When I think back to my childhood, I can only remember a few specific moments.

There were happy, sad, and moments where I had so much pent-up anger that I don't know how, at that moment, I didn't scream until I was speechless. Or moments where I couldn't feel anything at all.

Those specific moments are the only ones I remember—the only ones that, good or bad, I decided to keep and do everything necessary not to lose them.

Because, regardless of the feeling, they are the few I have of my mother before she was locked up in the damn psychiatric hospital. Before, the life I thought I would have with her, changed.

Before, my father decided to take her away from me without letting me say goodbye, without giving me a warning. Without anything.

But my father was always a man of few words. With a handshake or a small, proud smile, he managed to make me the happiest child. Because I knew well that those small gestures meant everything to him.

I grew up knowing well how to read his gestures, how to understand what he meant, fighting with all my might to get one of those rare moments.

My mother's love filled what little my father showed of his. It filled it and still overflowed.

So when I came home that day, excited to tell my mother about my day and listen to hers all afternoon, I saw that her room was empty. It was as if the room, the house, ran out of light.

But it wasn't my father's few words of explanation or the long drive to the hospital that unsettled me, it was how my mother's room looked.

Completely trashed, disheveled and dark.

And, as my father tried to explain my mother's illness to me, I just tried with all my might to remember when the last time I went into her room was.

I get angry at myself for not remembering.

How could I not remember my mother's room if we spent the whole day together?

The answer made me angry at myself.

Because I had never gone in. Because my mother always made sure to go where I was, she never let me go after her.

Because my mother knew about her illness, and with all her light, she left in the shadows a part of her that she desperately tried to hide from me.

A psychologist's explanation only succeeded in making me search inside my memory, inside everything my mother showed and everything she hid.

Because it was not possible, it was not possible for her to hide so much. But she did, and I learned to live with her illness, with her remoteness and with the lack of her light.

As a child, I didn't fully understand what was happening to her, but as long as she was there for me, I was there for her. And perhaps, having only my father and his few words, I decided that the doctors would take care of her, that my father would take care of her, that everyone would take care of her, but that, when I grew up, I would be the one to do it.

I would take her out of that hospital, hire the nurses she loved the most, and we would leave. Together.

The papers were ready, the nurses were hired, and the damn house was bought.

But my mother's sad eyes wouldn't leave, they never left, not until a smile appeared on her face and stayed on it long after her body stopped moving.

I play with the necklace around my neck, watching the rain fall behind my father's empty desk.

My legs move restlessly, the sound of my heart in my ears makes me more nervous than I'd like to admit.

My eyes drift to the folder in my hands, my body tensing as I remember what's inside.

I rise from my chair as I hear the door open. I watch as my father enters the office, not at all surprised to see me, not after the scene I made for his secretary to call him immediately.

I see my father's graying hair, and my throat closes. His tired features and his tired, slow body walks toward me, placing one of his hands on my arm.

My anger falters a little as I receive a small, sideways smile.

My father turns the desk around, sitting back in his chair, motioning for me to take a seat.

His calmness tells me that he knows what I'm doing here, what I have in my hands. It is his calmness that gives me the strength to sigh and face him.

"You're going to marry her." I look at him, not hiding my annoyance, not wanting to show him more than that.

My father looks at me silently, clasps his hands together on the desk, and looks at the folder, trying to decipher what the news is that I read among all the news forums that dropped the engagement bombshell just this morning.

"How...?" my voice trails off, as his eyes collide with mine.

There is guilt in them, there is sadness and a bit of annoyance.

"My mother..."

"I will always love your mother, Ian." My throat closes once again.

I try, with all my might, not to close my eyes before his voice. I was unable to shake the habit of feeling happy to hear him.

But I don't stop, not even though his clear annoyance in his eyes is annoyance to himself.

"Then why?" My voice is raspy, when my father drops into the back of his chair and opens his mouth, I hold my breath.

"Isabeth was by my side in my most difficult moments."

"She was by your side in your most vulnerable moments, strategically." I say, unable to hide the venom in my words, as I remember my mother's sister, who at no time cared for her until she was buried and my father was single.

I settle back in my seat as I feel my father's warning look. His eyes look tired, and I wonder when the last time he slept well was.

But I close my mouth, unable to let him know my concern for him, not at this moment when all I can think about is my mother.

"I loved your mother very much," he continues, dropping his eyes to the framed picture in front of him. A picture that always sat on his desk, where a picture of me and my mother rests. "There isn't a day that goes by that I don't wonder if I could have done more for her."

I fight back tears as I feel his helplessness, helplessness similar to my own.

"When she died, I thought..." my father's eyes return to mine, I breathe as I see so much sadness in them. "I thought I didn't deserve anything more from this world. But when Isabeth came, I fought so hard for it not to be her. I really fought hard not to be her, of all people in the world. But you see, son, that love works in a way beyond our understanding."

"Do you love her?" I ask, with the feeling of wanting to vomit growing in my body, with anger enough to make my body tremble.

"Not the same way I loved your mother, but yes." The sincerity in his eyes makes my shoulders drop, my body stop moving. "I love her son."

Ian's Outfit