Gemotions

The house seemed to shrink around him, the air growing heavy with the weight of the past. He stood in the storage room, before the boxes of his school work, feeling the tightness in his chest. His mother had kept everything, a testament to her love or her control, he couldn’t say.

He started with the earliest things, the crayon drawings, the construction paper projects. He saw his younger self, eager to please, and knew, with a certainty that settled in his bones, that it wouldn’t matter what he did. It would never be enough. He picked up one of his art projects and threw it against the wall. He kept throwing.