Reflections from the Abyss

I have long suspected that I was not born, but exhaled into this world—like a sigh nobody wished to hear. There was a time I believed my mother loved me, but this illusion did not survive past the age of speech. Her gaze, sharp and luminous, devoured me. She loved not me, but her reflection in me. I was her proof, her echo, her living ornament. When I laughed, she clapped; when I cried, she withdrew with an offended silence, as if I had insulted her with my pain. In those early years, she was   everything . I say this not with warmth but with the horror of a prisoner recalling the uniform of his jailer. Her presence was absolute, her moods unrelenting tides that drenched every corner of my being. I did not speak—I   responded . I did not feel—I   monitored . My will was not mine, but leased to me under conditions I could never satisfy. And when I failed, as I always did, shame was my inheritance. My father? He was there, I suppose. A quiet man. Pale, spectral. He read his...