The Witch Hex That Curses Me
A story where it all begins to go wrong. Writing this so the maggots eating my brain won’t make me forgot my sins.
Thinking back about it, I was so naive. Growing up pampered, sheltered, cared for, makes me grateful for each passing days I am in the family. But it also makes me realize how incapable I am without my parents. Maybe I still am, but it was far worse.
I remember the day, it was Eid Al-Fitr, how incredibly funny for such a happy, graceful day to be the doom of my family’s life. I remember when they bring Ayah back with his knees folded, Ayah’s stroke worsen when they were praying. I remember the commotion, I also remember how I act towards it.
I shunned away, I rarely go downstairs, I left the burden for my mother. I act like I am not 19 years of age.
So maybe it is karma. But am I deserving of such karma? When she was the one who left Ayah, left me and Nazwa to sell everything we ever owned so she can get a life on her own?
Thinking about it all, it happened because of me. A week after I moved out to the Rp700.000 lodge, I fell ill. My head feels like its bursting through my skull, my head is burning up. I remember being taken to the hospital that day. I remember that I had yet to take the trash out of my room, panicking it will cause rotten bugs to tarnish my room. As it turns out the rotten bugs tarnish everything, not the only rent room i live for a week, but all 19 years of my life.
I am always grateful for her, as she fought for the family, as she cared for my ill father. But she was never around, never when I am ill, never when I need guardian to bring my rapports, never when I need help for my study, never to care about everything but what she feels.
I went home that day, then the sudden surges of my dad’s relatives come in. All chiming about “Yang sabar ya neng,” Sure, I was hospitalized because of the dengue, but I am here, I am home, I am healed. As it turns out they are not sending condolences for my illness, they are saying that to my father. My sick Ayah with a stroke. Because my mom divorced him, when I was in hospital bed. Cared by her half-sister that badmouth about how ungrateful I was.
Get Nadirra’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
My life crumbles. And I avoid it all. Like I always do. I left Ayah behind. I left Nazwa behind. I care about no one but myself. Writing this seethe a firing anger to myself. Why did I save her when I let my old, sick, Ayah bleed by himself? I remember her not doing anything better, she is escaping, with the lover she said that was destined to her before she met Ayah. Before Ayah took her away from the world.
I would have coughed blood if I could right now. Her audacity to say that when no one but Ayah’s family who cares for her when she got into psychosis, It was Ayah and his family that sheltered me and Nazwa away from bed bug infested house. It was all Ayah. And I only remember him when I left him.
I am no better than my mother. I try to persists at first, I try to save money, the Rp700.000 my cousins (from Ayah side) left to not starve in Jakarta Selatan, but I crumble, I crumble by that witch of a mothers’ dangling words. That I can rely on her, that I can be together with my sister. That I am no better than a villain for my Ayah. That I betrayed him.
So I sold the house. The house that I now long for. The house that Ayah sheltered us for. The home that Ayah cared and cleaned for.
When Ayah’s condition worsened, and when he died. I remember the surge of relief washes over me. That I no longer have to tiptoe around his family. That I do not have to be afraid to be hated.
But I forgot one thing, That I Love Ayah.
That caring for only myself, being egoistic, escaping the hard life without Ayah, is never better with the life with Ayah.
As now I have to harden my shoulders, cleaning up the mess my wicked mother has done. She is now all left with the debt. The debt the love of her life left her with.
Should I have done different Ayah? Ayah, what should I do? Is this the time for be to be an egoist? Could I live my life?
