Almost Surely Dead

by Amina Akhtar

Death shouldn’t unnerve me this much; I was used to people dying around me. But this time it was different, and I couldn’t shake how it made me feel: like I hadn’t escaped, I’d only postponed things.

I didn’t bother saying it wasn’t my fault, that this happened because of some crazy man. Because once your family thinks you’re the source of all things wrong, you can never convince them otherwise.

It was as if guilt from generations had been piled onto me, so that her disappointment in me was the only thing that sustained me. Gave me life. I was born to be a failure.

How do you grieve someone who hated you? I wasn’t sure how to, but I was trying.

I put a mask on. A metaphorical one, not an actual mask. We’d been told to stop wearing ours despite various viruses having their way with the general population for years now. No, my mask hid me, hid my feelings. My mask was my survival.

No one ever tells you how to get through grief, how to not let it take over your life. Because it does. Every part of your life is hit. And sometimes, just when you think you’re turning a corner, months after your loved one died, you get hit by something new all over again. It doesn’t stop. You just have to learn how to live with it, until the pain of them not being in your life anymore becomes a dull ache. What really got me, though, were the conflicting emotions. I loved her, I hated her, I wanted her approval, I wanted to do everything I could to piss her off. Even dead, my mother ruled over my life.

I hated the anticipation, the hope. Hope was what crushed me.