AN: Written for a challenge on SAYS (Dobby101's Serious Challenge) - I hope you like this.
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I suppose I knew, deep down, that it would happen someday. In some ways I even welcomed it – the rebellious side of a teenager always does, subconsciously or not – but there is no way of knowing what your reaction will be when it really happens.
You might think that you will be fine with it – I know I did – but when they tell you, when you find out what they really think…it is like nothing you will ever experience, because it is worse than losing someone's love, it is someone saying that they have promised themselves you are not worth loving. And not only are you not worth loving, but you are below contempt, also. You become nothing, when you are disowned. An absolute nothing. Divided by zero, a black hole. Collapsing inwards until you become nothing more than nothing and nothing and nothing.
I ran away because I could not stand to be around my family anymore. I suppose, in some ways, it was a type of disownment. I didn't want to see them again – I couldn't deal with them anymore. And apparently they couldn't deal with me. I don't think…I don't think I was sorry that I had run away. I don't think I am sorry. I think all I am sorry for is the fact that they could not understand me enough to work things out. I think I would have worked things out with them, if they had wanted to.
But that's the problem with being a Black. There are boundaries you cannot cross; because once you do you cannot come back, no matter how much you plead. Especially if you plead. A Black does not plead. Nobility does not plead. We must retain our pride, our purity. That is why I had to be cut out, a canker on the rose. I was not enough.
A family, you would think, is related by more than blood. There should be a…link at the soul, or the heart, or something else. Why, otherwise, would we have these feelings for people who are nothing but packets of flesh and blood and nerves? Why the link? Everyone has this link to their family, whatever relationship they have. Unconditional love – it is the norm, yes, and the ideal, but it does not always happen. What I want to know, then, is what this link is. Because if you look 'family' up in the dictionary, this is the definition you will receive:
A group of persons sharing common ancestry
That is all it is, according to the dictionary. Does that mean that all anyone thinks of family is that it is we only share common ancestry? Inside every heartbeat, there is something else. A heartbeat is not only the thing that keeps us alive, it links us to others. It links us to our family – or at least, I had thought it did. It turns out I was wrong. Anyone can break the links – or perhaps there were no links in the first place.
I don't know if it was me, or if it was them, or if it was the world. Something cuts you apart and something makes you different and it all comes down to the way you react. And any situation, I suppose, could have a different ending – perhaps, if my family were different, when I ran away I would have been told to come home, told that I was loved, told to stop being rash and stupid. Then again, if my family were different, I would not have run away.
So it all comes down to circumstance and choice and reactions and links and I don't know what counts anymore, I don't know whether anyone is beside me, I don't know what anything means. I'm stuck, I think. Stuck and floating in some kind of limbo, one less family, one less link, until I can just float up into the sky like a balloon tugged from a child's wrist. Disownment. I am disowned. I am owned by no-one. Not even myself.