Her words were like slaps in the face, each one designed to destroy what little self-esteem I had left. And the worst part was, she was right about something. I didn’t have much family. My sister had died five years ago, my parents decades ago. My few friends were scattered, each with her own life, her own problems.
«I’d rather be alone and at peace than accompanied and miserable,» I replied, and I was surprised by my own bravery.
«Oh, how dramatic. Nobody’s making you miserable, Josephine. We’re giving you a roof over your head, food, company. But, of course, nothing is ever enough for you,» Grace said sarcastically.
«You don’t give me anything. I pay with my pension, with my work in this house, with my dignity,» I said, raising my voice for the first time.
«Your pension doesn’t even cover half of what you cost us here. And washing a few dishes and sweeping a little isn’t work. Anyone can do that!» Grace shouted, completely losing her composure.
«Then anyone can do it. Hire someone. I’m leaving,» I said, and walked towards my room.
«You’re not going anywhere, Mom. Stop being ridiculous!» Edward yelled after me.
I locked myself in my room and heard the two of them continue arguing outside, Grace blaming Edward for being weak with me, Edward trying to calm her down, both of them talking about me as if I were a problem to be solved and not a person.
I sat on my bed for hours, listening as the house gradually returned to its usual silence. Grace had locked herself in her room, slamming the door. Edward tried knocking on my door two more times, but I didn’t answer. I had nothing more to say to him at that moment.
When night fell and the house was completely silent, I took out my old phone and dialed the only number I knew would comfort me. Linda, my lifelong friend. The only person who truly knew me.
«Josephine? What happened? It’s almost 10 o’clock at night,» Linda answered with a worried voice, and then I broke down.
I told her everything: from the conversation I overheard in the morning to the fight with Grace, from the $82,000 they tried to spend to the hurtful words about my age and my loneliness. Linda listened without interrupting, letting me cry and vent like I hadn’t in years.
«Josephine, listen to me carefully,» Linda said when I finally ran out of words. «Tomorrow morning you’re coming to my house. You can stay with me as long as you need while you look for your apartment. You can’t stay there anymore. That house is killing your soul.»
«Linda, I can’t impose on you like that. You live in a small apartment. There’s no space,» I said between sobs.
«I have a sofa bed in the living room that’s more comfortable than being in that house where they don’t value you. Tomorrow, Josephine. Tomorrow you pack what you need and you come here. It’s not a suggestion, it’s an order,» Linda said with that firmness she always had when she knew I needed a push.
I barely slept that night. I stared at the ceiling of my small room, remembering how I had ended up in that place 20 years ago. Edward had just married Grace and told me they wanted to buy a bigger house, but they couldn’t afford the down payment.
I had sold my small apartment, that two-bedroom apartment I had bought with so much effort, and I gave the money to Edward: $50,000 that represented my entire life’s work up to that point.
«It’s a loan, Mom. I’ll pay you back in two years when I get a raise,» Edward had promised me, his eyes shining with excitement. But two years passed, then five, then ten, and the loan was never mentioned again. When I brought it up, Edward would get annoyed, saying he gave me a roof and food, that it was worth more than the $50,000.
Now I understood that I had been a fool. I had trusted my son blindly, and he had abused that trust. Worse, I had allowed it for two decades because I was afraid of being alone, afraid that Edward would reject me, afraid of losing the only direct family I had left.
But the fear of loneliness couldn’t be stronger than my dignity. I couldn’t keep living like this.
When Friday morning came, I got up earlier than usual. I prepared breakfast, as always, left everything ready on the table, but this time I didn’t stay to serve them. I showered, got dressed in my best clothes, and started packing my things into the two old suitcases I had stored at the back of the closet.
I didn’t have much. Modest clothes, a few shoes, photographs, important documents, and the small wooden box where I kept the few pieces of jewelry I owned: my mother’s wedding ring, a pair of silver earrings my sister gave me, a thin chain I bought with my first paycheck. Everything fit into two suitcases.
I heard when Edward and Grace got up. I heard their voices in the dining room, eating the breakfast I had prepared. Neither of them knocked on my door to see how I was. Neither asked if I had slept well. It was as if I didn’t exist unless they needed something.
I waited for them both to leave for work. Edward left first at 8:30, as always. Grace left at 9:00.
When I heard her car’s engine fade away, I took my suitcases out of the room. I walked through the house one last time, looking at every corner I had cleaned thousands of times. The kitchen where I spent countless hours cooking for a family that barely said «thank you.» The living room where I could never sit comfortably because that was Grace’s space. The dining room where I always sat in the corner, in the least comfortable chair.
I left the house keys on the dining room table. Next to them, I left a note I had written during the night.
«Edward, I’m leaving. I can’t keep living in a house where my only value is my money. Thank you for these 20 years, but I need to get my dignity back. Don’t look for me. When I have my new apartment, I’ll send you the address. I love you, but I love myself more. Mom.»
