The Diary of Existing

TWO

It was a Sunday and I found myself staring intently at my notebook. I bit my lip, trying to chew off the dryness of my lips. It was a terrible habit that I had since I was 10, but it was something I simply found myself doing. I didn't do it just because I was anxious, excited or any of that. I just did it. Another unexplained thing about me. A mystery if you will. Just like my writing. I love to write, but I hate it too. Writing will be the death of me.

"Alex, your father is here." Nurse Trixie popped in and immediately popped out. She went so fast she probably didn't see my face. My father's here. He's barely here. It isn't because he doesn't want to be, he's a busy guy. I have no idea what he does. Business? I'm not sure. To me, it's a trivial matter. Or at least my mother says so. But I love my father. I miss him a lot. He's always away. It has always been that way. I immediately stood up and slipped on my shoes. I didn't bother to fix them. I had a jolt of excitement in me. The last time my dad was here was on my birthday, that was six months ago. He gave me a charm bracelet that had a symbol of every single country he had visited. France, Italy, Dubai, Japan, Mexico. Every single one of his visits.

I ran through the hallway, ignoring the nurse telling me not to run and to walk briskly but I could care less. My father was here.

"There she is." I just went in there and hugged him. My father gave the best hugs. They were soft, he was sweet and caring. More maternal than my own mother. "Your hair is longer than it was last time I saw you." He said as he inspected it. I simply smiled. We sat down on the table. The visitors area was basically the cafeteria. There was different options. Depending on your situation you had access to certain areas. For me, I had ground privileges to everywhere. If I wanted to be by the swings with my dad I could. The classrooms were off limits though. Those rooms were always locked on weekends, unless there was tutoring sessions or extra make-up classes.

"Look at you, writing again?" He pointed at my notebook. I immediately lost my smile and slid it from the table towards me, hiding it away. "Hey now don't hide that. Come on, let me see." My father asked and I shook my head. "Don't mind it. It's nothing its a book for one of my classes." I lied. But he didn't pester me. He just smiled and pulled something from the chair next to him. It was a paper bag, a plain white one. "I got this for you. I had just come from Russia." I pulled a box from the paper bag and lifted the lid. Inside was full of color, delicate, antique-like. "They're matryoshka dolls. These are made of wood. They're nesting dolls from Russia, quite popular with tourists and I know it seems a little cliche to pick but Alice thought that you would love to have them displayed in your room, on a dresser maybe."

Alice.

As soon as the name escaped his lips I found my smile, once again, fading. Alice was my father's assistant. I despised her. I don't know why. I never had a solid reason to really hate her except for the things my mother told me about her. My mother would never admit it to my face but I recall a dinner party she had with her friends, I snuck down to the stairs and heard her talking about my father and Alice having sex in his car. During another dinner she talked about how they had sex in his office and my father accidentally dialed her phone, and that she had recorded it and was intending to use it on the divorce proceedings so she could get more than half of what she was entitled to.

My mother placed this image of who Alice was in my head. When I entered the institution my dad brought her over to meet me during my first holiday here. She was beautiful. She looked like a doll, she looked just about the right age, and she was genuinely kind to me. But I had a seething hatred nonetheless. It was possibly loyalty to my mother. I don't know what it was, but I disliked her either way. I tried to be civil with her but I did accidentally spill tomato sauce on her expensive Balmain jacket one Christmas. It was the first time I saw my mother smile at something I did.