I think what hurts the worst is the amount of confusion. Loving my exes Cody and Andrew so much but always questioning if they truly hated my guts and if they were really trying to hurt me or did they love me at all, even if it was a 1% chance, I would sigh and be ok. Thinking they absolutely hated me even though they made me obsessed with them, that kills me inside. More than the obsession, I always wonder “Are they okay??? Are they really traumatized themselves??” I know how it feels to feel like your past has messed you up. Thanks to them. 🥺❤️🩹 They projected themselves onto me and showed me what it feels like to hate yourself deeply, to not feel good enough and to live in isolation. They seem to consume me still and yet I’ve lost all trust but not heart. It’s still in me to want to be a genuinely pleasant and caring woman. I still wanna be a light in the dark but the coldness residual from the relationships. The stress and the toxicity tries to keep a close follow of me, like it’s my shadow and I try to run but it chases me. I see the world very differently now. I never feel safe anywhere. I don’t wanna ask a stranger for help. Does it ever change or is this my life now?
I don’t know if you’ll remember me or not but we talked over KIK in 2013 and I had feelings for you and I believed everything you were telling me. Halloween night in 2013, is when you “ghosted me”. You blocked me from every social media account you own that I followed you on and that traumatized me. I spent many years just frustrated and angry at you. I really didn’t understand how you could be so cruel and cold towards me, but I recall you telling me a lot of things you went through as a child with your parents splitting and other things that you shared with me… I don’t even know what was true or what was a lie. I truly believe you deceived me back then and the reason it wasn’t so easy to get over you is because I thought that I was falling in love with you and you said it would be fun for us to move in together, and I was trying to picture myself moving to San Francisco to be where you were at.
I need to share one thing with you; when you first met me, I had written a suicide note. I was not in a good place mentally and you were there for me and you talked me out of suicide, encouraging me to make me feel better. You called me your “queen” and you were showering me with affection!! It impacted me so much because I was so lost at that time and was trying to find a safe place to hide. I had no idea who I was. When I realized you had blocked me on all of your accounts, I took that as a sign that you really wanted nothing to do with me and yeah, it hurt me a lot because I cared so much about you, but I tried to respect your choice and walk away. I didn’t understand you or anything you were going through. I thought wow he’s hurting me so much and I don’t know why I deserve this…. You can’t force someone to love you back if they don’t.
I want to say I don’t hate you and I want to forgive you and I try to pray for you all the time. I hope that you’re well and I think about you often. I’ve tried to google you every now and then just to check in on you, and I hope you’re having a good life. I want nothing from you moving forward and I’m not even sure I’ll ever send you this message but if I did, I am not expecting you to reply. I’m married now and so I’m not trying to get back in your life. I just need you to know that I do think about you and that I am hoping the best for your life. 🙏🏻❤️ No matter what you face or where life takes you, think of me and know I’m rooting you on!
Her only saving grace was that this year was a leap year. It gave her that one extra day, but still she knew that she was out of time. And why? Because Tessa had warned her not to let the rest of the Ignotum know her relation to Cody? After so many weeks, she could hardly still claim that as an excuse. Weeks of crawling into her mum’s bed after hearing her sobbing herself to sleep. Weeks of stiffening up ever so slightly when she ran into any of those people who she knew could hold the key to what her family had been missing all this time. Weeks of wanting to snap out at people or punch a wall over tiny comments that she never would have taken so personally in the past.
The truth was, that she was scared. Terrified, even, of how he would react when he knew. Could he even believe her after this long? They had been out for three months and she had no good excuse for why it had taken her eight weeks to go and talk to the one person who could tell her for certain that he was alive, and another six to actually try and track him down. Though the Sorting Hat had talked of how she could fit into any House, it was becoming clearer and clearer why, after her demanding either Gryffindor or Hufflepuff, it had chosen the latter over her mother’s House. Whatever inkling of courage the Hat had seen all those years ago was gone now. Family values and loyalty were all very well, but how to handle the person who had been ripped away? How could he forgive her that he had been the one their father had taken? There was little logic behind it, other than the vague memories Eden still had from before they had left, which she doubted her younger brother could recall, but similarly there was little logic to any of the situation, least of all why it had taken her three months to reach this point, stood outside the Ignotum buildings, her eyes wandering from block to block.
She could see where there had been fire damage a few weeks ago, and wondered if he had been in one of the evacuated rooms. Was he currently one of the lit up windows, or was he out? Did he even still live here, or had he managed to get himself a place of his own before their deadline?
