TRIGGER WARNING FOR THIS CHAPTER:
- Pedophilia
- Descriptions of childhood abuse
- Descriptions of violence and manipulation
- Drug use
PLEASE do not read this chapter if any of the topics discussed would upset or cause you harm. You do not need to read this chapter to understand the next one.
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I can practically feel Paul's eyes searching my face from across the room. His concern, his confusion. Even when I was getting better, I never really opened up to him about anything. Never spoke a word about anything that's happened, never went into too much detail about most things.
The only difference between how much Paul knows about me now and what he knew when we met, nearly a decade ago, is that I'm gay and I tried to kill myself a long time ago.
That's it.
So the worry in his voice when I called him and asked him if it would be okay for me to get some things off my chest was totally understandable, but even so, I felt a little put off. Arthur was really the deciding factor; without his encouragement, I would've cancelled with Paul and stayed home in bed for the next three weeks calling myself a coward.
Well, I can't say that. Arthur wouldn't let me do that sort of thing anymore. He won't just let me lay there and destroy myself for days.
"So. What did you want to talk to me about?" Paul asks.
"Right." I murmur. Right. What I wanted to talk about. "Where should I start?"
He shifts in his seat. I hear the tap of a pen on the desk. "Wherever you think. Most people start from the beginning, wherever you think that is."
I laugh. "When I was born?"
He chuckles, clicking his pen out, in, out. "Whenever you're ready, Aedin. You don't have to be nervous. We're friends, right?"
We are. I know we are. Some time ago, it was hard not to hate him. Simply because he existed and wouldn't give up on me, I hated him. But no, I was wrong. Paul is my friend.
I nod, weaving my fingers together in my lap.
"I was born on March 13th, 1989," I start. Pretty normal. "My mother was Catherine Jones, 16 years old and a junior in high school. Captain of the cheer squad, with two glowing proud parents and a textbook high school boyfriend. My father was, at the time, a grown man. Maybe about my age."
I can somehow already feel myself getting angry and scared. It's strange to feel scared, knowing she's gone, incapable of hurting me ever again, but still. It feels as though the power she had over me is never truly gone.
"They had sex and he left. She found out she was pregnant and shortly after so did the rest of the world. 9 months later, I was born. When I was 15 minutes old, my mother symbolically disowned me. She gave me my father's full name. Technically, I am Aedin James Kelsing Jr."
I take a pause long enough for Paul to speak.
"I'm surprised it's been 10 years and I never knew your birthday was in March."
"I hate my birthday," I tell him dismissively.
"Why?"
It's really hard to explain. It's just one of those things where you want to tell someone everything in the right order. But most of the memories are gone, now. Self-destructed so I could keep functioning.
"There's no wrong answer." He reassures me.
"I know. I think it was her. My mother. It was one of the days where she would just shut down. I think she saw it as like the day her life ended. She grieved like normal people grieve on the anniversary of a death," I mutter, almost talking to myself. I think I am talking to myself.
"There was a lot of times like that. Special days of the year, shit like Christmas, Thanksgiving. She stopped functioning completely sometimes, in the summer. I took care of her when she couldn't get out of bed. Sometimes I'd bring her food I'd made and she'd scream at me and it was the most life she'd had in her in weeks so I was almost kind of relieved."
"I remember every time she'd come home with new baby stuff. She wouldn't tell me outright if she was pregnant, it was like she didn't want to acknowledge it. Her boyfriend at the time would stick around for a little while, maybe 6 months at most, I think. And then I'd come home from school and everything would be gone, and she'd..."
My tongue gets caught in my throat.
I hear Paul's pen stall on the notepad and time stands still. I can't get the words out.
I can't.
Paul sets his pen down and I hear the notepad slide away.
"Nothing you say will ever leave this room," he promises.
He doesn't know that it doesn't matter. She lives in my head, she'll always live in my head. She planted herself in there, burrowed down into the grey matter, cut up pieces of me so she could fit. And she's dead, now, but part of her still lives here. It'll always live here.
It's so hard to be angry. Trying to remember it, to talk about it. I'm tired, already. My fingers flutter against my shoelaces, searching for a source of comfort. He helped me tie them, this morning. Arthur did. I wish he was here. I promised him I'd stop smoking, but...
"Do you have any cigarettes?"
He opens a drawer and I reach out my hand. A lighter and a cigarette brush my fingertips and I take them.
"Thanks."
"No problem. Whatever you need."
I light it up and breathe it in a little, coughing more than I expected I might. It's been a while since I've had one. There's more than one reason I wanted to smoke. I can feel my shaking hands calm slightly, and the smell brings me back.
Tar...
What was it? The door, swinging open, letting the tar in. I'm clawing at the edges now, trying to pry it open, but it's stuck shut. There's nothing to grab hold of, it's like the door was never there at all.
