2
Gray clouds were all around me, the hot rain came down stinging me like a bee. The sound of the thunder felt like little drums pounding through my ears. It was the fifth week that we were in Berlin. My plan to leave with or without Paul was demolished; we were planning to leave the week after.
I really hated Berlin. It was so dead there. I haven't drawn anything in weeks, at least nothing meaningful, my art was dying, I couldn't draw any more, and neither could Paul. All we were able to draw were pictures of each other.
I thought about my mother a lot. A part of me still belonged to her. I could just picture a time in L.A., I was twelve and the time was three fifteen a.m. She was combing her hair, and the breeze felt so nice and so warm, it wrapped me up in its arms. My mother asked me to join her, I refused. "I want you to feel the wind" she said, "I want you to feel the breeze". I knew that it must have felt really good from where she was sitting but I was just too frightened to sit on the edge of the roof. "I could feel it from here", I cracked a smile, she laughed "No you can't". She pulled me close to her. I laid my head on her breast it was like a pillow. She was stroking my hair, only the oleanders thrived. The night was beautiful and I was with my mother who might have actually cared about me. I decided to write her a letter, it was a month and a half since I've seen her. I never thanked her for finally letting go of me and setting me free when she decided not to use me and to make me lie in court and say that Barry raped us both. At least she did something for me for once.
The letter said:August 16, 2003
Mother,
It is your daughter Astrid. I heard of your release and I want you to know I am very happy for you. There is something that I want you to know. I went to Florida and I met my father Klaus. He is older, and he has a wife and children, they looked at me as if I were a stranger, as if I were some kind of weird creature. Klaus welcomed me in his small home; he was nice and made me feel as if he wanted to get to know me. He made me feel loved. Out of those short thirty minutes I haven't felt safer in my life. I want you to know that I can't believe you put me through so much, I can't believe you killed Barry without even thinking what it would do to me. And then your advice was for me to stay away from people because that's what you had to do being stuck in a small cage. Whoever I opened up to you didn't like. Star, Clare, and Paul. And you were so jealous that you got Clare to kill herself; my one question is how come you never wanted me to be happy? Why didn't you want me to live a better life than you had? I don't even know what happiness is, and it's all because of you. You took it from me, you killed it, and you want to know something else? What you've done is killing me. I bleed everyday because of my past, these bruises wont ever go away, and the cuts will never heal. I just want you to know that. I haven't made up my mind yet, I don't know if I want to come back to L.A. I'm trying to forgive you, trying to love you, but no matter how much I try I think about my past and I remember what I went through, and it just stops me from growing any love for you.
-Astrid
I knew that she moved back to our old apartment, she owned it and it was deserted the past seven years. I didn't thank her for setting me free; when I was writing the letter my true feelings came out of my hand, I couldn't hold anything in. The pain was eating me alive slowly, my insides felt twisted, my heart felt crushed. Every anti-depressant I was taking was not going to heal the pain my mother put me through.