[ g u i l t ]

"yesterday you went too far, karen"

"i told myself, today i'll cry myself to sleep"

what i anticipated to be a voice raising debate between myself and my two parents this morning, turned out to be worse than that. it was nothing like that. there were no raised voices, everything was subtle. there wasn't a debate since i kept quiet pretty much all of the time. and there weren't even two parents. there was just my mum. and all i had to do was listen.

hearing my mum say the things she said had pierced me even deeper than what i could have expected. her words were not at all menacing, not at all hateful. instead they were honest and sincere, and it made me want to shrink to 1/100th of my size and crawl into a crack somewhere. and i was beyond guilty conscious. i was a wreck. i was so ashamed that i couldn't bring myself to look at her. and as she asked me questions, simple straightforward questions which somehow i could not produce an answer, i found myself with no other choice. i was silent when she started talking to me. i was silent even as she left the room. and that was when i wept...