Sliced Trees and Dead Words

36 - Some people just aren't ready to hear the truth.

- DALEN -

The day of my grandmother's funeral changed a lot of things between Luna and I.

For one, she witnessed the complete and total annihilation of my hope to have a proper relationship with my parents ever again. More importantly, however, it marked the day that I knew definitely that Luna and I were never meant to be together. And I unfortunately learned this after first having sex with her.

Luna had promised to come support me attend the funeral when I found out my Nan died, who was always so nice to me, regardless of who her husband was and what he was capable of. For a while I thought perhaps she was only that way because she knew what he was doing to me and was trying to make up for it, but Luna shut down that rationale pretty quickly because she knew it was important for me to hold onto good feelings and memories, and not to blur the lines to fit my own negative agenda in place of the truth.

She was right, though. My Nan was a wonderful, caring and generous woman, and she couldn't have known what he was capable of and remained with him. So he must just be that crafty an evil bastard to have hidden those depraved tendencies from everyone else . . . apart from lucky, little old me, of course. And she deserved better than a spineless coward of a grandson who abandoned her to a lifetime with him without a word. When I came back to visit my parents occasionally with Luna after I left, I could never go visit her house without the risk of him being home, too.

Eliza Rivers deserved a lot better than that, and for all the shortbread cookies we had baked together when I was a child and daffodil bulbs we'd planted in her garden and watched grow forth from the dirt in the spring time, she deserved me pushing aside my fears and attending her funeral to say the goodbye I never did when I first left.

It was a bad idea from the very beginning. I knew it, and Luna probably knew it too, despite trying really hard to convince me and herself otherwise. The very second I saw him, he triggered a full blown panic attack—racing heart, chest pain that felt a lot like a heart attack, shallow and hurried breathing, uncontrollable shaking, reliving flashbacks of dark bedrooms and the sound of metallic zippers—and no amount of Luna's soothing touch in my hand and on my back was going to change that.

The shitstorm that ensued after then just made things so much worse. Luna carried me out of the church building to lean against a large, weathered headstone in the old cemetery, and encouraged me to breathe deeply and slowly. My parents followed when they noticed we'd left, asking a thousand questions about what was wrong with me, which just created more pressure on my broken mind and made everything so much worse.

Luna ran her long nails up and down my arms and counted my inhales and exhales slowly to help me get back in control, ignoring their comments entirely. When I was gratefully able to breathe independently again, she said it was time, and that I couldn't hold onto this anymore on my own.

But I had Luna, who made just about everything better. I didn't need anything else. Or at least I didn't think I did back then. Now, years later and nearing the end of my life, I realise that wasn't true. I needed my parents' understanding and empathy, and that they wouldn't even entertain the idea of my disclosure as being even a fraction truthful hurt. It hurt a fucking lot, and that hurt morphed into rage and jealousy and self-loathing, which came out verbally against my parents, from Luna and from me, in harsh words that are not at all appropriate for sacred ground. Their retaliatory denial of my truth and similarly inappropriate language choices brought a few people from the inside of the church, including one of my uncles and my pop, who Luna turned on so quickly no one even saw her hand coming until her palm met his cheek. She spat out that he was an evil son of a bitch, and that it should be him in the ground, not my Nan, and we were promptly told by all around to fuck off because we were no longer welcome there.

Fine by me. I didn't care to be around people who didn't believe me. But watching them all surround my pop with affection and concern did a number on my self-confidence and belief in justice, especially after I had just told my parents, in very explicit terms, what he had done to me and given them the explanation they always asked for about why I was so fucked up.

I guess some people aren't ready to hear the truth, no matter how convinced they are that they want it.

Luna let me get drunk that night. Actively encouraged it actually, which she never did and for good reason. When she learned how much of a self-control problem I have with alcohol years beforehand, she stopped drinking with me. But that night, lounging on a bed in a hotel room she'd hired for us, she just let me. And I took full advantage of the fact that the hotel was located across the road from a bottle-o.

I was wasted, crying, despairing over how fucked up my life was and how no one would ever love a train wreck like me and mourn over my grave. That I would be alone forever. Luna, sober as a toddler, was trying to encourage a little hope and denying it to be true, pointing out various factors she saw in me which would attract someone eventually. She knew I only wanted it to be her, and for the first time ever I didn't squash my constant desire to reach out and kiss her, and the beautiful woman just let me because I was so tied up in my own despair and she knew it, and wanted me to have some faith that I would be okay. That I would meet someone who wouldn't see my insanity as a burden and would want to share a life with me.

I continued to kiss her, and she continued to let me. And when my hands started wandering a little up her shirt, she didn't stop me. I asked if it was okay maybe a thousand times, then asked her another thousand times whether she actually wanted to have sex when it reached that point between us. And she said yes, because she's my best friend and she loves me enough to help me in any way she can. And I made love to my best friend and felt peaceful for a few short minutes until I realised what I'd done and was overcome with regret, and it had nothing to do with seeing Luna's very poorly executed attempt to conceal her own.