The people at the clinic had said Miyako needed to find Her True Self. They had said it with capital hidden in their mouths, which convinced Miyako of the importance of The Words That Were Being Said. And Miyako left, without looking back as she always did, and headed back home in a red and white plane, firmly decided to find her True Self before she turned thirty. The Self was probably not very far away, tucked under a sink of sort, maybe carelessly thrown in a cupboard years ago, during The Abusive Relationship.
Miyako stepped out of the pine-smelling air of the plane, smiling at the Japanese sky above her and the Japanese birds flying in it, almost convinced she was home. Even the overcrowded metro seemed agreeably familiar. She smiled and giggled a bit while entering it, no longer afraid of people mistaking her for a lunatic, because a lunatic was exactly the thing she was. Madness was strangely liberating in that way, and Miyako smiled again.
The apartment smelt musty and reminded her of The Self she had lost. It was the absence of Self, she had decided while on the plane, the absence of Self that had dragged her unwilling persona to the deeper darkness lurking within each individual. She was convinced of it.
Miyako dropped her suitcase to the floor near the door and scanned the familiar surroundings, shifting her weight from one foot to another. Everything was in its right place, even the flowers she had thrown in the trash after he had left, in one desperate attempt to get her back. She was ashamed of herself now, for she had almost believed his speech, sugarcoated and fake-sounding as it was. Of course, that was then, back when she was weak and Self-less.
She decided to go with her first idea and clean the cupboard, and under the sink and inside the many drawers filled with the junk she had accumulated in five years of Living A Nearly Adult Life, which would probably take the rest of the day, when actually all she wanted was a warm bed and a cup of coffee. But priorities had to be set, and the Self that would give her a semblance of stability was far more important than lying down and sleeping off jet lag.
It was all about priorities, finding your self, they had said, and Miyako had believed because she so desperately craved something to hold unto.
And with her head full of bright, happy thoughts, Miyako started to clean, hoping her mind was to settle down when the pine-scented fumes of the disinfectant reached her brain.
Three drawers later, Miyako was still without Self, although she had found many things she had thought lost, among them a few childhood pictures that made her chest tighten and her eyes water as the memories came flooding back in. She made no attempt to stop them though, and slowly sank to the ground, still holding the faded photographs in her tightly clenched hands.
-"Miyako! Miyako!" the people on the picture called out to her, bright smiles adorning their faces, their arms reaching out to pull her back in their Technicolor world where everything was perfect and hundred of possibilities lay ahead, for digital critters had not been reduced to blurbs of binary and every chosen child was still connected by what seemed like an unbreakable bond. A high-pitched wail escaped Miyako's throat as she stared into the eyes of the picture children.
The Self was not in the first cupboard, nor in the second one, though her discarded engagement ring was. She watched the tiny diamond sparkle in the darkness for a while before throwing in the already overflowing trash can. She emptied it and put a fresh garbage lining, apparently antibacterial and grape-scented, as it was proclaimed on the package in attractive yellow lettering.
There was cockroaches where there had not been, and new magazines laying on the kitchen table, probably brought in by a charitable neighbor, sure Miyako would appreciate to be able to catch up with the newest fashion and world reports when she returned.
Miyako tucked a loose stand of hair behind her right ear and sighed. Her room seemed smaller than it used to be, she noticed as she laid the plastic bottles on her faded pink comforter, feeling its familiar warmth under her hand, running her fingers along the seams.
She keeled beside the bedside table, slowly opening the first drawer. It contained the usual bedside stuff, paperbacks and spare pairs of contacts, ink-less pens and half-full boxes of tampax, a flowery box of Kleenexes, a bunch of letters tied together by a red rubber band, all covered with the same all too familiar scrawl.
She sat down with her back against the bed, hugging her knees, holding the letter like you'd hold a ticking bomb, shooting small worried glances at it ever so often. What do you do when you are holding the last remains of a bygone relationship, she asked herself, for it had never been a subject addressed in the preparatory classes she took in high school.
Nobody had warned her of the pain either, the tightening in her chest and how it hurted. She took the first letter and slowly tore it apart, first in two, then in two again, until there were thirty-tow tiny pieces of Ken lying on the pink rug. Then, she looked up and smiled.
The thirty-two pieces of Ken smiled back at her. Her hands were shaking as she threw Ken in the wastebasket, hearing his faint cries as the torn pieces of his body were being covered with discarded cardboard boxes and soaked super absorbent scott-towels.
And at this exact moment, something flickered behind her eyes, and she knew she was whole again.
I meant Ken's abusiveness to be more of the verbal kind, which I could see him do, than of the physical kind, which is what most people think of when the see the word 'abusive' in a story. Hope I cleared that up
rianne, april 18-19th, 2001.
happy birthday antoine, happy birthday steph, (my neopet's dead and draco malfoy is a wonderful human being, dammit!)