“Jason, where are we going?” I asked for the fourth time, but Jason ignored my words and continued driving.
I signed that I can’t do this any longer. Every time I want to forget the depressing pasty of life, it comes knocking right at my door. I don’t know what wrong I did to deserve so badly in life. Even now, when I should be in the hospital beside my dad,, but look here, I’m with Jason, who is taking me somewhere unknown.
Now, as I think of Jason, both he and I have very similar struggles in life, and somehow we are throughly connected with each other for having the similar reason for our pain.
I turned my eyes outside, looking at anything to distract my thoughts, my mind. I’m so disturbed right now with all this that I want to shout until I lose my voice. But I can’t, since childhood one thing that I have mastered myself to do is hide my emotions and pain. And now I am so good at this that even when I want to cry, but I can’t., I want to shout out, but I can’t shout.
I hope everything is fine. Sometimes things are so bad that it even scares me to be happy, thinking that my happiness can be the reason for my upcoming pain in life.
As my mind jumbled with negative thoughts inside, I felt a warm hand touching me, trying to provide me with the warmth that was missing from my life. I looked down at our hands joining as Jason placed it over his thigh, pressing tightly enough, only to make me remind him he was always there for me. I looked at his face as his eyes were focused on the road, on feeling my gaze on him. Jason turned his face towards me, giving me a small yet cheerful smile before turning his head towards the road.
Things changed so fast, the same that trying to cheer me hated me so heartily; but look at him now, so much has changed in a few months. I hope I change too, but I don’t know why I am too afraid. Every time I tried to let go, things always turned out differently, providing me with an extra reason for pain.
“Kiera,” I turned my head, hearing Jason’s voice, how so zoned out because of my jumbled thoughts I didn’t even notice that the car stopped and Jason was standing right in front of me with the car door open for me. “Come,” he said. He looked calm, but his voice sounded somewhat anxious. I put my hand on Jason’s hand as he helped me out of the car.
I roamed my eyes around the place. We were in a similar place. We have been here before and how zoned out I was that I didn’t notice the familiar path and the very familiar place we are in. I can’t help but ask Jason the question that pooped in my mind seeing this place at first sight. “Why are we here?”
“To help you,” Jason said, holding my hand and taking me inside the house, or, if I say so, Jason’s childhood home.
“How…” I was about to ask, but before I could ask anything, Jason, holding my hand, took me inside the house.
“Just follow me,” I nodded, with my mind still confused, but I didn’t mind.
Wait a second. I haven’t looked carefully before, but now seeing thoroughly, this seems different. Last time when Jason took me here, this space was a mess, broken walls, cobwebs, dust, and, most importantly, dark and depressing. Then what changed, this space doesn’t seem the same, even the furniture that is the same but seems mended, and everything else is also the same, but well maintained, and just the same, but clean as if the soul of this has been somehow restored since last time. Wait for the wall; the same where there are pictures hanging, but it was so dirty that you couldn’t look at anything, but the same contains pictures of people. “They are Jason’s parents,”
“Yes, these are their wedding day pictures,” I say the words out loud. I turned my head towards who was looking at me rather than the pictures.
“What happens to the place?”
Jason smiled, turning his head towards the wall staring at the pictures. “Restored it,”
I nodded my head. “But why now? I mean, why not all these years but now and why did brought me here?”
“Back then, this place was the reason for the sadness in my life, or so I thought so,”
“Than what changed?”
“You…” I turned my head towards Jason, hearing his words.
“Jason I’m in no mood of joking, you know how things are now,” Only if Jason knew how much darkness was stored in his heart all this time.
“No one knows it better than me,” Jason said with a gleaming smile on his face.
“Is this you,” I said in an attempt to change the subject, pointing at one of the pictures on the wall with Jason’s parents and a boy around seven.
Jason nodded, “This the last picture of me with dad,”
“Sorry,” every time I mess up, maybe that’s why life is a mess, maybe that’s what I deserve.
“Don’t be, this was one of the happiest moments of my life before everything turned bad.” Jason smiled while speaking, but he seemed sad. “There was time when I don’t want glance at this pictures, thinking that its open up my unhealed wound, but now these pictures are reason of happiness of my life, I was lucky to have them in my life,”
I nodded , I don’t know anything about a happy childhood. I had not met my dad until my teenage years. My mom never let me. My mother was a workaholic and I don’t blame her fort that. Raising a child alone is not easy and rest, I don’t want to think about.
I shook my head. Now is not the time to think about the past. “Jason why are we here,”
“Remember the last time we were here,” I nodded my head at Jason’s words. “Before entering this place, I was the guy who hold a gauge for someone for more than 12 years, a person that always looked through negative rather than thinking positive in life, a person for whom life was just surviving, like wild animal where the rule was to be prey or the hunter, but as we left this place I’m turned into a completely different person, everything about me change,”
“Jason comes to the point, I know all these, and we are here together.”
“Correct. Kiera, I want the same change from you,”