Voids Fill Up Differently by Students of IACT (books for students to read txt) 📕

her trance, “Pak!” The auto gate opens once again. He’s back. She walks into the living room and sits on the couch, placing the photo strip on the coffee table with a solemn face. Her seriousness and rage are forming a formidable atmosphere. The man she trusted and sadly still loves steps into the house, with a poker face and looks at her uncertainty. The silence of the living room feels like a gap between both of them. “What’s the matter? You look angry,” he breaks the silence first. She stays silent and stares at the photo strip on the table. His eyes hesitantly follow her gaze of rage and brokenness. It was the photo strip from the carnival that he took Angela. The woman he has been seeing for the past few months. As much as it was exhilarating and alive to be with her, he knew deep down that it was wrong. A tsunami of guilt swarms him and he quickly kneels down in front of Evelyn.

 

“ I……. Look, it was just a few months. I’m sorry. I love you. I still love you. I do,”  Mike stares at his wife with such pleading eyes, looking up at Evelyn and quickly grabs ahold of both her hands. She doesn’t look at him but reality hits her like a truck as this means, Mike really is cheating on her. There was no excuse for this. It is true. How ironic that he says “I do”. In Evelyn’s life, the only time she ever felt fulfilled was when he said that during their wedding vows. Now, like never in her life before, she feels the unimaginable void he forced upon her soul, he says “I do”. He brought life into her like no one ever could but now, she sees him take that away like she never meant anything to him.

 

The sound of thunder boomed and echoed throughout the house, as Evelyn feel the first tear escape her left eye as she blinked and she could feel her heart being squeezed like a twisted cloth. She stood up, weakly pulled her hands away from his and walked upstairs. Stopping midway, she gathers all her might and mutters, “Get out” and continues up the stairs. She’s lost, feeling like she has nowhere to go. Her heart is shattered into a million pieces. She needs someone, a person she trusts and can tell this to. She needs her dad. She has no friends to talk to as she spends all her time earning money rather than having a social life and Mike is the only friend she has or had. She’s vexed, whether to give up or keep the marriage for Kayden. How could she ever tell Kayden what his father has done? Kayden looked up to Mike, he loves him like no other, maybe even more than her. Worries and hesitations start to emerge in her mind, for the sake of Kayden. She loved her son too much to destroy his world. 

 

Evelyn hears the sound of keys opening the front door. He’s leaving. Evelyn was glad she doesn’t need to face him but deep down she hoped he would come after her. She hated herself for feeling so.                                                

 

“Baby, let’s go to see Grandpa and Grandma in the early morning. Mummy misses them.” Evelyn, on the verge of tears, attempts to utter these words to her beloved son who was getting ready for bed, trying to hold in the pain from the recently witnessed betrayal. Kayden was confused but happy to skip school. He doesn’t question as he squeals excitedly.

 

Destroyed, Evelyn packs her things along with her son’s so they can leave first thing in the morning to hit the road back to her hometown, Kemaman. She feels like she’s running on auto-pilot as she packs a few days of clothes and some necessities before going into Kayden’s room to sleep with him tonight. 

 

The next morning as they leave KL, she makes a quick pit stop to her frequently visited florist, Nina, and picks out a beautiful bouquet of flowers for her dad back home. Usually, she orders a bouquet of roses and gets them delivered back once in a blue moon as a reminder of her love for him. Her father always loved roses because he thinks it resembles Evelyn, beautiful but deadly. Evelyn is far away from home and is always too busy to travel back to her hometown to visit him but as of today, she will finally be delivering them to her dad personally. After the purchase of the flowers, she gets in her vehicle and starts her journey right away. During her 3-and-a-half-hour drive, her subconscious starts to zone out as she reminisces about her childhood days.

 

 

Evelyn is the oldest child of Mr and Mrs Chin, among seven siblings. Being the oldest sibling, she did not exactly have the best childhood, to begin with. She grew up having immense pressure and responsibilities shoved to her by her mother. Her father, on the other hand, was always so nice to her. When she was growing up, Evelyn was spoilt by her father, as he would constantly shower her with gifts and lots of love.

“Dad, can I please have these colour pencils please?”

“Anything you want, my dear. It's all yours.”

Although, Evelyn always ended up in arguments with her mother.

 

“What a waste of money. Did you not get one last year? Stick with it!”

