Danica #1687 in Elysium: Part 5

This is Chapter E and Chapter 5 of my WIP novel. It's 2240 words

Chapter E

Journaling Exercise

          All-Wise reminds us that one completely natural aspect of life is disappointments. Sometimes, things just don't go the way we would prefer. This is obviously something we have to come to grips with so we aren't bitter and resentful as we age.
          Has anything disappointing ever happened to you? Write about it!


          Obviously, the biggest disappointment I've had in my life is the fact that Gavin won't return my feelings back. I think about him all the time; maybe I'm obsessed? I don't know.
          I suppose it's better to avoid dwelling on it and answer with something else. There's the horrible relationship I had with my father, and then my mother-!
          Yes, my mother. I'll focus on her. She's proven time and time again just how disappointing she can be. Her generational group must've been desperate over who had to take on the responsibility of raising me, because I got left in the hands of one of the most unfeeling and unsupportive mothers in Elysium!
          Maybe I'm being too hard on her? I can't even imagine how the responsibility of adulthood is like on a twelve year old since I don't have to raise any children. And the dismay she felt losing her mate, Otto, when she was eighteen must have crushed her will to live because she just stopped trying and became a drunk.
          After my father's death, my mother barely did any "mothering" at all. Even though I was too short to reach many of the things in our pod without a chair, it was up to me to feed, bathe, and dress myself. As for my education, I was already a voracious reader, but now there was no structure so I had to ask All-Wise and my siblings to guide my education.
          As I got older, I started to write more and more. These days, I prefer writing fantasy novels; before, I wrote some contemporary stories about fictional people based off of the ones I know.
          This eventually led to my first novella, Kerry and Fiona, when I was just ten. I was very proud of it and I desperately wanted my mother to read it and give me the praise and support that Gavin and Mary get from their parents for their writing.
          The subject matter was, perhaps, wish fulfillment on my part. In it, a fictional daughter and mother bond over reading and writing after the untimely death of the father. Yeah, I guess you could say it was very on the nose.
          And what did my mother do? She didn't read it! Every opportunity she had to read it she instead squandered on drinking coolers in bed! I pestered her constantly to please read it because I wanted to show her how much I love her.
          I even chose to dedicate the book to her on the acknowledgements page!
          I'm starting to get worked up thinking about this... I'll conclude by saying I love my mother, and I believe I understand and can empathize with her, but I'm still a little bitter...


         

Chapter 5

          "Danica..."
          Danica stirred in bed.
          "Danica..."
          Danica slowly opened her eyes and questioned her current mental and physical state. Despite how absolutely wonderful she felt smoking Lucy's "devil's drug," the withdrawal from it was unpleasant, to say the least. Yes, she had just been sleeping, but she didn't feel well-rested and was fatigued. In fact, All-Wise waking her up was a source of agitation and discomfort.
          "What is it, All-Wise?"
          "I am sorry to awaken you after your long night, but your mother, Diane #1279, has sent yet another message asking about you. I would recommend seeing her today since you have procrastinated doing so for a long time now."
          "Oh, darn," Danica muttered. After hastily getting up out of bed and nearly falling on the floor trying to put on her slippers, she realized she was also hungover from last night.
          Last night? How long was she smoking and drinking with the others?
          "All-Wise, what time is it?"
          "It's eighteen seven."
          "What!?"
          Danica was furious that she had spent so much time in bed. But, wait... Did she really spend that much time in bed after the celebration?
          Danica looked at her laptop and foggy snippets of last night came back to her. She couldn't have, could she?
          "Danica, what about your mother?"
          "Oh, tell her I'll be over in an hour for sure this time."
          "Will do."
          Danica asked All-Wise to put on a symphony and then went through her routine in the restroom. Her stomach was rumbling, so she ate a surprisingly large amount of chowder. She still had some time before she had to see her mother, so she sat at her desk to use her laptop to check the fruits of her labor.
          "Danica?"
          "Yes, All-Wise?"
          "Would you like to do a journaling exercise?"
          "No, not this time."
          "That is fine."
          Danica turned on the laptop and navigated it to her word processor. As she thought, she had done a lot of writing while under the influence last night. In fact, she did far more than she had expected.
          It seemed she had first written a five thousand word rough outline for her potential fourth novel. She stared in disbelief at the title: Daenerys's Adventures in Hell. So it appeared that, despite actually dying, Daenerys was still alive in some capacity to continue going on adventures. It was highly likely Danica would deviate significantly from the outline (which is something that happened during the writing of her first three novels). She then navigated to the beginning of the novel and saw that she had written a prologue recounting the major events of her first three novels, which culminated in Daenerys's untimely death to the Chaos Demon.
          From here, there was the first chapter. She was going to start reading it, but All-Wise interrupted her.
          "Danica, it is time to see your mother."
          "Oh, ok, I'll go right now," Danica said as she powered off the laptop. She really wanted to read that first chapter; not getting to do so was frustrating, and when she realized she was about to go see her mother of all people, she groaned.


