Steemit challenge s28wk2: Remembering through healing

The silence in her mother’s bedroom was a different kind of heavy, not the usual domestic quiet, but a choking, almost sacred stillness. Tina had avoided this room, treating it like a mausoleum of memories too precious and too painful to disturb.

But tonight, a desperate longing, a need to connect, pulled her in. The air, thick with the phantom echoes of lavender and a hint of dusty roses, enveloped her, threatening to crack the brittle shell she’d built around her grief.

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Her fingers trailed over the vanity, a silver-backed brush still nestled beside a half-empty pot of her mother’s favorite cream. Every object screamed her absence. “Oh, Mom,” she whispered, her voice a thin thread against the vast emptiness. “If only I could tell you… everything.”

A tear, cold and sudden, traced a path down her cheek, leaving a burning trail. She wasn't just missing her mother; she was missing the version of herself who existed when her mother was alive.

Driven by an impulse she couldn't name, Tina knelt by the old oak dresser, its surface scarred by decades of light. Her hand brushed against a loose floorboard beneath it. A creak, a hollow space. Her heart, a frantic drum in her chest, hammered against her ribs.

Prying the board up, she found a small, locked wooden box, aged and forgotten. A gasp caught in her throat. This wasn't just a box; it was a secret. Her mother, a woman of pristine order and open honesty, possessing a hidden compartment felt like a betrayal and a revelation all at once.

Her hands trembled as she found a tiny, tarnished key hidden beneath the dresser. It slid into the lock with a soft click that resonated like a gunshot in the still room. Inside, nestled on a bed of faded silk, was a worn leather-bound journal.

Her mother’s familiar, elegant handwriting graced the first page. Tina’s breath hitched. This was it. A direct line to the past, to the unspoken parts of her mother’s heart.

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She flipped through the pages, a torrent of unspoken words and intimate revelations washing over her. The early entries were sweet, mundane: recipes, gardening notes, observations about Tina and her sibling’s childhood antics. But deeper within, the tone shifted.

“March 12th, 1998,” she read aloud, her voice quivering, “Another argument. He doesn’t understand. He never truly understood my dreams. My life feels… smaller now. A gilded cage, perhaps. I watch Tina, so fierce, so independent. I yearn for that fire myself, the one I let dim long ago. I wish she knew how much I admire her strength, even when we clash. Sometimes, I think she’s the only one who sees me, truly sees the woman I wanted to be, not just the wife, the mother… the ghost of a painter.”

Tina crumpled onto the floor, the journal clutched to her chest. A painter? Her mother? She had never once mentioned a dream of painting. The arguments, the "not so happy conversations" she remembered, suddenly took on a terrifying new context.

It wasn't about trivial disagreements; it was about stifled aspirations, a life unlived. Guilt, sharp and agonizing, pierced her. She had been so selfish, so focused on her own youthful dramas, she hadn't seen the quiet desperation hiding beneath her mother's gentle smile.

"What are you doing, Tina?"

The harsh voice ripped through the silence. Her father stood in the doorway, his face etched with a grief that had aged him ten years in mere months. His eyes, hollow and shadowed, fixed on the journal in her hands.

"I... I found this, Dad," Tina stammered, pulling herself up, the journal now a shield. "Mom's journal. And she wrote about… about how unhappy she was. How she felt trapped. All those arguments, they weren't about us. They were about her." Her voice rose, thick with accusation and pain. "She wanted to be a painter, Dad! She felt like her life was a gilded cage! Did you know this? Did you even care?"

Her father’s face, usually so composed, contorted into a mask of shock and a raw, guttural agony Tina had never witnessed. "Give me that!" he demanded, his hand reaching out, trembling. "That's private. That's... her deepest thoughts. You shouldn't be reading them."

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"But I have to!" Tina cried, tears blurring her vision, "Because she wrote about you! About how you never understood her dreams! About how she wished she had Tina's fire… the one she let dim!" She thrust the journal forward, open to the page she’d just read. "She saw me, Dad! She truly saw me! And all this time, I thought our disagreements were my fault, that I wasn't enough, that I was difficult! But she admired me! She wanted my strength! What did you do to her, Dad? What did you do to make her feel like her life was so small?"

Her father’s outstretched hand faltered, then dropped. He looked at the journal, at the words Tina had pointed to, and a profound, desolate sorrow washed over his face. He didn't deny it. He didn't argue. His shoulders sagged, and he looked smaller, suddenly, irrevocably broken.

The silence that followed was not just the absence of sound, but the sound of an entire family history shattering, revealing fault lines Tina had never known existed.

Her mother wasn't just gone; she had been a stranger, living a secret life of yearning right under their noses, and Tina, armed with this devastating truth, finally understood the depth of her absence, and the monumental, complex task of truly getting to know the woman she called mother.

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I need my friends to enter this competition. I invite @mahadisalim , @fasonia , @ripon40 , @edgargonzalez , to participate here.

Thank You So Much To All The Readers.