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Ever since October was 13, one of the only feelings he could feel for his mom was pity.
...
That's about it.
He sounds like a saint, too much of a saint. October's not a saint.
Pity sounds so kind, except pity wasn't kind. Pity doesn't mean October forgives his mother for all she had done to him, it just means he can understand where she was coming from with some of her-more negligent actions.
It’s just the only negative feeling, October could feel without any malice. Without any intent to harm, be it verbally or through actions.
Pity was just this feeling of “Wow, you are really miserable”... It's this feeling of sadness he feels for his mother, acknowledgment for how bad her situation is.
It makes his mom’s actions towards him sound more excusable, October's pity makes him feel like his mother was the one truly suffering here. Not him.
Her actions look more beautiful, more tragic.
More like an unavoidable tragedy, than a woman in her forties, bullying her 17-year-old son because she never had enough bravery to even think about the fact her personality sucks.
Her coping mechanisms suck, and the way she deals with any form of imaginary stress sucks.
It’s just pathetic.
Because if not pity, what else was there to feel? Disgust, frustration, hate, aren't those emotions just wrong? Won't he be making their relationship worse if he hates Maria? Wouldn't Maria be right in her hatred of October then?
What if mother's right? What if October's wrong?
What if everything he had fought Maria about was wrong? What if he ruined their relationship for nothing?
Shut up, SHUT UP, he was supposed to be a g-
???
a
a Good kid.
...
What else was there to say?
His mind runs blank like a blank CVS receipt.
So much paper, yet nothing is written on that paper.
He ran out of words to say, to complain.
He's done, exhausted just like always.
It takes him some time to get enough energy to think again.
Waiting.
Still waiting.
The higher I get, the lower I'll sink
The lyrics enter his mind and October hums the tune. It's rock, heavy metal.
Its notes are deep and loud, they vibrate through his entire body before the note hits the air.
The muscles he needs to use for the notes are mostly concentrated in his chest, so he uses his chest voice for most of the song fragments.
It used to be a little hard for him to switch from soft to heavy so quickly.
In music, timing is very important, as October likes to say, sometimes the pacing of a note is more important than how the note is sung.
The feeling of accomplishment that was present, when he first hummed the tune correctly is gone. Nw, he just feels a little bored with it.
He still feels proud of himself; but maybe he needs to look for more songs to hum.
I'm scared to get close, and I hate being alone
Can you save my bastard soul?
She appreciates the gifts he gives her more than she loves him.
The situation he was and still is in- is absolutely ridiculous.
It's so hard to explain, that's why nobody can understand why he hates his mom. On paper, she sounds like a normal person trying her best to parent her rebellious son. Except October's situation with his mother aren't just words spoken to the air, only to disappear with the coming minutes.
The thing is his mom hates him, but she feels guilty about her feelings of hate, so she acts superficially sweet to October with undertones of anger to it. That means in return, she does October a lot of good here and there.
Actually, she doesn’t even do October a lot of good. She just tells him her fake, guilty “ I love you”s when he leaves for school and that’s about it.
At least, she isn't like his father, trying to cram October's schedule with every single damn class in existence so he would stop lazing around and get to work.
She doesn't complain about much to her friends and coworkers, the sole exception to this is October. Her life is perfect her son is the sole exception.
Yeah, too bad she can't wave a wand around and then BAM her social anxiety disappears. She can pretend like her parents weren't neglectful, but she felt so overwhelmed as a teenager taking care of everything; with an additional burden of immigrant parents who never bothered to learn the language of the country they were in. That's why she left them to rot, homeless in the streets of New York to die a cold and painful death. She'll never confess to this indirect murder, however her hatred of her parents is as clear as sunlight.
Maria's situation sounds pitiful, anyone who hears about her relationship with October thinks he’s the problem.
Middle-upper class rich kid, a 17-year-old teenager who likes rock and never does his homework. He has no knowledge of the outside world, has never suffered anything beyond the confines of his comfortable home.
He's a teenager, and his opinions clash with the opinions of the adults around him. That is enough excuse for them to pull out their "You think you're so great?! Then become an adult!" criticisms and all their variations.
It's bullying, of course, it's bullying. It's a good thing then, that the standards for bullying usually depend on the victim's reaction to it. The moment he gets angry, it takes less than a second for the bullying to be labeled as the necessary discipline of a spoiled child.
Not all victims of bullying mope around and become an absolute disaster because of it, should he really be punished for daring to be confident?
And then there’s Maria.
Suffering from unresolved trauma of being forced to grow up too early, forced to deal with an uncaring husband and a son who hates her. Her beautiful daughter Reese is now in the custody of her ex-husband, and Maria is cursed with the custody of October. Immature, toxic, irrational October. All while doing everything she can to help those in need, working in charities and volunteering at fundraisers for the poor in her free time.
Wow, if you add up all the shit she does in her free time. Parties, fundraisers, charities, gym, window-shopping, etc… Any event that vaguely concerns her medical company.
You’ll have to wonder at some point, how much free time does this lady have in order to do all of this.
October’s answer is,none, all her free time is spent doing all those activities. All their money is spent doing all those activities as well.
