Oh dear Daisy
Daisy's broken world
I wasn’t even home when the world started splitting at the seams. I had been out late, completely detached from reality, caught up in some mundane chore that feels utterly pointless to me now. Then my phone buzzed. It was Anna, my grandmother. Her voice wasn't its usual calm self; it was sharp, panicked, trembling. “Daisy, come home. Your mother is sick.”
In that split second, my survival instinct took over. No thoughts, no tears, just raw movement. I rushed back, grabbed the car keys, helped my mother into the passenger seat, and drove to the hospital. During the drive, my mind was strangely, terrifyingly numb. My hands were steady on the steering wheel. I was perfectly normal, or so I thought. I was the responsible daughter doing exactly what needed to be done.
But reality doesn't hit you when you are running. It hits you when you finally stop.
The doctor handed me her medical reports under the harsh, buzzing fluorescent lights of the hospital corridor. I looked down at the papers, and suddenly, the numbness shattered. The medical jargon blurred together, but the gravity of it hit me like a physical blow. My hands began to shake—so violently that the paper rattled in my grip.
A suffocating wave of panic washed over me. How am I supposed to handle this alone? Who do I turn to when the pillar of my life is breaking? I looked around the sterile, white hallway, and the crushing weight of being completely, utterly on my own threatened to pull me under.
boarded a night bus heading to the other side of the city, just needing the movement to keep from crashing. Leaning my forehead against the cool, vibrating glass of the window, watched the blurry city lights melt into streaks of rain.
And that’s when my mind finally broke its defenses and drifted to him. To Ren.
In the quiet hum of the moving bus, my thoughts didn't stay in the terrifying present. Instead, they took me back to a time when safety didn't feel like a luxury. I closed my eyes and dreamed of our childhood—the endless summer afternoons, the absolute certainty that as long as he was there, nothing could truly go wrong. I remembered the boy who would sit patiently on the porch, letting me force him into a ridiculous sky-blue Argentina jersey just to hear me laugh, even though he hated the team. He was my anchor then, long before life, O-Levels, engineering dreams, and family walls built a distance between us.
Sitting alone on that bus, clutching my shaking hands together, I looked out into the dark night and realized the cruelest truth of all: the only person who could calm the storm inside me was the one person I could no longer reach out to.