She doubted that a little. Even after working for a year out of school, when she had briefly considered moving out, she hadn’t felt like she had the funds to do so. Cody would have had three months tops to save up enough money from a menial job that he may not even have managed to secure. She highly suspected that when their eviction notices were posted, many of them would be forced into streets and shelters.
That was why she had run out of time.
The amount of time while it was still possible to track Cody down by virtue of pretty much all his peers living in the same place was now hours rather than days or weeks, and Eden was being pressured into action by the knowledge that when they all left the DMLE provided buildings, her chance of finding him would be limited to hoping she might accidentally run into him, or opening up to Jamison as the only person she had iFlown contact details for who might know. Even with the vote looming, she didn’t think that opening up was a good idea. The thought of isolating her brother even further by letting the news spread that he was different was too unbearable.
She took a deep breath and finally, after what felt like hours of dithering, stepped through the gates and started up the path to the buildings. She kept her head down, though there was nobody around as it was, and got to the main foyer as quickly as she could.
“Hi,” she said, trying not to focus on the desk attendant’s reaction to her being there as she approached. “Um, I’m looking for a... Er... A Cody Hambleton? Is he here? Cody...” Her father had said he still went by the same name, but she now hesitated over whether he had been including the surname in that or not. “I think it’s Hambleton.”
“Sure,” the desk attendant replied, glancing down at a list. “Cody Hambleton, room 34. Second building along, ground floor.”
And there it was.
After all that time, it had been so easy. As if they were giving them enough privacy to worry about handing room numbers out to strangers willy nilly, and she soon felt even worse for putting it off so long when she could have just walked in there three months before and asked.
***
“Who are you?”
He looked like Uncle Riley. Eden could think of nothing else as she stood outside his door, staring in at the twenty-two year old on the other side of the threshold. Having knocked, and scratched anxiously at the palm of her hand, she was now rendered speechless by his presence. There he was, stood right in front of her, looking like her uncle. He seemed to grow tired of her lack of response, and his hand rose to shut the door on her, but her hand reached out quickly.
“Wait.”
They stared at each other a little longer, and though her eyes were now watering, she could see the confusion on his face, and she knew that her next words wouldn’t help one bit with the confusion, but she had to say them.
“I’m your sister.”
She had expected him not to believe her. She had even expected him to tell her she was crazy. For some reason, though, she hadn’t expected him to laugh. When he did, it pained her that the sound dragged up long lost memories of her father. Even her paternal grandmother seemed to be present in that laugh, and tears started to flow, even as her hand still resisted him closing the door on her.
“Don’t you know what these buildings are? We have no real siblings.”
“Cody,” she said, not even looking for his reaction as she said his name for the first time, but feeling the pressure of the door against her hand lessen in that moment. “Please. Just... I can prove it. And explain. Morley... Morley Hambleton. Did you never think that was strange when nobody else shared a surname?”
“Who’s Mor— Do you mean Doctor Morley?”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the last family photo they had taken of the four of them. It had been one of the photos she had taken out of the lounge in a rage when her father was caught, but they had stayed stashed away in the back of her wardrobe and she had figured it might be useful today.
“I know the picture’s twenty years old, but this man.” She held it out and pointed, now seeing clearly Cody’s face as he tried so hard not to believe her. “His name is Morley Hambleton. He’s not a doctor. He’s a wizard. This is his wife, Brianne. They met at Hogwarts, and married, and had these two children. That’s me. And that... That’s you. He took you. I don’t know why, I just know that he was working for GIFT, and he left me and my mum, and he took you. We have your birth certificate at home if you want to... If you want to see.”
She knew it was a lot for him to take in, so when he didn’t respond, she just pressed the picture into his hand. If he were to turn it over, he would see the date it was taken in the faded hand of their mother and beneath that Eden had written every different contact detail she could think of for when he was ready. Unable to stand the silence any longer, she went up onto tiptoes to press a kiss to his unmoving cheek, and then stepped backwards.
“I’m so glad you’re okay, Cody. Your bedroom’s still there if you ever need to crash. I hope I’ll see you soon.”
She didn’t add that her mother would be over the moon if he chose to come home for good. He had to make that decision himself. Shoulders feeling surprisingly tense still, despite the weight that had been lifted off them, she turned away, and walked slowly down the corridor rather than apparating straight away. To her disappointment, no following call came, only the click of his door as he shut himself away from her.