No wonder Maria always seems to be out of money, it turns out if you spend you working allowance helping strangers you don’t know about. You yourself will not have any money left for yourself.
Oh yeah, and Maria is in charge of balancing all that, and she’s constantly out of money for some reason.
Money that is spent by her abusive teenage son October.
God, her situation sounds horrible.
Too bad, being in a bad situation, doesn’t mean anything.
Sadly, since October’s a teenager. His problems just don’t seem to elicit the same amount of pity as Maria’s problems do.
It must be that weird cognitive dissonance thing where people idealize their childhood so much to the point their memories are no longer an accurate representation of the past. Which becomes a very big problem, when the only tool you have on hand in offering advice to people in other situations is empathy.
The thing is, teenagers complain a lot, and adults don’t forgive them for complaining.
So if you see your highschool years as the golden years, aka the calm before the storm, and you see somebody else in highschool complaining about some issues that seem “childish” too much homework, not enough free time.
Then isn’t it an instinct of sorts to just ridicule that person, or the “hahaha, you don’t pay bills so I don’t see your struggles as valid thing”.
If anything, it takes way too long for people to realize that October’s in the same situation as his mom is in, too little money, not enough free time, etc.
The struggles of a teenager aren’t struggles at all, apparently, so continue on with your “I work an additional three hours after a seven-hour long school day and my mom is basically the equivalent of a worm when it comes to doing anything useful” complaints.
Too bad, being in a bad situation, doesn’t mean anything.
It doesn’t mean you didn’t deserve your bad situation, doesn’t mean you’re doing the best you can to deal with that situation. It just means you are in a bad situation and people will now pity you because they hate the thought of being in the same situation without emotional support.
(This only applies to Maria, October doesn’t need to worry about the latter half of the previous paragraph.)
He hates his mom, he knows that. But why can’t people just leave him and his damn hatred alone?
It’s almost as if, every single second he spends angry. Is an insult to their existence.
It’s like, for some reason, he has to justify his own hatred of his mother to other people in order for his feelings to be valid.
It's so weird, they're treating his emotions like a democracy or something.
Something that needs the approval of an entire group to be passed. Except his emotions aren’t a law and will never be a law, so why is everybody so concerned about the fact he might have depression?
It’s almost as if-
And nothing, October’s mind goes blank.
He’s dumb, he isn’t good at continuing thought trains. Former thoughts are forgotten within seconds and present thoughts are lost. Lost like when you go on a walk in a sketchy neighborhood, and you just so happen to forget where you are. Much to the hatred of that dude who was waiting to mug you on some random street you passed.
He hates it.
He sounds so pitiful saying something like this, but his self-hate doesn't need to be pitied.
He doesn't need to be happy, just to be worth something.
Something that his therapist can’t seem to understand.
“October, tell me, help me understand why you hate your mom so much.” His therapist tells him, her voice at the “why you hate your mom so much” part of her question gets stupidly low and slow. Like each word might accidentally trigger October’s non-existent PTSD.
She cakes her face in stupid amounts of make-up, a point of insecurity and her voice has that stereotypical therapist vibe of forced happiness.
Or what the average person, who has never taken a day of music theory, thinks what happiness sounds like.
Too high, too monotone, too professional, she's suppressing how she really sounds like, in order to sound happy.
Too high, so forced, every single note is way higher than it should be. She sounds strained, really strained and exhausted.
Her vocal cords are exhausted.
She wants to sound happy, but with how forced her voice is, she sounds angry.
If October's honest, Maria's the one who needs a therapist not him.
“I should've made you drink bleach, the moment you began to talk back to me.”
Too bad, she's the adult with the social skills to convince everyone to believe that he's insane.
The therapy is a form of discipline.
She wants to discipline him, to force him to be nicer to her.
She's already been trying the forced discipline approach for the last two years and it is working.
October has given up on trying to change her, so they no longer fight. But they aren’t on speaking terms with each other anymore, the bad blood between them has simply gotten too much.
'Cause, baby, now we got bad blood
You know it used to be mad love
Sorry, off topic.
However, she's not satisfied, she wants more- she wants their relationship to feel like a family again.
Band-aids don't fix bullet holes
You say sorry just for show
Off topic. Again.
(Damn it, he really needs to see if he can get an ADHD diagnosis in the future.)
She acts like her “discipline” is benevolent, that she's doing a great favor for October by yelling out all her trauma and how lucky he is to not be the breadwinner for a family of six.
There are other things too, the times that she got bullied because she was the only Mexican in her mostly-white school. How everybody kept asking her which farm she and her family worked at in her free time, spreading rumors about the fact her family works for the mexican cartel. Which actually led to a police investigation in their house for drugs once.
How much her parents worked and how she was the one taking care of her siblings most of the time. How her younger brother Orlando, the second-oldest ran away to join a gang.
Etc…
She isn't a strict and fair parent, she's a strict parent and that's about it.
“... No problem then, I’ll just kick you out the moment you turn 18. One less burden for me to worry about if you’re that adamant on making me look like the bad guy here ! ”
However, October now knows the solution to his current problem.
Admit he's wrong, lie crudely, change his pitch to sound ashamed.