I called a cab and waited outside with my two suitcases. The next-door neighbor, Mr. Earnest, was watering his garden and looked at me curiously.
«Good morning, Josephine. Going on a trip?» he asked kindly.
«Something like that, Mr. Earnest. Something like that,» I replied with a smile that didn’t reach my eyes.
The cab arrived in ten minutes. The driver, a young man in his thirties, helped me with the suitcases. «Where to, ma’am?» he asked.
I gave him Linda’s address and looked out the window the whole way, watching the streets of the city where I had lived my entire life go by. Every block took me further away from Edward and Grace, and strangely, instead of sadness, I felt something like relief.
Linda was waiting for me at the door of her building when I arrived. She hugged me so tight I could barely breathe, and that hug made me cry again, but this time they weren’t tears of pain but of gratitude.
«You’re here. You’re safe now,» Linda whispered as she stroked my hair as if I were a child.
Her apartment was small, as she had said: a living-dining room, one bedroom, a kitchen, and a bathroom. But it was clean, tidy, and above all, it was filled with peace. There was no tension in the air, no looks of contempt, no hurtful words waiting to attack.
«The sofa bed is all yours. It’s not much, but it’s comfortable, and this house is your house as long as you need to stay,» Linda said, showing me where I could put my things.
«Linda, I don’t know how to thank you for this,» I said with a broken voice.
«You don’t have to thank me for anything; that’s what friends are for. Besides, you’ll keep me company. Ever since I became a widow three years ago, this house has been too quiet,» Linda said with a warm smile.
We spent the rest of the morning organizing my things. Linda gave me space in her closet, showed me where everything was in the kitchen, made me feel welcome in a thousand small ways.
At one in the afternoon, my phone started ringing. It was Edward. I didn’t answer. He called again, and again, and again. Finally, he left a voicemail.
«Mom, where are you? I came home for lunch and you’re not here. I saw your note. Please call me. I’m worried.»
Worried? How interesting that he was worried now. He wasn’t worried yesterday when he yelled at me. He wasn’t worried when his wife tried to steal $82,000 from me. He wasn’t worried for 20 years while I withered away in that house.
Linda looked at me with questioning eyes. «Are you going to answer him?» she asked.
«Not yet. I need to think clearly first. I need to decide what I’m going to do with my life before I talk to him,» I replied, turning off the phone.
That afternoon, Linda and I sat on her small balcony with a cup of coffee. From there, you could see the city, the buildings, life moving on the streets below.
«You know what hurts the most, Linda?» I said, after a long silence. «It’s not the money they tried to spend. It’s not even that they disrespected me. What hurts the most is that I lost 20 years of my life trying to earn my son’s love, and now I realize that love was always conditional on what I could give him.»
Linda took my hand in hers. Those hands also wrinkled by the years, but strong and warm. «Josephine, listen to me. You didn’t lose 20 years trying to earn his love. You gave 20 years of unconditional love, which is very different. You’re not the problem. The problem is that Edward and that woman didn’t know how to value what they had,» Linda said wisely.
«But I’m his mother. Mothers are supposed to sacrifice for their children,» I said, still feeling that guilt that had been instilled in me my whole life.
«Mothers should love their children, yes, but children should also love their mothers. Love isn’t a one-way street, Josephine, and sacrifice has a limit. When the sacrifice is killing your soul, it’s not love anymore. It’s self-destruction,» Linda replied firmly.
She was right. She always was. Linda had been my friend since we both worked in the same textile factory 40 years ago. She knew me better than anyone, had seen my marriage fail, had seen how I raised Edward alone, had seen how I slowly faded away in that house.
«Now you need to think about yourself, about what you want, about what Josephine needs to be happy,» Linda continued.
«I want my apartment. I want my own place where no one can make me feel like I’m in the way, where I can have coffee in the morning without feeling like I’m using someone else’s electricity, where I can watch TV without being told I’m taking up the couch,» I said. And as I spoke, I felt something inside me grow stronger.
«Then that’s what we’re going to get. Tomorrow morning we start looking for apartments,» Linda said with determination.
That night I slept on Linda’s sofa bed, and it was the best night’s sleep I’d had in years. There was no tension, no fear of hearing footsteps outside my door, no anxiety, wondering what new form of humiliation awaited me the next day.
On Saturday morning, my phone was still off, but I could imagine the number of missed calls I had. I didn’t care. For the first time in two decades, I was my priority.
Linda and I had a quiet breakfast, talking about everything and nothing, laughing about old memories, making plans. Afterwards, we got dressed and went out. We had marked five apartments to see that day, all within my budget.
The first was too dark, with small windows that barely let in any light. The second was in a run-down building that smelled of damp. The third was perfect, but it was on the fourth floor without an elevator, and my knees weren’t what they used to be. The fourth had plumbing issues the owner didn’t want to fix.