“But mum, pleaseeeee I-I-I…”

Her father, being the person who had always given her everything she had wanted, whether it be ample cuddles, showing his unconditional affection to her all the time, or even just listening to what she has to say all the time instead of being biased towards her younger siblings. Her mother, on the other hand, was always mean and just like a broken recorder, constantly nags and repeats the same things again and again and was always bias towards her younger siblings. She always forced Evelyn to take care of her siblings, even when she was quite young. Growing up, Evelyn never had a life of her own and constantly doubted herself, as well as whether she was really loved by her mother, or not.

“Why are you so lazy?”

“You are the oldest sibling! Why aren’t you helpful even one bit?”

“Why are you like this? Is this how I trained you to be?”

“Why are you so stupid?”

“Why do I have a child like you?”

“Can’t you at least do one thing right? Have I ever asked a lot from you?”

All these times, she could only recollect her father always standing up for her when she was belittled and picked on by her mother. Her father always treated her like a princess, and this is the exact reason why she had a soft spot for her father. She looked up to him and loved him like no other. As time passed, she even started to despise her mother. To Evelyn, her mother was just her birth giver. She gave Evelyn the chance to be on this earth, a roof, food on the table and she is grateful. However, that is all and that is all it will ever be. Evelyn’s relationship with her mother was nothing but toxic.

 

Evelyn was always very insecure and had zero confidence, self-worth and self-esteem when she was a little kid. She couldn’t stay in the same room as her mother for longer than 10 minutes. She never strikes up conversations with her mother, she always walked with her head down and eyes fixed on the ground.

 

When those old thoughts and memories hit her, crystal tears started to form in her eyes, blurring her vision during her long journey heading back to her hometown of Kemaman. Everything she had recalled, trying to find at least a single drop of care from her mother, seemed to be in vain. She could not remember even one memory of her childhood where her mom would be supportive of her, because she never had a caring mother figure in her entire childhood. All she remembers is having her mother as a “dragon lady”, all of this just because she is the oldest child in the family.

Especially the incident that she had to face that once, which remained as trauma to her life until this day…

Evelyn felt the icy cold and emotionless sting on her left cheek as her head was thrown to the side. She blinks twice trying to comprehend what had just happened yet found it funny as to why was she surprised. Her mother’s red handprint on her cheek would have formed by now.

“YOU ARE SUCH A USELESS DAUGHTER! CAN’T YOU HELP JUST A LITTLE? YOU ARE A DISGRACE! I WISH I HADN’T GIVE BIRTH TO YOU.”

Those sharp words cut her heart deeply. Deeper than any black hole in the universe. Evelyn’s thin, frail body froze, her mind going blank by the second. Her tears streaming like there is no tomorrow as her throat ached. Words imploring to crawl out of her mouth felt like the stabbing of a knife, wanting to escape this tunnel of hell. At that moment in Evelyn’s life, she has never felt more enraged and helpless before in her entire existence. The hatred she had towards her mom was built to a point she could have never expected in her life to hate someone this bad, that too is her own mother, her own flesh and blood. The person who was supposed to be the person she could always go to at any time of the day, for the warmth that she had never received from.

 

Fast forwarded to the moment she reached the age of 18. Evelyn remembered packing her belongings as she could finally leave home to further her studies in KL. She bethought the moment of happiness as she was able to escape the torture of being around her mother but at the same time was heart ached that she had to leave the one person who actually loved her, her father.

 

Just as she was about to leave the house, her mother had handed her an envelope consisting a decent amount of allowance in order for her to survive and manage herself when she is away from home to further her studies. Moving to KL, the whole process of it was surprisingly easier than expected. Since Evelyn had been responsible from a young age by guiding her six other siblings and constantly getting scolded by her mother for apparently not being responsible enough made this move a smooth one.

 

At that moment, she felt blessed that her annoying mother was able to somehow help with something that was sort of useful. Although, this small benefit that she had gotten from the years of torture definitely did not change the fact that she still hated her mother and did not wish to be associated with her anymore. Evelyn’s mother hurt her in ways no child should have to go through. It may not have been physical abuse but she wished it was because no one could see or save her from the pain of emotional abuse her mother has endorsed on her all these years.

 

 In a blink of an eye, days, months and years flew by and Evelyn had finally stepped into the working world as an adult. During then, she fell in love with an absolutely charming stranger who sat across her daily in her favourite coffee shop. The stranger whom she then pronounced as the love of her life. He was tall, handsome, had a very alluring personality. When he first lured her into his embrace, it felt like even if the world was in danger and was about to collapse, she was protected by him and it felt like the best thing that has ever happened in her life. He treated her like a queen, his lifelong partner until the end of their good days. After being happily married, Evelyn wholeheartedly believed everything was going to turn out fine until the reality of life hit her