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You’re a little weird, and you’ve always known that.
You’ve always felt it. It doesn’t go away, it never does.
But your mom makes it different. You don’t feel like you’re not weird, like it’s taken away, but instead like that’s normal. Like it’s okay and you don’t have to think about it, because she’s really weird too, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.
You’ve gotten older and yet you still live at home. She’s never cared. You think it’s because you both need each other still, but that’s never seemed sad to you. Just the way the world works. Sometimes you wake up in your own room, which you’ve been sleeping in more as of the last year. Sometimes you wake up in her bed clinging onto her like velcro, which you think you always will.
Sometimes you still get nightmares. Not a lot, not anymore, but you don’t think they’ll ever fully go away, even if they’ve lessened.
Over pancakes, warm sunshine out the window hitting both of your faces, syrup making a mess on the table, your pet sea bunny Lemon eating out of her bowl, the radio on the counter nearby playing music you don’t really care for, she asks if you remember the one you had last night.
You tilt your head, confused, and say you don’t remember it.
She smiles, relieved, brushing gray tentacles out of her face, and admits sometimes she catches them in the middle of the night and soothes them away while you’re still sleeping.
The confession makes you giggle for some reason. You hug her tightly, and help her put the dishes away. That night you dream of your mom, a net in her hands jumping up and catching all the bad memories, like they’re dragon flies in a summer’s forest. You watch her smooth your bangs out of your eyes on your forehead before she releases them, and you both stand there leaning into each other as they flutter into the sky.
You wake up. Lemon’s breathing heavy at your feet. It’s still early enough that you should be asleep. You feel fine, your chest light in a good way this time. You crawl out of bed and make your way down the hall to her room despite this.
-
Maybe it’s not that weird that you still live at home.
You have two really weird partners. One likes plants, has a splotchy scar over her eye, and will sit for hours strumming on her guitar. Not even a song, or a tune, just plucking the notes and adjusting the sound until it’s a beat of its own.
The other likes stars, and baking until there’s nothing left in the pantry and no bad thoughts left to distract from. Her long red tentacles have shifted to a purple as of this year and you enjoy the style change, almost as much as you love laying in her bed next to her and counting the glow in the dark stars on her ceiling till you’re both sleepy. Your mom bought you a pack when you told her about them.
They both live at home now.
Ashley moved back in recently. After Alterna she told you about how tired she was until she was sobbing into your shoulder, and you held her so close because you know the feeling. She misses her brother, she misses her dad, she misses her pet axolotl, and she misses her mom. She asked you for advice, and you promised her nowhere was too far as long as she was happy. And it’s true. The train rides to Inkopolis Plaza feel like nothing when she’s beaming being back there. Her parents know she’s an agent now, but you don’t doubt that she’ll follow your footsteps sooner than later and change that eventually.
Lucky changed but never left. You remember being sad at peeling away the stars off her ceiling to pack up, but she promised you that when they moved into the new house you could help her put them all back up. Pearl and Marina had a pretty big place built, it felt like they practically just moved the mansion. Her room was a new shape, but you both worked together and made it feel like the exact same place. The last thing you did was put the stars back up, and Lucky paused you when there were a couple handfuls left, and showed you how to make them into both of your star signs. She seems happier in Splatsville, with her moms and her sibling Smollusk, than she ever did in Inkopolis. You’re glad.
It’s funny, you all had plans together. You three were gonna rent an apartment and give tearful goodbyes to the family. It’s what you were supposed to do at this age. You’re glad you aren’t the only one who didn’t need it though.
You’re a little biased, but you can’t imagine leaving Inkopolis Square.
Your stuffed jellyfish tucked under one arm, your mom’s hand in the other, you enjoy every moment walking down the shopping centers. The lively music playing at every turn, the pigeons you both stop to feed, the glow on her face you know you're matching. It’s been so long now that it feels natural, but sometimes you still can’t help but smile a little extra when you think about how different she’s been since she went from singing and announcing to just teaching science at the highschool a block over.
In the center of it all you’re both sitting on a bench, pausing your shopping spree to rest. Your mom’s got a snack she bought and she’s taking a moment to munch while you lean against her. She introduced you to the people watching game, something she picked up from when her and your aunt were stuck behind a glass window all day waving to fans. A clearly struggling dad walks by dragging a crying younger blob of a squid, who is carrying a pair of plastic devil horns, and you both get too invested in a story about a father dealing with a body snatching demon who can’t handle the stresses of now being a toddler.
You’re happy for your partners, where they’re living really seems like places more suited for you. Something like the countryside where things are a bit more relaxed and quiet, but despite the city’s hustle and bustle, it’s your home.
-
You HAVE been to the countryside though.
It’s where your mom and your aunt grew up. Your mom has taken you out there a couple times to see it all and see your grandparents.
The first time there had been weird. your grandparents didn’t really get why your mom had adopted so young, and you both had very shabby unbelievable explanations as a workaround for talking about the Splatoon. Getting to know them was hard. Your grandma was intimidating and your grandpa was as shy as you were.