Shame shame shame shame engraved into his very voice.
It's great that he's been practicing all his life for this moment. Maria isn't innocent, and her husband was just like her.
“I hated my mom…” October paused for a moment, sprinting, running, with momentum gained and lost with every step he ran down memory lane for a correct answer as to why he hates his mom.
Hint: The correct answer is anything but the truth.
Mrs. Anderson waited, patient, or tolerant of October’s silence. Waiting for the chance to reprimand him. To remind him why his answer is wrong and how everything, as always, is his fault. It’s because he was from a rather privileged socio-economic class, which may have affected his perception of what he was entitled to as a person.
Apparently , washing the dishes without being yelled at for hours non-stop wasn’t something he was entitled to.
A stray memory rolled to his feet, it was purple. Like him.
Familiar brown eyes, blonde hair, a condescending voice.
The details flowed into October’s brain like streams of water, with each inch the amount of water each stream held dwindled, moistening the rocks around it with its own life and October now knew what his excuse was going to be.
“ The reason why I yelled at my mom so much was because I was jealous of my friends.”
Friend, not friends.
“I wanted to be just like him, but I’m just not good enough. So I took it out on my mom. She's innocent. God, I’m a horrible son.” Word nonsense flew out of October’s mouth like how disgusting smelly goo would ooze out of an imploded sewer. His pitch mattered, so he monitored his voice the whole time, making slight adjustments here and there when needed.
He was jealous of Maxwell and Maxwell hated October for being so boring and plain.
October wasn't plain, he wasn't even boring. He's literally part of the same "popular" kids friend group that Maxwell was in. He’s a singer, he cares for his little sister like his life depends on it and if Maxwell wanted more, he should’ve paid premium for October +.
And Maxwell’s hatred was not because October acted out against him or anything, he just hated him from the start.
"Wow, you wrote this for me. You're really… devoted."
Devoted, it was supposed to seem like a compliment, but from the way Maxwell said it. It seemed like he was weighing the consequences of what would happen if he filed a restraining order against October.
October’s jealousy was also completely detached from Maxwell’s hate, he was jealous of his ex’s wit and intelligence.
"Didn't your dad name you October because his favorite holiday was Halloween?"
"I told you months ago dude, how did you even remember that?"
Maxwell always seemed to know what to say, what to do. Everyone seemed to like him for some reason.
That's the reason he asked him out in the first place, he just thought Maxwell would be such a cool boyfriend and here he was.
In therapy, a liar, and a horrible brother.
"You're the only one I ever told this to, October… Mhm, stay quiet and keep your mouth shut like your life depends on it. Don't betray me."
(They broke up through text, not even an hour later.)
Their hatred of each other developed on its own, cut off from their actions to one another.
However, mother couldn’t accept that.
Couldn’t accept the fact people can just hate you without a justifiable reason to.
Hated the fact that such a thing can happen to her as well.
Couldn’t accept the fact you can’t control somebody’s opinion of you. Especially if the opinion was made without you present.
Just like what was happening right now.
"It's good you understand." Mrs. Anderson said, satisfied with his answer, " Starting today, in order to make up for all the trouble you have caused your mother. You should start listening to her and treat her better.”
Mrs. Anderson’s tone while saying the word “better” was accusatory, pointed and judgmental.
“She’s your mother, not your slave. Your father took your sister with him. And her absence has had a big impact on your family dynamic, you are in this together, not apart. Family, is all that matters." Mrs.Anderson spoke and her words had an air of regal finality to them, like a judge who has finally concluded a case she was assigned.
Incorrect and arrogant.
The therapist slowly preached, handing out instructions like mints at a pizza restaurant.
Useless, artificial and sweet.
As if what they did to each other could ever be undone within a day, as if their relationship could magically become fixed with a single apology from the wrong party.
At least he’ll get to stop wasting time in therapy, he'll be free soon.
“ October, I have to agree with Maxwell here.” His mother said, slowly, cautious–enunciating each syllable with precise clarity. Something she usually doesn't bother with, despite father's complaints about her accent. Mother never enunciates unless it's to reprimand one of her family members: her husband, Reese and October. Her voice sounds deeper, she's trying to sound more authoritative.
She’s trying to overwrite October's opinions with her own using fear.
She wants October to be scared.
I never met Maxwell before, I didn't even know you were gay until Reese told me three days ago.
You haven't even told me the full story yet, but my opinions about what I think happened matters more than the actual truth.
You only told me three sentences, yet I somehow know enough to pass judgment on why you two broke up.
She couldn’t care less about Maxwell, Maxwell just gave her an excuse to tell October about her hatred of him without feeling guilt.
Mother loved October, too bad only she can feel her love and October never will.
“ You are boring, you are mean. Ever since you turned fifteen, you just became this monster of sorts. The sweet October I raised just disappeared and in his place, you appeared. It hurts so much as a mother, to see the sweet boy who loved his sister so much turn into this .” His mother said, tense, she left the car doors locked even though they were already at home.
He can’t get out.
She looked so scared, what was she even scared about?
She was the one locking him in, not the other way around.
It hurts so much as a mother.
Nothing about how much it hurt to hear this, as her son.