happiesttask15 The I want
More than anything, James wants to be accepted.
It is a desire that has followed him his entire life, though he would never admit it aloud. On the surface, he appears composed and dependable, someone who asks for little and carries his burdens in silence. Yet beneath that calm exterior lives a fear so deeply ingrained that it has shaped every choice he has ever made: the fear of rejection.
That fear began in childhood.
When his father abandoned his mother, James watched the foundation of his family collapse before he was old enough to understand why. His father's departure was not just the loss of a parent—it became proof, in James' mind, that love was conditional. That the people who promised to stay could leave without warning.
His mother's grief soon turned into bitterness, and eventually into abuse. Instead of finding comfort in the parent who remained, James learned that the person who was supposed to love him unconditionally could become the one who hurt him the most. Home ceased to be a place of safety. Love became something unpredictable, fragile, and dangerous.
Children often search for explanations when they are hurt, and James found one that would quietly follow him into adulthood.
If people leave, there must be something wrong with me.
It was never a belief he consciously chose, but one that rooted itself so deeply within him that it became the lens through which he viewed every relationship. Rejection was no longer simply something that could happen—it became something he expected. Something inevitable. He convinced himself that anyone who truly got close enough to know him would eventually decide he was not worth staying for.
To protect himself from that pain, James built walls that few people ever noticed. He decided he would never truly love another person. He would never marry. He would never create a family of his own. He would never allow himself to depend on a friendship so deeply that losing it would destroy him.
It was easier to live alone than to risk being abandoned again.
Or so he believed.
Life has a way of unraveling the promises people make to themselves.
Despite every effort to remain distant, Smee slowly became more than just a companion. He became James' closest friend, someone whose loyalty never seemed to waver. Before James realized what had happened, he had allowed another person into the space he had sworn would always remain empty.
Then there was Tina.
She did not simply become someone he loved; she became the person who challenged everything he believed about himself. Through her, James experienced a life he had always convinced himself he could never have. Together they built a marriage founded on trust, companionship, and unwavering devotion. Alongside her came Mary and Anne, his half-sisters, who slowly became the family he had never imagined he deserved.
Without realizing it, James had achieved everything he once believed was impossible.
He had found friendship.
He had found love.
He had found a family.
For a time, he believed that perhaps he had been wrong. Perhaps not everyone leaves.
Then came the poisoning.
The event shattered more than their physical health. It fractured the emotional foundation they had built together. Tina withdrew into herself, consumed by her own trauma and pain. Her distance was never meant to punish James, nor was it a reflection of diminished love. She was simply trying to survive.
But trauma does not always allow people to see reality.
James did not see a woman struggling beneath the weight of unimaginable suffering.
He saw someone slipping away.
Every unanswered conversation, every quiet moment, every glance that lingered elsewhere became another piece of evidence that his oldest fear was finally coming true. The terrified child who had watched his father walk away and endured his mother's cruelty returned with overwhelming force, drowning out every rational thought.
She's going to leave me.
She doesn't love me anymore.
I'm losing my family.
The fear consumed him until it became impossible to distinguish reality from memory.
And so James did what he had spent his entire life preparing himself to do.
He left first.
For an entire week, he disappeared, believing that if he abandoned Tina before she could abandon him, he might somehow lessen the pain. If she intended to divorce him, then she would never have the chance. It was an irrational act born not from anger or resentment, but from pure panic. It was the desperate decision of a man trying to outrun a wound that had never truly healed.
Yet even as he ran, something unexpected happened.
The distance did not ease the pain.
It magnified it.
Every mile between them reminded James that the life he had built with Tina was not something he could simply abandon. Every passing day forced him to confront a truth he had spent years denying: his greatest fear was no longer rejection.
It was losing her.
For the first time in his life, love outweighed fear.
The walls he had spent decades constructing could not compete with the life they had created together. He realized that protecting himself from rejection would cost him the very people he loved most. Running away was not saving him from heartbreak—it was creating it.
James still fears rejection. It remains one of the deepest wounds he carries, whispering that he is unworthy of love and that every meaningful relationship is destined to end. But unlike the frightened boy he once was, James is slowly learning that acceptance cannot exist without vulnerability.
To be truly loved means accepting that there is always a chance of being hurt.
For James, that is the hardest lesson of all.
Yet despite everything, despite every instinct telling him to run, he chooses to stay.
Because Tina, Smee, Mary, and Anne have become more than the people he loves.
They have become the home he spent his entire life searching for.