Why does it always go away when I want to remember?
Paul shifts in his chair and does a short scribble. I can hear the pen drop and him relaxing into his chair. I can't believe I didn't like Paul.
"I don't know," I tell him, leaning back. "I can't... remember anything. It's all gone."
"Okay, here's something I like to try," he says, leaning forward and on his desk, making it creak. "What's the worst thing your mother ever did to you?"
I take a short drag off the cigarette and let out a sigh.
"My mother destroyed me," I tell him. My voice is quieter than I intended. Smaller. "I can hear her now."
"What's she saying?"
"She's telling me I'm a worthless piece of shit. That what she did wasn't 'abuse,' it was discipline. That she gave up everything to raise me and now I'm slandering her name. She always loved to do that," I say softly. "Her favorite thing to do was tell people that I was the abusive one. That I was a bad kid. That I was violent and temperamental and impossible to control. She called the cops on me, over and over and over again. She told all our neighbors that I was a violent psychopath. She told my teachers and principal, she told every friend I ever made. I think the thing that sticks out in my mind, though, thinking about it..."
Paul leans back in his seat, listening. I can tell he's listening. I'm not sure how.
"She didn't always hit me. That started when I was ten. By the time I was 14, I was taller and stronger than her, but she still scared the Hell out of me. But I think that she was starting to get scared, because those last few years, Paul..." I take another drag off the cigarette, thinking back on those two years.
"There was one night, about a month after my fourteenth birthday. I hadn't been feeling like myself for a while. I think you told me it was called... disassociating? Dissociating? I felt like I was watching myself from above. She called me into her bedroom one night and started her usual spiel. She screamed in my face and told me I was useless, that she wished I was dead. Those lines hadn't made me cry for a long time, but when I didn't react at all, she was... enraged."
I shudder. I can see her, standing there, that look in her face. I can suddenly remember that night so clearly, but I'm trying to keep the memories in order.
"She... She hit me. With something, I didn't even get to see what it was. I think it was a coat hanger. I could hear it whip through the air when she swung it. It hit me in the shoulder and then she reared back again and it hit me in the face that time, and some part of me came back, aware of the danger. I went to cover my face with my arms and she screamed at me to put down my hands and hit me again, over the top of my head. I grabbed her wrist to stop her from doing it again, and she shrieked and accused me of trying to attack her. She called the cops on me. The only thing my mother was ever good at was acting. She played the part of the battered woman so well that they didn't even notice that I was the only one with any injuries, and I went to juvey."
"For how long?" Paul interrupts, taking a short note and then setting his pen down. His chair creaks as he stands up. I ash my cigarette and put it out in the ash tray before lighting another.
"Six months. I was on probation for another ten weeks after that. I celebrated my fifteenth birthday with my sister, Rachel. She was eight. We had a tea party. Catherine passed out on the couch."
"Why do you call her by her first name?" Paul asks. Another good question.
"Because I know it'd piss her the fuck off. 'After all I did for you,' she'd say. 'How dare you disrespect me.'" I give a cold laugh and take another lungful of smoke. It burns my throat. The pain anchors me to Paul's office, to this moment in time. "It just feels like something. The one thing I can hold over her head forever, like she held so many things over mine. It's the one and only thing that she'll never have, after everything she took from me. It's MY choice."
"So it's like revenge?"
I shrug. "Even if she were still alive, I could never make her feel the way I did as a kid. The terror, the desperation, the... horrible shame. Catherine thrived on shame, it fueled her. She could make me feel bad for breathing. She did make me feel bad for breathing. Sometimes I think about it, though. I imagine reconnecting with her, tricking her. Watching her deteriorate as she got sicker and sicker, holding her when she cried, pretending to care. And then, when she's fully reliant on me, like I was as a child..."
I trail off.
What would I do? I don't know. I like to think I'm not as cruel as she is but I know I have the capacity in me. So what would I do, if the roles were reversed?
"When she's fully reliant on me, I can make her fear me like I feared her. I can make her cry. I can see her flinch when I move too fast and mock her to her face for being a coward. I can ask her if she's proud of me yet in between telling her how horrible and monstrous she is. I can..."
I can see her there, now, in my imagination. On the bed, sick and dying, her body tense with fear, her face placid and blank, eyes averted. I can see her as I was, as an 8 year old boy, paralyzed in terror. What would I do then?
"What would you do then?"
"I'd strangle her to death," I say resolutely, pulling in more smoke and blowing it up high at the ceiling. It's starting to smell in here. I want to apologize but I know I'd be a mess right now if I didn't have something to do with my hands.
Paul remains quiet for a minute, and then asks, "What's your best memory of your mother?"
I take a deep breath.
"There aren't many, but I'll tell you one."