My relationship with Vicenzio kept getting worse and I think if I was to say that we hated each other, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration. He actually got some backbone with the passing years, no longer the shy child he used to be. Who knew when cold indifference between us turned into bitter insults, getting nastier each passing day? But then again why wouldn’t he be confident? He was now a teenager, confident in his abilities, who had father’s encouragements and his mother’s deep unfailing love. She always had a ready smile for him and a mouth full of eulogies. The woman kept on telling whoever cared enough to listen how much she was proud of that child of hers.

I think though, in our bouts, we have cursed both our families’ previous generations until the creation of the world. Many turned around in their coffin certainly, unable to peacefully remain with such descendants!

If to be honest now, I wonder if most of those arguments, I wasn’t the one starting them.

My unrequired affections for my father turned me into an irritable person and I was leashing it at those he was acknowledging the most: Vicenzio and his mother; which ironically was actually further lengthening the distance between my father and me, but that was something I realized much, much later.

When arguing with them I wasn’t minding my words. It started with small scales, with me calling Vicenzio Vicky, just to anger him -it sounded girly and he hated it- to the point where we would each cursed our fate with earlier death. That was just with Vicenzio though, with Paelita we were fine not talking to each other. She didn’t like how we were always quarreling her son and me, but after some failed attempts to pacify the tension, she kept quiet; silently glaring at me. It was a little funny though when she would lose her temper, calling me a failure as a sister, then I wouldn’t hesitate to call her son a failure as a brother right back at her face. Her small shoulders would shake in anger, her eyes turning red, along with her cheeks, flushing with fury. She would clench her fist, ready to pounce on me. Nonetheless, she never did. Never had she even slapped me.

Father never cared about our disputes. We never fought in front of him and he never reprimanded us for things we said in the morning. I’m sure seeing how angry she usually was during our dinners around the table; Paelita was dissatisfied with that fact.

She had long lost her patience with me, stopped trying to sympathize with me, stopped trying to please me, to organize my birthdays or to gift me presents. At the time, I used to think that it didn’t matter, I never had them anyway… However, to be fair… it was a little… lonely.

To get notice maybe, I took the medicine in the cupboard. Small dosages at first, but they kept getting bigger and before long I grew addicted. The time for my surroundings to notice, I was already bedridden in my chamber with the doctors fussing over me.

Like father did to mother, he never entered my bedroom and with his newly acquired family, it wasn’t like we had the best relationships. I lied there for a couple of weeks, with just myself and dread feelings of loss in me. I wonder why but I was scared to death.

I think it was at that time that Paelita asked her son to stay away from me. Completely. To not even answered when I talk. And hearing that from the servants, …somehow, a huge sense of loneliness crept inside me.

With trembling hands holding the books that aided me to escape reality, I used to wonder if mother felt like this…

But then again, she had me to keep her company. Me, who was it that I had?