rata con bicho

Alboba

by Alboba

Story

He stood in the door and blocked it and I forbid myself to be treated that way. I had made my points clear and through my lens, I had all the right to leave. We were standing in there, screaming at each other. “I NEED SPACE, NOEL, SPACE. I NEED TO LIVE ALONE I JUST CAN’T DO THIS TO US ANY MORE.” “PLEASE STAY AND TALK TO ME. I WANT MY PHONE BACK. PLEASE DON’T LEAVE.” He was so desperate, I felt repulsed. I felt that if he needed to leave I would let him go. It was something I had not done right before and learned how important it was. “Get out of the door.” “No.” That was it, the last straw. Coming from a family of women whose husbands beat, forbid, and abused them, all my alarm bells rang. “Get out of the door, or I will hit you and I don’t want to do that.” But I did. And it felt horrible. “LET ME GO! I need to leave now. I dare you to block my way, I will beat your ass!” I was also leaving to hang out with another guy, which made matters much worse, but there were not many places to hide. He was crying. Finally, he let me through. Sitting on the floor, he whimpered “Please don’t leave me, please.” But I did. To not break more than had already broken. To get rid of the damned drugs. Barely two steps out the door, I heard glass shatter to the floor. Inside the flat. I went back to look inside. He had punched through the glass panel of my bedroom door. Sitting within the shards of glass, he looked up to me, glaring. “I’m sorry Alma, I shouldn’t have.” He was sitting within the shards on the floor shivering and crying. Holding up his hands, cuts on his knuckles. I was unable to feel empathy. It was too much for me and I left. And it was painful, so deeply painful. In my dreams sometimes I walk inside and bow down to him on the floor. I take his face between my hands and tell him I love him so much. I tell him that it will all pass. I stroke through his hair softly. I pick him off the ground before I pick up the shards with him. I reassure him I need more time. That I needed to heal alone for some time. In my dreams, I was strong enough to look after him the way he looked after me. I just wished he would look better after himself. Instead, I left with some Venezuelan guy for some time, who would leave the country soon. It was good, he better disappeared. And so I lost my best friend and broke his another man’s heart. But I come from a family of women who give away the best years of their lives to men. I come from a family of women, who tell me how they stuck needles into their uterus to prevent fetuses from settling. They were birthing more children these men were willing to get up to work for or able to feed. And I was sick and tired of that story. I was not going to become like them. So when I buried the Venezuelan guy and was able to process the breakup, I got working. “So, how is it going Miss Arabella?” “Life is shit. I’m brokenhearted. My mother visited me, and she passed me fucking scabies. I’ve been crying in front of my washing machine the whole weekend. That’s getting better, but I feel like I want to hurt myself every day.” “How about doing some workout to get rid of that energy?” “I have horrible back pain, so I started doing Yoga.” “Yes, but you seem like you have a lot of energy. Don’t you feel like you need something more explosive?” “I’ve always wanted to try boxing.” “That seems like it could work.” So I quit men, quit smoking, and signed up for boxing.


© Alboba 2023-09-01

Genres
Novels & Stories
Moods
Dark, Emotional, Funny