Eden still lives in the house she was brought home to the day she was born. To this day, the three bedrooms remain distributed as they were twenty years ago: the master bedroom for ‘the parents’ (so now just Brianne Frazer); the middle-sized bedroom for the eldest child, Eden; and the smallest bedroom for the younger child, Cody. Over the years, his cot was swapped out for a bed and his walls painted more neutral ‘mature’ tones. The changing table was replaced with a desk and the toys and Mr Men books moved to the shelf in his otherwise empty wardrobe to make room for ‘his’ hand-me-downs of Eden’s school books. It always upset Eden a little to see her mother torn between keeping it appropriate for the age he should be now, so that he would have something to come home to, and leaving it as close as she could to what it was like when he left, as if he might ever remember that and want it to be familiar.
What made the insistence that it was Cody’s room more awkward was whenever they had anyone over to stay. Without another spare room, Eden found herself constantly offering to give her own room up to the guest and she go in Cody’s room, or even in with her mum, to keep his space sacred, and not be lending it out to other people without his permission (something she knew would eat away at her mother). Many people who stay are confused about the arrangement but don’t know the reason for it, as mentioning Cody in a way which implies he is gone has become so taboo in the Frazer family, that they avoid talk of him in front of other people completely. With so many pictures of extended family around the house, and nothing of Cody past age 2, his room is the only real indication that Eden is not an only child.
It's been awhile. Sorry about that. A lot has happened in my life and everything feels a bit heavy. I guess I just needed to talk to my friend.
So where do I begin? I got into film school. It's been a challenge, but I would be lying if I said I didn't love it. I was always so afraid for people to read my work. I've never been the most intelligent or grammatically correct, so that was a struggle in the beginning. It's been great though. I may not have started writing that perfect script yet but I'm getting there...slowly.
I've met some new people who are pretty cool. I was worried that I would shut myself off from people in college, but I feel I've opened myself up a bit more. This pretty much means that people have to listen to my terrible attempts at humour, but they deal with me well.
I have surprisingly stayed in touch with my good friends in high school. I was always terrified about losing those people. That group of friends from high school helped shaped the person I am today and are the few people I can be myself with. I know people say you make your best friends in college and not high school, which may be true in the long run, but I could never leave my high school friends behind. Yeah sometimes we feel a bit distant from each other and we don't always talk, but it's comforting knowing that they are there if I need them.
Things are going great, generally. I think I am in a much better place than I was a few months ago. It was a long process to get to this point, and I still have a long way to go. It's a never ending battle, but I am ready to charge forward with sword in hand.
However as great as things have been I have been struggling a bit lately. Right now I am starting to feel a bit disconnected from everyone. Mostly my friends, but some of my family as well. Some days I feel back to normal, but some days I can go without hardly talking to anyone and no one makes an effort to talk to me. It's not entirely everyone's fault. I tend to get in moods and distance myself from everyone, afraid to be emotional and vulnerable. I've been putting my walls up a lot.
I have also been feeling a bit inadequate lately. It comes eventually when you delve into art. I always have a habit to compare and notice the striking contrast between my work and others, mine feeling like the inferior piece. It's been hard getting past that. I know my writing is not terrible, and some of it I am pretty proud of, but it's hard when being compared to the great writers around me. I guess I am just waiting to write that one great thing that will make me feel worthy enough to stand up next to the people I am working with.
But yeah, things are good, generally. I'm sorry I haven't written. Maybe I will try my best to write more because I think it helps. I miss really talking to someone about things.
I don't really know what to say. Sounds stupid, doesn't it? Why write if I have nothing to say, right?
It's not that I have nothing to say, it's like there's too much to say; too much wanting to rush to the surface. However, it feels like I can't get it all out, so it just sits beneath it and manifests and eats you alive.
You've heard it all before, it's really nothing new. The same shit that just keeps piling on and evolves into sleepless nights and tear stained pillows; to silent conversations and pleas for help.
But that's all it is really: shit.
Some days are better than others, I will say. Not all of them are really that bad, and I am more fortunate than most. I have a job, I have a moderately loving family, I have a small handful of decent friends and I will hopefully be going to school soon. I should be happy, but it's never that easy.
Right now, I am left with being hopelessly disconnected. I am not really sure if that is worst or better. Most days I feel like I am just drifting or staying afloat. I feel as if I am coasting through life without really taking it in, and I am not sure if that is worse or better.
Sometimes it's better to avoid the pain, but at the same time you miss the good.
If I was smart I would stop writing these damn letters and go talk to someone who can truly help. While you are a fine listener, I'm not really sure this is helping. It used to feel good just to let it out and move on. It used to feel good to have someone listen and not respond.
It used to work.
Maybe it's the fact that I haven't written in ages, or the fact that I tend to focus on the bad rather than the good, but I know something needs to change.
I guess I just don't know what it is yet.
Maybe I just need a sign, huh? Can you give that to me?
