Hey, this is a one shot. It's based on a dream I had. It's quite confronting and depressing, so warnings; indirect and direct references to cutting, suicide and depression. There is a child cutting, but I've done my best to tone it down.
Thanks
Jamaze
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My baby boy
Laughing, smiling, running, playing, having fun, being healthy, laughing at his silly mummy...the opposite of what he is now.
My baby boy
Crying, yelling, bed-ridden, hateful, depressed, screaming at his stupid mummy...
All my baby wants is something sharp...something he can use to scratch himself...please mummy he cries, day in, day out, please!
"I'm sorry baby, I'm so sorry!" My new favoured phrase. "No baby, you can't hurt yourself anymore! Mummy is trying to save you!"
"No! Mummy is stupid, mummy hates me. Mummy wants me to die! I hate mummy! I want my daddy" ...more tears.
"Daddy isn't here baby..."
"Daddy let me scratch! Daddy scratched himself! You let daddy scratch!!! Why can't I scratch?"
"No baby! Daddy didn-" I began. What did daddy not do? What is so different between my son and my late husband. They both hate me. They both hate themselves. They both cut. But my baby doesn't understand! A seven year old couldn't understand. All he wants is his daddy, the only way he sees is doing the same as his daddy did.
His daddy who bled out onto the bathroom floor because he took his 'scratching' too far.
My baby,
Doomed the same fate as his father.
I saved him though!
Not enough
He understands now. A seventeen year old boy who continues to 'scratch' when and where he thinks his mummy won't notice.
I see it
I see in the way he always wears shorts to his knees in summer. How protective he is over his thighs. If someone bumps past him, he flinches, his hands already hovering protectively over his leg, he glares at the offender and continues on through the crowd.
I should have known.
I should have known it would be today of all days.
After ten years of counselling, therapy, countless attempts at conversation with my son that didn't end in screams of "I HATE YOU" or quiet but resentful murmurs of "you should have let me die when I was seven." He does it on his daddy's anniversary.
But maybe my baby didn't have a full understanding, because in his letter, he signed it with 'see you later.'
I'm not seeing him later. I am not going to give up. I am going to be a hero. I am going to live a life worth three. I am going to live for me, my baby and my husband.
My baby boy,
Laughing, smiling, running, playing, having fun, and finally being the angel he was meant to be.
