The buzzing started at 2:14 a.m., a harsh, angry sound that dragged me up from deep sleep like hands pulling me out of dark water. I rolled over in my bed, squinting at the red digits on my alarm clock, disoriented and groggy. The phone on my nightstand vibrated again, relentless, the screen lighting up my small bedroom in harsh white flashes.
I reached out with a hand that felt heavy and clumsy, my fingers finally closing around the phone. When I brought it to my face, the brightness made me wince. Mom.
I hadn’t seen that name on my screen in ten years. Below it, in small white letters that seemed to pulse with accusation, was the notification that made my heart drop into my stomach: 35 missed calls. Thirty-five calls in the middle of the night from a woman I’d spent a decade avoiding.
My hands started shaking so badly I nearly dropped the phone. Panic flooded my system, a chemical reaction I recognized from years of therapy—adrenaline, cortisol, the fight-or-flight response triggered by nothing more than a name on a screen. Even after ten years of freedom, ten years of building my own quiet life in this small apartment above a coffee shop in a city hours away from where I grew up, one word could flip me back into being that scared girl standing in my parents’ hallway, waiting for the next demand.
My name is Isabella. I’m thirty-four years old. I live alone in a clean, organized apartment on a tree-lined street where people walk golden retrievers and carry reusable bags from Trader Joe’s.
My walls are painted soft cream. My sheets are crisp white. Everything in my life is orderly, peaceful, quiet.
It took me years to get used to silence that wasn’t filled with tension. I sat up in bed and turned on the lamp, flooding the room with warm yellow light that did nothing to ease the cold spreading through my chest. I wrapped my arms around myself and stared at the phone screen, my mind racing through possibilities.
In a normal family, thirty-five calls at two in the morning means a real emergency—a car crash, a heart attack, someone dying. But I don’t come from a normal family. In my family, “emergency” was often just another manipulation tactic, another way to pull me back into the cycle of giving until there was nothing left.
The phone buzzed again in my hand. I watched it light up, watched my mother’s name appear again, and felt myself transported back to every guiltridden moment of my first twenty-five years. I didn’t answer.
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