metaphors | garrance // laurroth

five

garroth

I can't get out of bed on the first day of the weekend. Weights hold me down by the limbs.

My mum comes to wake me up by the time noon rolls around to give me a fruit salad, probably out of pity or the feeling of obligation. She laughs at me when I sit up as she draws the curtains, eyes half open and curls sticking to my forehead while an irritated groan escapes my lips. It's too bright. She thinks it's funny that my eyes are burning.

Mum is better. I know she won't drink for a while. There's always warning signs like a constant, blaring alarm, but I'm not feeling the skepticism at the moment. Her relapse can't be prevented - it doesn't work that way - but at least it'll be a little while before it happens again.

It's been over two weeks since the accident, and by now, I don't think about it as often as I used to. This is the quiet period - she's often blasé and I just have to wait until I act anxious enough to get her worked up again. It's not really the calm before the storm so much as the calm between two storms, because as one settles down into taboo, another is simmering just on the horizon. The longer the break is, the more worried I get that it's coming and it'll be worse than the last.

The scar on the underside of my thigh will never fade. It's one of the ones you can tell is always going to haunt you - the stupid memory clinging to you like metal to a magnet. I don't have many other scars from actual drunken attacks or accidents, but since this has been the most serious injury yet, it'll always be a milestone. A rite of passage in abuse.

Nothing like the scars on the inside of my right bicep, lost in the time of constant pain and tucked away to be ignored. I don't do that anymore. I lost my reason for it. There isn't a point in making them for myself if I'm just going to get them anyway.

My mother kisses my forehead and tells me to eat as she leaves, so I do, watching a show on my laptop as it rests on my duvet-covered legs. I'm eating the fruit like cereal, trying to adjust my eyes to the warm yellow hues of the morning (or afternoon) sun.

I am tired. School always drains me, or at least more so than usual. My sleep habits have always been odd, and having to get up early after sleeping late isn't good for my energy levels. By the weekend I usually spend a day in bed at least, just to make up for what I lacked in the previous five.

As I eat the fruit salad, I think about my appreciation for my mother. She does make things like this for me a lot without asking (although, since it's winter, the store-bought fruit I'm eating is nowhere near as good as what she grows in her garden in the summer) and nobody is completely perfect, so I can't blame her for having an issue. Some people's flaws are just... a little more complicated to put up with.

But I make do.

At this point, I'm pretty sure my brothers haven't thought about it at all in at least a week. I wonder if it's simpler just to suffer through verbal abuse - if they get over it quicker - because I suppose the healing of your wound is a constant reminder when it becomes physical. Zane and Vylad weren't there for any of it and probably just thought I was being shouted at, so I doubt it's crossed them recently. That's what I'm aiming for: to keep them as out of it as possible. This is my fault, so I should face the punishment.

My mum is the stay-at-home kind. She couldn't find a job she wanted to do despite having a talent for art, which is probably where Vylad's knack comes from. She's told us many times that she's wanted to have kids since she was a kid, and she thinks it's the best job for her and that we're the best part of her life, as well as my dad.

Sometimes I question what she tells us. It seems more like a way to dampen the reality of the situation to me.

I think that she runs out of things to do when it's not spring or summer and she can't garden. There's only so many errands you can do everyday, so my theory is that she has too much time to think, psyches herself up to the point of a breakdown, and drinks to get rid of the feeling.