          "Well, well, well, you FINALLY came to see me..." Danica's mother, Diane, said with thinly veiled disappointment after a quick hug for a greeting.
          "I'm sorry, Mother, I've just been busy..."
          "Busy doing what, exactly? You have no children."
          "I know, and I'm sorry. Please don't take it personally."
          Diane sighed and said, "Nevermind, you're here now, so let's be pleasant."
          Diane, most likely due to daily drinking, had aged horribly for a thirty-one-year-old woman. Much of the skin on her face sagged with wrinkles. She had allowed her flowing brown hair to come down to nearly her waist. The only saving grace of her appearance, her slender body, was very commonly the norm for the people of Elysium, anyway.
          Danica looked around her mother's pod to see that there was a surprisingly large amount of empty cooler bottles that had been left strewn around on the floor. As for whether or not her mother was drunk right now...?
          I guess some things never change...
          Diane asked, "Do you want to sit on the bed or at the table?"
          "I guess the table."
          The two walked over towards the table and Diane asked, "Do you want a cooler? I was going to have one."
          Danica sighed. She said, "Not right now. I actually drank a lot yesterday."
          Diane grabbed one cooler from the refrigerator, twisted the plastic cap off, drank some, and then sat down close to Danica. "Doing what?" she asked.
          "Well..." Danica thought carefully if she should say what had transpired between her and her uncle, Roland. Realizing that Diane was indeed her mother (someone who should be supportive), she felt she should confide in her on the harrowing experience.
          "'Well' what?" Diane said impatiently.
          Danica sighed (again) and said, "It's just that yesterday afternoon, Uncle Roland scathingly criticized my abilities as a writer. I was so distressed that I got drunk and then hastily killed off my self-insert protagonist. Then I published the novel in that state."
          "What? Your uncle doesn't like your writing?"
          "No, he admitted he hates it."
          Diane seemed to not care. After a pause, she said, "Well, I'm sorry I can't help you with that stuff. Neither I nor your father were very artistic."
          "Even still, you have to be doing something with your time besides drinking coolers. You could at least read the things I write."
          "Oh, here we go again..." Diane said in a dismissive tone of voice.
          Danica got angrier from that comment than she normally would have. Her fists clenched and she wished she could be assertive enough to tell her mother off. Could this uncharacteristic amount of frustration be due to her withdrawal? In either case, she tried to look past it.
          "Never mind. You said yourself just now that we should be pleasant."
          "Well, ok... So I guess that's what you've been doing with your time? Just writing? What ever happened between you and your brother, Gavin? Did he ever have a change of heart?"
          Danica sighed yet again and said, "Actually, Gavin found someone else."
          "From the Social Pod?"
          Danica nodded.
          "That must sting you to be treated so horribly. Have you two ever...?"
          Danica shook her head. "No, I'm still a virgin."
          Diane drank more of her cooler and said, "Danica, don't you think you've put in enough effort on him? It's been seven years; I doubt he's going to ever mate with you."
          "Then what do you propose? Going to the Social Pod?"
          "Well, if you wanted to find someone to love you, you kinda have no choice in the matter."
          Danica, in her increasingly irritable state, wanted to criticize her mother for not being a source of love for her growing up. However, she held her tongue and chose to stay pleasant.
          "I don't understand," Danica asked, "why didn't you take your own advice after my father's death?"
          Diane looked taken aback and said, "Your father's death was hard on me. I didn't want to try again when I doubted the men in the Social Pod were that desirable."
          At this, Danica glared at her mother and asked, "If you believe that, then why did you just recommend I go do that very same thing?"
          "We're different people with different priorities in life, Dani. You're still young and beautiful enough to find a man: an undesirable man, but a man none the less."
          "'Priorities?' And please tell me what your priorities were after my father's death?" Danica spat out.
          Diane didn't appreciate this comment because she said, "I did my best and All-Wise and your other family members picked up my slack."
          "Your slack was ALL of your parental responsibilities."
          Diane shook her head and said, "Well, once you hopefully learn how hard it is to raise a child, you'll see that I did my best."
          There was an awkward pause that Diane used to drink more from her cooler. Danica broke it by asking, "Do you socialize with anyone? Your brothers and sisters or...?"
          "I still talk to them daily, yes; though it's sometimes hard for me since I have to see them having good relationships with their children and grandchildren. I envy them for it, honestly."
          Hearing her mother say that peeved Danica further. Why was it that her mother thought Danica was the one with the problem when her terrible parenting was the problem? Danica was about to get up so she could leave, but she didn't want to end this conversation on bad terms. She thought carefully and asked, "So, in the entire time since my father's death, have you ever once gone to the Social Pod?"
          "No, never. Why do you ask?"
          "The woman Gavin met there, Lucy, looked like she could possibly be your age. From what I could infer, she had never paired up when she first became an adult."
          "Are you wondering if I've met her? Or are you asking if your father had?"
          "I was just curious."
          "Curiosity killed the cat, Dani."
          At that, Danica got up from her seat.
          "Anyway, it seems we don't even have much to talk about, so I'll leave you for now. I promise to try harder at maintaining our relationship."
          "Yes, please."
          The two hugged each other and Danica went back to her pod. On the way, she questioned why she hadn't been far more confrontational with her mother. Her mother was a drunken slob and her number one priority after Otto's death was to drink instead of raising her only daughter. Danica believed a normal person (someone with a backbone) would not have been as patient with her mother. She assumed she'd once again probably procrastinate seeing her mother for a very long time.