bathroom.

I knelt over the toilet for at least an hour, the seat cold under my grip and the fear pouring out of my throat.

My father knelt by my side and rubbed my back, whispering soothing words into my ears while desperately trying to understand what was wrong, a doctor with years of experience diagnosing patients struggling to identify the problem with his own daughter.

After my throat was raw and my stomach emptied completely, I finally spoke. I told him about the spice and the acid and the giant, unwieldy thing that I was still carrying up that hill even after I was miles away from them.

My father canceled Thanksgiving.

He never offered again.

Funny how fear still clawed at me, still had its hold on me after everything my father did. How my anxiety only inclined after that fall. Now I knew better than to feel safe. My mother and that man knew our address. Nothing was stopping them from showing up at our door any day of the week, the month, the year. There was not a safe moment in my life.

Crowds scared me.

Leaving the house scared me.

Living in the house scared me.

My father scared me.

The thought that his hospitality could lead to him invited them over again, that he would let the enemy into our home once again. That he would let me suffer again.

Funny how fear can lie so convincingly.

My father, now filled with even more clarity, finally knew what was going on.

How I was protected was by a moving truck.

How I was protected was by a home sale contract.

How I was protected was by running once again.

How I was protected was by moving to Stars Hollow, a small town where the people that aren’t built for city life but too modern for country life decide to dwell on what they could have been.

How I was protected was by the same person who had always protected me in the past, the same person I never had to doubt.

How I was protected was by pinching my nose shut so that I could block out the smell of spice.

What love smells like is like a forest freshly rained. 

What love smells like is old paper and new hugs.

What love smells like is minty aftershave.

What love smells like is my father, tall and lean and kind and dependable.

What hate smells like is spice.

Biting, harsh, overpowering spice.

What I lost was a normal life. Or, an imitation of it.

What I lost was my childlike wonder 

What I lost was the family I believed was perfect.

What I lost was my mother.

What I lost was the woman who was supposed to be there for me at all times and at all costs.

What I lost was the woman who, no matter how badly I needed her to be, could never be a good mother.

What I lost was what would not last.

What I lost was what I did not need.

Who I was was an innocent little girl still forming her opinion of the world around her. 

Who I was was a mystery to me.

Who I was was a child, one who made mistakes.

Who I was was a child who needed help to fix them.

Who I was will never be who I am now.

Who I was will always be.

Who I was shaped who I am today, but will rarely be seen in the person I have built myself to become. Who I have been forced to become.

Who I was was not a problem.

Who I was can only be described as growing.

What I found was a letter.

What I found was spice. 

What I found was an embrace amidst a storm.

What I found was the embrace of my father.

What I found was acid.

What I found was a waft of mint and fresh pine needles.

What I found was love.

What I found was real. 

What I found was me.

Who I am is not who I was.

Who I am is not a girl, but a young woman.

Who I am is strong.

Who I am is capable.

Who I am is not a screw-up, she is a truth-seeker.

Who I am is not an anxious, timid little girl.

Who I am is on fire.

Who I am is bright and fierce.

Who I am is worthy.

Who I am is a daughter to a man with determination and love stronger than anything in this world.

Who I am is not what I remember.

What I remember is not what I am.