Image: ©Dave Huggard Fragmented life drawings

When she was, alive life was a constant battle to stay in touch with whatever had to be done.

She felt owned by and owing to so many.

There was never any time for herself. She felt obliged to respond to everyone’s needs. She’d given up thinking about her own needs. They were inconsequential, just like she was.

She welcomed death.

It was an escape, and she doubted she would be missed by anyone apart from the inconvenience of them having to get their own coffee and make their own bed.

Death gave her time, and she smiled at the thought that time was now irrelevant. She had occasion to reflect on her fragmented life.

That was a good word she decided, fragmented.

For that’s how it had been. A bit of her for her parents, her siblings demanded of her, later her husband, the low life scumbag he turned out to be, governed her every moment and so she ceased to exist.

Even when by some miracle, she conceived and had children to a man who made it clear he didn’t want children she felt a little bit of her go to each of the two kids who took up so much of her time.

Life was a single mother existence when her husband up and left, said he’d found a better woman, a woman who thought he was someone and loved him unlike her whom he called cold and distant.

When he left, there was a sense of relief, but at the same time, she felt a little piece she called failure, break away, never to be replaced.

Over the years that was how it had been with bits of her breaking away, floating off into a space, she could never reach.

Now she had reflection time, and she used it well. Free of the world of obligation she realised settling over her was a rare calm.

Maybe the fragments she lost while alive could be replaced with fragments worth hanging on to.

Written for: https://sammiscribbles.wordpress.com/2017/10/21/weekend-writing-prompt-25-fragment/