Why Did You Leave Me?

It’s was always this letter. It is always Victoria that haunted my dreams. I ran my fingers gently across the page. I was afraid that I might tear it from reading it so many times. It had become almost unreadable. I'd kept it in my wallet. I wanted it close to me so that I can feel close to her.

When I read the letter, it reminded me that at some point my sister was here with me. The comfort it brought me steadied me. I had to believe that the answers to all of my questions were within the pages. Even though I had not been able to find them. It’d been five years since I lost her and yet I know that she was trying to protect me. I believed it in the very essence of my soul. My hands had begun to tremble slightly as my breathing grew labored. It was the moments like this with the silence when I found myself the most vulnerable. I noticed the paper had become moist and it was that mark that alerted me to the tears that had pooled in my eyes.

“Victoria, damn you. Why did you leave me?” I cursed her but I wasn’t really angry with her. I just hated that I lost everything and all she had to do was hold on. She didn’t need to leave me. After all of this time I still struggled with the thought that both my mother and my sister may have been mentally unhinged. 'How am I supposed to deal with information like this? How am I supposed to look in the mirror and see a sane person when I had my sister's face?' The thoughts plagued me.

My almond colored eyes would stare back at me and I would swear that they didn’t belong to me at all. Those weren’t my eyes. I needed to figure this out. I needed to understand what happened because if I didn't I wouldn’t be able to be a mother for anyone. I was barely a wife. With renewed determation I decided that I needed to understand the secrets of the past.

The letter held the secrets. They held the answers.

“The answer is here…I just know it.” I repeated this to myself like a mantra. I needed to believe it. I needed to know that what I was saying was the truth. There were no other options for someone like me. My voice always betrayed my words. I wasn’t sure that I could honestly say I believed the answers were there. I’d never found them. Not even after five years of reading the letter. Each time I read it a part of myself broke inside. Each time I found myself crushed under the weight of my own sorrow. I noticed my mascara had streamed down my face and I felt a twang of pain so deep that I could barely grasp the extent of this rising sorrow.

The silence in my living room was deafening. “Breathe,” I said to soothe myself. I walked over towards the computer desk and I sat down on the lush chair that offered me a comfort where the words on the paper had failed me. Each time I would unfold the letter I could swear that I would see shadows creeping across the empty space. A chill would run down my spine.

I couldn’t help but laugh at myself. The reality setting in that my mind was failing me just as the women in my family before. “Shadows and demons, ridiculous,” I spat. My poor husband, he mjst have thought I was insane. We’d been married for six years. He was with me when everything happened and he is still with me despite the fact that I have slowly become a recluse. I’ve become isolated and even when I try to leave the house the terror grips me and I cannot go any further. He’s been so patient with me that I wish I could just find the answers to all of these questions that course through this weary brain of mine.

‘Maybe, I’m just a fool,’ I thought to myself as I held the papers in my hand. The hairs on the back of my head stood up. I was being watched. “Who’s there?” I called out. The room grew cold and suddenly I could see my breath. I was terrified. I was losing my mind and David was going to find out and he was going to leave me. I would be left completely alone. I HAD to keep this quiet. He couldn’t know. If he thought I was becoming like Victoria he would admit me to an insane institution and that would be my ending. The answers were in this letter. She left this for me so that I could know the truth and I was going to discover the truth even if it killed me.

“Victoria, did you always feel like someone was watching you even when you were alone? Isn’t that what you were trying to say to me?” My words fell from my lips into the silence. Of course she could't answer me and now I was talking to myself. There was a heaviness in my chest as the chill in the room increased. I trembled but it was always this way. It always felt as though something was trying to prevent me from seeing the truth. I had to press on, so I wrapped myself up in the shawl that I kept on the back of the chair.

I was determined to find the truth, cold or no cold, shadows or no shadows, the devil or not. Nothing would keep me from understanding why I lived in crippling fear every single day of my life. Nothing would prevent me from understanding why my mother was with that monster and why my sister lost her mind. With trembling hands I steeled my resolve and began to read.