But the fifth, the fifth stole my heart the moment I walked in. It was a second-floor apartment in a well-maintained and secure building of only six floors. It had a living room with a large picture window overlooking a small park, a perfectly equipped open-plan kitchen, a spacious bedroom with a closet, and a clean, functional bathroom.
It wasn’t big, about 650 square feet, but it was cozy, bright, and had a peaceful energy.
«How much are you asking for it?» I asked the man showing it to us.
«Fifty-five thousand dollars. It includes a parking space downstairs and a small storage unit in the basement. The HOA fees are $100 a month,» explained Mr. Benjamin, the owner.
Fifty-five thousand dollars. I could pay for it in cash and still have $75,000 left to live comfortably, for emergencies, for my final years.
«Can I see it again?» I asked, and Mr. Benjamin nodded kindly.
I walked through each space, imagining my life there. My bed in the bedroom, my clothes in the closet, my few photographs on the walls. I imagined making coffee in that kitchen, sitting by that window to read, sleeping without being startled awake. I saw my future in those empty walls, and that future was bright.
«I’ll take it. I want to buy it,» I said in a firm voice.
Mr. Benjamin smiled broadly. «Excellent decision, ma’am. It’s an apartment with very good energy. The previous owner lived here for 20 years. She only moved because she went to live with her daughter abroad. It’s well cared for and never had any problems,» he explained as he took some papers out of his briefcase.
«We need to do the legal paperwork. Do you have a trusted lawyer, or would you prefer I recommend one?» Mr. Benjamin asked.
«I know a good one,» Linda intervened. «My cousin’s son is a lawyer. He’s honest and charges a fair price.»
«Perfect. Then we can meet on Monday to start the paperwork. It usually takes a week to complete the whole legal process,» Mr. Benjamin said.
One week. In one week, that apartment would be mine. My name would be on the deed. I would be a homeowner, not a burden living for free in someone else’s house.
We left the apartment with a signed agreement and a $5,000 down payment that I paid by check. Linda and I hugged on the street like two excited little girls.
«You did it, Josephine! You’re going to have your own place!» Linda shouted, not caring who heard us.
«I did it!» I repeated, feeling a huge smile spread across my face. «I really did it.»
We returned to Linda’s apartment, euphoric, making decorating plans, talking about what furniture I would need to buy, what things I could get second-hand to save money. It was then, in the midst of that happiness, that I decided to turn on my phone.
I had 32 missed calls from Edward, 17 from Grace, and over 40 text messages. The messages started out worried: «Mom, where are you? Please answer. We’re frantic.» But then the tone changed: «Mom, this is ridiculous. Stop the drama. We need to talk about important things.»
And the last ones were outright threatening: «If you don’t answer, I’m going to the police. This is abuse towards us. You’re going to have to come back. You have nowhere to go.»
Linda read the messages over my shoulder and snorted with indignation. «That boy has lost his mind. ‘Abuse towards them,’ he says, as if they haven’t been abusing you for years,» Linda said, shaking her head.
«I have to talk to him, but by text. I don’t want to hear his voice yet,» I said, taking a deep breath.
I sat on the sofa and wrote a long message, choosing each word carefully.
«Edward, I’m fine. I’m in a safe place with a friend. I needed to get out of that house to recover my mental health. For 20 years, I lived feeling like a burden, and yesterday’s incident was the last straw. I bought my own apartment. I’m moving in a week. This isn’t a punishment for you. It’s a decision of self-love for me. When I’m settled, I’ll give you my address and we can talk calmly. I love you, but I have to do this. Mom.»
I pressed send before I could change my mind. I saw the two checkmarks indicating the message was delivered. Then I saw them turn blue, indicating he had read it. The three dots appeared, indicating Edward was typing. They disappeared. They appeared again. Disappeared again.
Finally, his reply came. «Mom, this is crazy. You can’t just buy an apartment like that. Who’s going to take care of you? Who’s going to help you if you get sick? Have you thought about that? Besides, Grace is very upset. She says you owe her an apology for the embarrassment at the mall. We need you to come home and talk about this like adults.»
I read the message three times. No apology from him, no acknowledgement of what they had done, just more manipulation, more attempts to make me feel guilty, more fake concern disguised as love.
«Are you going to answer?» Linda asked.
«Yes,» I said, and wrote a short but clear reply. «Edward, I’m 68 years old, not 98. I can take perfectly good care of myself, and I don’t owe Grace any apology. She tried to spend $82,000 of my money without my permission. If anyone should apologize, it’s you two. We’ll talk when I’m ready. Mom.»
After sending that message, I turned the phone off again. I didn’t want to keep reading his attempts at manipulation. Linda was right when she said I needed space to think clearly, and that was impossible with Edward bombarding me with messages designed to make me feel guilty.
