“Yuka, not everyone can be as heartless as you.”
So I’m heartless — but you didn’t watch me burst into tears five times today.
I hold a lot of guilt…guilt for running away, 20 hours away from home, and leaving my dad behind. I come home for the first time in about a year, and it feels like I don’t know him anymore. We were never really close, but this time I feel like I can’t even look him in the eye. The betrayal I feel for leaving after spending a year in Nashville to help build our relationship — and then I picked the farthest state I could to get away.
Not only that, but he takes me to my room to show me all the stuff he’s bought for me these last couple of months, anticipating my arrival — and I want to sob. I am sobbing, actually, as I write this.
All I ever wanted was to be a good daughter with a good head on her shoulders, but every time I come home, I feel like a failure to that goal. I just can’t be perfect, and I can’t help but feel the need to run away.
He doesn’t even know me. He doesn’t know what I study in school. He doesn’t know who my best friend is, or that my favorite thing to do is be outside. He doesn’t know I ran a half marathon, and he doesn’t know all the parks I’ve been to. He doesn’t even remember the actual day of my birthday — only that it’s in February. And he sure as hell couldn’t tell you what my dreams are.
Do you know what it feels like for the person who’s known you the longest to also know nothing about you at all?
I think it’s the loneliest feeling. It makes me question my identity every day, and I wonder if anyone truly knows me at all. Maybe that’s why I’m loud and abrupt — because I wish to be seen. But as soon as people see too much, I recluse into the woods.
If no one really knows me, then no one really cares about me… so then I just don’t have to care at all.
And that’s what gives me the title of Miss Heartless.