Page 103 of Cerulean Truth
"So, being in foster care prohibited you from translating?" she furthered softly.
I tilted my head, considering how much I was willing share about my past.
"… let's just say, I was terrified to feel anything. So I shut it all out—the anger, the fear, the grief, the loneliness… I suppressed it all… and when you don't feel anything…"
"You don't translate," she whispered, her expression reflecting understanding.
"Yeah. Which is why it took Cyclos six years to track me down. And even then, I struggled to confront those emotions. You have to understand, I was very angry at the world..."
I paused.
"And when I ran out of external targets for my anger, I turned it on myself. I convinced myself I had to have done something to become someone nobody wanted. That I had somehow driven everyone away. That I was unworthy of love..."
Her eyes brimmed with empathy as she listened intently, and for some reason, I unexpectedly found myself eager to share even more with her.
“I was scared shitless to let all that in, so after my retrieval, it took me a while to acknowledge the existence of emotions. And then, when I finally did, they consumed me. They controlled me. Stephen took me in, tried to help me get a grip on all that darkness but…”
I hesitated, the memories still very raw, even though it had been years.
"For almost three years, I had no control over it whatsoever... there were incidents..." I trailed off and quickly swallowed the rising impulse to tell hereverything.
Instead of elaborating, I quickly translated myself a bottle of water and took a long sip, attempting to regain my composure. Without much thought, I translated another bottle and extended it to Emma.
“I had to figure out how to harness my darkness, channeling it into translation. It wasn't until they enrolled me in Offensive training that I learned to control my 'rage haze,' as Stephen used to call it. By the end of my second year in Offensive training, my interface—the time between the emotion and the translation—took up but a few seconds."
Another pause, gathering my thoughts.
"Which is why I understand your current fear to feel better than you think," I finished.
She was clearly too stunned to speak, taken aback by the level of openness I had displayed in those last ten minutes... and, to be honest, so was I...
"Okay, so I have to get in touch with my emotions...." She hesitated, then admitted to me in softer tones, "it's not like I don't have any, you know... it's more like I have so many, I'm scared if I let one slip out, it will all come crashing down on me." She blinked a few times, maybe holding back tears that threatened to spill, and I realized I hadn’t seen her cry even once since the night of the “bathroom-incident”.
I studied her face, searching for the root of her apprehension. “Are you that afraid of confronting your trauma?”
“It’s not just the trauma," she replied defensively, her voice tinged with frustration. "It’s everything. I’m so lonely all the time, I don’t know how to connect with anyone, and I feel like I’m good at nothing. I fail at everything, and for someone like me, who had never failed a day in her life, that’s maybe even more disturbing than being bled out against a tree.”
I raised a skeptical brow, wondering if she was exaggerating for effect.
She let out a heavy sigh. "It's just... I don't understand why I had to cut off everything entirely... this transition would go a lot smoother if I could go home during the weekends or something. And I get that we’re on the brink of the Great Exposure, but Istill don't see how that all pertains to me. My life, my career, my family, my friends—everything is now being sacrificed. For what? For some magic people I don’t even know, coming out of the broom-closet?"
I felt a surge of irritation bubbling up inside, mixed with a cocktail of emotions I couldn't quite untangle. Was it her obliviousness to the importance of the Great Exposure, or was it just plain envy for what she left behind? Hell, maybe I just craved the same sort of connections she’d had.
Or maybe I simply didn’t want her to miss anything, maybe I irrationally wanted to be everything she wanted. Everything she needed.
Or maybe, it was because opening up to her had injected a raw fear of rejection, compelling me to hastily rebuild my emotional walls.
Whatever the reason, it annoyed me and I lashed out.
"Emma," I snapped, my voice dripping with frustration, "it’s time to pull yourself out of this self-pity spiral. You've got a cushy life waiting for you back home, everything handed to you on a silver platter. And here you are, acting like the world owes you something."
She blinked, clearly taken aback by my outburst. Her shocked expression only fueled my frustration further.
Maybe I could’ve gone about it in a different way but she needed a wake-up call, and if I had to give her some tough love to get her moving, so be it.
“Yes, your law career is over, but you’re still immensely young. We all need at least a cycle to get on top of our game and you’re acting at twenty-three as if your world is collapsing. Just grow a pair and figure it out. It’s what we all had to do.”
Her eyes widened, and her face flushed with anger.
