The bag of leftovers

Growing up, I had a mother who made me feel like I was never good enough, and a father who wished I never existed.
So from an early age, I would fantasize about leaving home, getting a job, and getting my own apartment – where I could no longer be unwanted.

But that never happened. Instead, I moved into a shared house over 100 miles away from the city I grew up in. Away from everything and everyone I ever knew. Because I had no other choice.

I was in survival mode the entire time I was living in the shared house with strangers. It wasn’t safe. But there was no other option. My parents would never want me back in their home.

At times, though, I would go back to visit my home city – back to the familiarity. But I didn’t have a place to stay. So I would turn to relatives for a stop-by day visit, secretly hoping they’d want to help me out.

On this occasion, I stopped by my Uncle’s; he said that I could say with them. Before he could finish the sentence, my aunt jumped in. “Oh no, no,” she said, her eyes darted towards me. “You don’t want to stay at our house. You have your own place, your own belongings…” Her words tumbled over each other as she hurried to explain why staying with them wouldn’t make sense, filling every silence before I had the chance to speak.

My body sank and shoulders dropped.

“Yeah, you’re right, I don’t have my stuff” I weakly agreed.

I felt like I was dirt she wanted to wipe off the bottom of her shoe; she wanted to wipe it away so quickly that nobody would have noticed I was there in the first place. Discarded immediately into the bin to be never thought of again.

“I should get going” I said as I carried my heavy body towards the front door.

She suddenly sprang to her feet. “Oh, you must take some food!”

Before I could answer, she was already in the kitchen. The clatter of pot lids echoed through the house. Leftovers were scraped into container after container, each lid snapped shut almost as quickly as it had been filled.

She walked me to my car with the carrier bag full of the leftovers. She opened the passenger door, leaning through the passenger footwell to tuck the bag carefully, ensuring it couldn’t be tipped over. Her shoulders dropped. “There,” she sighed with relief. This was the first time I had seen her look this relaxed all afternoon.

I drove off. Onto the 2-hour journey, more than 100 miles away from everything and everyone I ever knew. Every so often the plastic bag would slide a little, so I’d reach out across with my hand to steady it.

My eyes was fixed on to it for a few seconds, before looking back at the road with blurred eyes, sinking into my my seat and with tears running down my face.

A bag of leftovers, that was all I was taking back with me.