Untitled Project #1 Preview

Chapter 1 – Hate Is A Strong Word

Here is my confession.

I have a bone chilling, ominous, cold dread hidden in the pit of my stomach that my mother is going to die.

Not in the literal sense, though her behavior certainly doesn’t rule it out, but in the clichéd, soap opera style of a angst-ridden teen screaming at his parent “YOU’RE DEAD TO ME!” before storming upstairs to take refuge in their safe, ‘lovingly’ provided bedrooms.

You see, when I say “I do love my mother, but as a person I do not like her” it is completely true, this subtle change can be noticed that she is no longer ‘mum’ or ‘mummy’ but the cold and formal mother, which is used to remind me it is her position and purpose to provide love and care for her kids, she has to do it, but she doesn't have to want to do it and by Jove doesn’t she let me know that’s the case. I don’t hate her, and I know she doesn’t hate me, because ‘hate’ is a strong word and should only be used when describing some terrorist or someone that’s just purposefully jumped in a people carrier carrying four of their kids and driven them off a bridge into icy waters below. You need to know someone truly inside and out before you can really hate them though, and as I approach my 18^th birthday I can safely say that I am seeing a lot of things that will, instead of make me hate, will make me just remove her from my life, so she ‘exists’ out of sight, and hopefully out of mind, without the need for me to perform the dreadful, childish act of burning up with hatred continuously.

I don’t know why I’m telling you this, not that I even know who ‘you’ are, for all I know this confessional could be in the hands of a homeless tramp sitting in Central Park in Chelmsford, freezing to death under a blanket of newspapers, despairing at a young housed, fed and pampered boy’s apparent ‘worries’. I think the reason behind me telling, even if it is to no-one in particular… is just for me to unload this, well, what seems like a terribly dark secret.

I’m sure I should have started this with the same old boring introduction about me, where I live and such… but I’ve always seemed to go about doing things differently that the norm, not intentionally, I just don’t shop in Topman and H&M because I don’t want to look like everyone else down the high street.

But I suppose an introduction is needed, before you put this down and leave. My name is Torban (the specific choice of my paternal grandmother, had angered my mother who had wanted me to be called Hugo, but that was relegated to being one of my three middles names – the others being Carlo and Walter, after my grandfather and great-grandfather on my father’s side – mother must have felt left out even then, only one out of five names, surname included, could she call her son her own), I am currently 17, birthday is in the lovely chill of March, far enough away from Christmas to not be associated, but not near enough spring so that everyone doesn’t slip over leaving the house the morning after one of my birthday parties.

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