Three visits later and you all are a lot more comfortable sitting around their fireplace and eating stew, while your mom groans at a story your grandma tells about her childhood. She was a sensitive kid. You don’t like the wording but it reminds you of yourself, and you smile in her direction, even if she doesn’t see it.
That night, when it’s late and your grandparents are asleep, you and her sit on the porch. It’s so weird. At home, if you sit on the steps of the apartment complex you both still live in, you see tall buildings, neon lights and signs, you hear faint music still playing, cars driving by, and everything feels alive.
Here, you see the neighboring houses and the paths leading up to them (your Aunt’s parent’s house isn’t that far away. You miss when she was living with you both still), more buildings further off in the distance making up the town your mom and her cousin grew up running through, and a lot of grass. The field in front of you both is like a sea, and occasionally a firefly pokes its way through the waves, going back to the sky.
They aren’t stars, but your mom always wishes on them anyways. You do the same, both your eyes closed tightly in decision of your wish.
You never know what to wish for anymore, so you just continue to wish that this never ends. Do wishes run out? Hell if you know. You aren’t taking chances.
When you’ve yawned too many times, your mom picks you up (she’s strong. You know you’re heavy. She insists she doesn’t care.) and whisks you away to be tucked in with the plushies you’d packed.
-
It’s weird that it’s just the two of you now.
Your aunt moved out a few years ago to live with her partner. It took you both a very long time to get used to it. Sometimes it still aches, sometimes you go into her room, untouched incase she ever wants it back, sit on her bed, and wish she was still always one yell across the hall away.
Your mom took it harder than you.
She’s weird. The way you’re weird. If she’s away from her family too long she gets sad and scared.
It’s been that way since she met you. Since you saved Callie. You don’t know if she was ever this way before you met her. Neither her nor your aunt ever told you, and you don’t know if it’s rude to ask.
At first she’d visit her a lot, and you’d go too because you don’t like being away from her the same way she doesn’t like being away from your aunt. Constant visits turned to constant calls, and inevitably that slowed down too.
Sometimes you go into your aunt's room and find your mom’s already on the bed, wiping her eyes and sniffling.
You hug her the way she hugs you.
You’re both weird. She’s one call away. She’s one drive away. If you texted her and said that your mom is crying again, she’d be over faster than you could tell her that you are too.
You don’t know why you sit there and cry instead. But a few hours later when you’re both in the living room, your mom watching her favorite show, Lemon next to her, while you color on the table, you feel a bit better, even if you’ll forget it later.
-
You’re weird.
Weirder than your mom.
In the sense that you don’t know when you’re going to grow up.
You thought you were grown up before you left. When you still lived by sandy beaches and didn’t live in a home yet. When yelling was the norm and bruises were a part of your skin and you didn’t feel real. You could use the oven. You could patch yourself up. You learned not to whine or cry in front of them. You were grown up.
But now you’re weird, and you stopped growing up since you came here. Since you found home.
Some days you don’t think about it. It’s fine. You’ll continue to color, and sleep with stuffies that you carry around, and hold her hand in public, and watch your cartoons, and play with toys, the way you always have.
Some days you think about it.
Some days you feel left behind. Some days you stop pretending you don’t know inkfish your age aren’t supposed to do this anymore. Are supposed to leave home. Act different. Think different. Be different.
Some days you just stay in your bed and wait till the bad feelings leave. Or you shrivel up like a raisin and die. Or both.
Some days your mom’s as weird as you.
And she makes brownies with you and flicks the batter onto your face, and then eats the leftover batter off the spoons and bowls with you, and you both have it in the back of your mind that salmonella is a very real thing but you don’t particularly care.
Sometimes she draws with you. When you first met her, her drawings were. Well. They weren’t good, to put it nicely. Since she quit her old job though they’ve gotten better. She puts the sun in the corner of the paper though, and when you tell her that’s not where it goes she flicks your forehead and tells you it can go wherever she wants, and wherever you want.
Sometimes she does silly voices with your stuffed animals, and you laugh and yell at her that they don’t sound like that. And she keeps asking you about what they DO sound like so many times that you have to give in and give them your own voice. She talks to them like they’re real. They’re not. You know that. But they feel real to you, especially your jellyfish Mr. Wiggles. She doesn’t talk to them like they’re babies though, or aren’t real, she talks to them like you do. Like they’re real to her too.
Sometimes when you won’t get out of bed no matter what she says, she brings you cut up fruit and sits with you. She runs her hand through your tentacles and talks about doing things at your own pace. How she’s in no rush to act any age yet. How it doesn’t mean she loves you any less.
Sometimes you cry into her arms and tell her you’re scared. You’re weird.
She holds you everytime and says she’s weird too.
-
You’re weird.
So’s your mom.
She holds you tight whenever you need it, and tells you that you can let go and come back whenever you need.
You hold her just as tightly. You’re learning to let go a bit more, but you know you’ll never stop coming back. You think maybe she’s doing the same.
You’re both so weird.
That’s okay right now.