“And is that why you let him go? Because you were scared he might one day hurt you?”
Carmen’s lips twisted into a frown, her forehead wrinkling. “No,” she said carefully, considering her response. “I let him go because I’d already hurt him. And I didn’t want to keep dragging him down with me just because I was too caught up in my past.” Carmen pressed her lips into a thin line, forcing the words out even when she wasn’t sure how she felt getting to the part of her life where Asa was involved out into the open. “I felt stuck, like I was in limbo. But he was in a place where he’d already started to grow as a person, and I didn’t want to be the one holding him back.”
“And why do you think you’d be holding him back? Because you weren’t sure if you’d make any progress with dealing with your mother’s death?”
“Because I wasn’t in a place where I could’ve given a relationship what I needed to give it, I guess,” Carmen paused then sighed. “But he was ready to give his all, and I let him believe I was ready too. So that when I couldn’t live up to it, well, I think it made him feel like…like I didn’t value him as much.”
The heavy rain outside seemed to fall back into a calmer shower, the droplets no longer hitting the window like tiny bullets. It cast an odd sense of tranquillity over Carmen’s state of mind just then.
“What made you feel like you couldn’t offer to that relationship what you needed to, Carmen?” Gloria tilted her head to the side, her rich eyes boring into Carmen’s. “Or to any other kind of relationship in your life, whether it was friends or even your father, for that matter? Was it the circumstances of your birth? Did you maybe think that your mother being raped meant you didn’t deserve anybody’s affection?”
This was something that had plagued Carmen’s mind a lot for as long as she could remember—during sleepless nights, when she was adding a new entry into her art journal, or moments when she’d sit back and watch students stand in groups, so unapologetically comfortable around one another.
And now that she was being made to say it out loud, she felt surer than ever about her answer.
“I don’t think so, no.”
This seemed to catch Gloria’s attention because there was something akin to surprise on her face for a brief second before it disappeared. “So that part of your past doesn’t bother you?”
“It,” Carmen frowned, opening her mouth and shutting it again, repeating the action at least three times before she finally found the right words, “I mean, I don’t hold my mum accountable for that or anything. I know she’s not at fault there and—and ultimately, I hate whoever hurt her that way. I’ve—I’ve never dwelled too much on what it meant, I guess. Never looked at myself as something that was the result of a rape.”
Gloria tapped her chin with her forefinger, her face unreadable as she just looked at Carmen unblinkingly. It was a few minutes before she spoke again. “All right, Carmen.” She nodded in something that looked like approval. “You seem to be pretty confident about that. So what aspect of your past do you feel is a burden? If it wasn’t the circumstances of your birth, then what do you think blocks you from opening up to people?”
And there it was. The core of all the pain and the guilt that had crept into the crevices of Carmen’s entire being.
“Mum’s death,” she said quietly. “Sometimes I feel like visiting her grave or something. But then I ask myself if she’d want that because I—I feel like I was the reason she chose to leave and—and it made me wonder if perhaps going to her resting place would somehow be considered a disturbance. Because she wanted to get away from me, right? And I—I don’t want to take that away from her by going anywhere close to where she’s found her peace.”
“So you blame yourself for your mother choosing to kill herself?”
Carmen shifted in her seat, not meeting the woman’s eyes, but she nodded stiffly regardless.
“And is that why you keep people at bay?” Gloria asked, lacing her fingers together and placing them atop her raised knee. “You’re afraid that your presence in their lives would do them no good because you believe your own mother didn’t want you?”
Carmen swallowed audibly, feeling like there were a bunch of needles pricking the back of her throat. “It’s just…if I could cause so much pain to someone when I was just a six-year-old, then—then how much pain would I be able to inflict now? How far off the edge would I end up pushing someone one day?”
Gloria didn’t say anything for a long while, letting the words and their implications hang in the air between them.
“So which is it, Carmen?” she eventually asked. “Are you afraid you’d hurt someone the way you believe you hurt your mother? Or are you afraid you might hurt someone the way you believe your mother hurt you?”
The silence dragged on, heavy and thick, as if every single thing around Carmen was waiting, as if the universe itself had just hit pause for her to release the breath she was holding.
“The latter,” she finally said in a rushed exhale. “For so long, I’ve been angry at her, blaming her for making such a selfish decision to leave us behind, to leave by passing all that pain on to
