Alternate Reality Ramble 003

Intro

This one is inspired by all my friends who have had parents who are separated or divorced or basically in a bad relationship. This goes out to all of those who have had bad things happen to them and their family.
Marriage doesn't seem to mean the same thing anymore. There's no love, there's no commitment. There's only pain, suffering and more of all of that.

So, this is my go at it:
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The Story

She walked into the house and tiptoed all the way to her room. Was that crying, she wondered, as she swayed to the rhythm of the music she had left behind. She shook her head and attributed it to the intake of too much alcohol. It's been known to happen, after all.

She woke up, the next day, hungover and happy. The last night had been as much fun as always even though she never had enough memories to reconstruct the whole night. She hummed to herself and played a Das Sound Machine song from the new Pitch Perfect soundtrack-a shameful addiction, since they weren't even technically a real (acapella) band- and danced to it in her room.

She walked out, looking for breakfast, and saw that her mom wasn't in her usual place in the kitchen. She scraped together some semblance of a breakfast and finished up the usual morning chores. She went to her mother's room to see her sadness colour the room with tinges of many different feelings. She sat down, awkwardly, and listened to how her mother had had a fight with her father. He was leaving her, he had said. He would give away their other house to other family and give money to her for living and nothing else. She had had a life for the last two months, he said, like the Duke of Ferrara had said of his last Duchess. Her life was his, he secretly felt, and not being there when he came home for lunch was one of the main reasons he was doing this. Giving it all up.

Shocked and numbed, she couldn't provide much comfort. She thought to herself, secretly, but isn't he right? She hasn't been home most of the time. She has friends, is always on the phone and is almost never there when needed. She sympathized with him inside but supported her on the outside. She was the wronged party, she declared, even though she felt that both of them had done wrong to each other.

He had taken over her life and she had protested too late.

There were little things and big things and things all around. So many things that even she suspected their marriage shouldn't last.
Mother was never happy but her situation was self created and self accepted. Father was happy even lesser but his situation was one borne of the idea that this is the 1950s and everyone must be subjugated. He was conflicted enough to insist that his kids did what he said while being as independent and opinionated as possible...as long as it didn't conflict with HIS opinions, of course.

Could she judge them, she wondered, when she knew nothing about who they truly were? Could she judge them, she wondered, if she could still never understand how they ended up married? They hated her, most of the time. She brought them only grief. Was she the result of broken dreams and hopes? Was she what had created their cages and made them this way?

Logically, she thought, it couldn't have been her. She had studied psychology enough to know what was what but she reminded herself that the heart knows not what the brain knows. Even when confronted by the brain, the heart will always choose to run the opposite direction. And her heart warned her against procreation, against love, against marriage, against the bond created by Society.

The next day, all was well. Her father smiled at her and ridiculed her appearance, her internships, her work, her likes. Her mother fussed and did all the things right.

She pushed the incident and her thoughts to the back of her mind once again, as she had done before...and as she would do yet again.

-x.