I was walking down the steps by the buses exit as the world tipped over, “shit, I’m falling”, is all I could have thought.

 My arms burned as they were scraped against the car parks’ concrete against their will. There was a weird cushiony, lumpy feeling on my back, my backpack? Whatever, it didn’t really matter what it was, what mattered was that i had just fallen and embarrassed myself in front of my entire immediate family and likely more people, god i hated public spaces.

“Idiot,” My sister called from behind me, it was alright for her, she was standing happily in the bus “you should really at least try to make an effort not to embarrass yourself wherever you go, at least no when your in public, I know you love the attention and all, don’t try to deny it, but seriously? Come on, Cassian, try, for once in your life”

There it was again, that word, try, it felt like everyone was always trying to tell me to “try”, “Do they really think i’m not trying?! Seriously?!”, I yelled at myself internally. I felt wet on my face as I snapped back to reality, rain? No, it can’t be, it was meant to be sunny today, but then that means. I moved my aching arm up to my face, brushing my hand across my cheek, I let out a small exclamation of pain, my hands were grazed and I was crying, great, perfect, amazing day, “Fucking idiot” I told myself, in my head of course, I wasn’t going to speak when I was crying in front of people, of course.

“Oh, come on, get up son” My dad said as he walked past me, of course my family were just going to carry on, with or without me.

 It hurt, it really did, my dad hadn’t even glanced at me as he went past, my own damn father, that was just how he thought of me though, wasn’t it? 

The wasted potential son, the eldest boy of the family and yet I couldn’t even fall out of a bus without crying, I hated reading and found doing things by the book boring, I would rather live my life then having a curriculum tell me what I should be interested in, of course my book loving, law up-holding, loved by everyone, father wouldn’t want to look at me, he couldn’t face me or the reality of who I was. If I wasn’t the eldest son it probably would have been better, as he would have already had a few children that could live up to his expectations and I might’ve been left to my own devices just a little bit more. Things wouldn’t change though, no matter how many times I thought about it. Still I found a slight sense of comfort in the fallacy that things might change. Well, whatever, what good was staying on the ground going to do? 

I pushed myself up, wincing slightly from my grazed hands pushing into the concrete. I slowly followed my family, my legs and arms still aching a bit, partly from falling out of a bus, and partly as I sat down most of the time so my legs weren’t used to walking far. I used my sleeve to eliminate any remaining tears from my face, sighing, my dad was probably going to get pissed off if he saw me crying, I flinched at even the thought.

“You could’ve at least waited.” I sighed, almost caught up to them. My dad stopped. “Hmm?”

As I walked past him my dad grabbed my shoulder. “Fuck”, I thought to myself.
“What?”, is what I said out loud, though. He grabbed my collar the minute I turned to him, “You know what. You fucking embarrasment, can you not even get out of a bus without showing your mother and i up now?! Huh?! Every second anyone in this family goes out, our reputation is on the line! Do you not understand that?! Go on then! Are you going to answer me or what?!”, I held back tears as he yelled, did he really hate me that much? Well, at least he looked at me, this was probably one of the longest amount of times we had had close contact, he never really hugged his kids, even when they really needed it. I winced at that thought, it reminded me of my brother. I think my dad realised I wasn’t going to answer as he let go.

“Just try, please”, he said to me, his tone calmer, as he walked away. There it was again, that word, try, god damn it. I sighed, slowly starting to follow my family.