Still Point ✓

14 | crash

note

in the interest of minimizing harm, i’d like to warn you now that this part includes mentions of domestic violence, suicide ideation, trauma, and anxiety triggers. if any of this is distressing for you at this time, i’d recommend either waiting until you’re in the right space to take all of that on or forgoing it altogether.

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I don’t know a lot about Hillary―the woman who gave birth to me―except that she was a very simple and complicated woman.

She was pretty, and obsessed with her looks, buying tons of makeup with the little money she earned waitressing to cover the wrinkles on her face; which did no good, since she was an alcoholic, but hey, you've got to give her credit for effort. I think she had her demons, and drinking was the only way she exorcised them, but the thing with that is whenever she drank, those demons pushed her somewhere inside her head and took over the rest of her.

Or maybe she was a terrible person, and drinking only revealed that.

He stops and stares at Wyatt, whose attention remains rapt on him.

But I'm getting off topic. Backtracking, she was pretty and she enjoyed the attention it got her. And I don’t think she ever loved me, because she’d said it too many times to count. Said she’d abort me if she could, hit me, etc. but we had an arrangement.

She’d have men over and I’d make myself scarce up until they left, and she called me out to dinner. We’d make small talk, laugh sometimes, and I’d convince myself that that version of her was my mother, because the good times were good, man. I swear they were.

She wouldn’t hurt me, or say mean shit. Just ask about school and what it is I was up to at the time, seemingly small, but those moments meant the world to me, and I loved her. Sometimes we took pictures and she’d post them on Facebook. She was crazy about social media.

They lock gazes again, but Wesley’s eyes skitter away and he continues.

But sometimes after a bad day, or an argument with whichever new face she was into, she’d drink, and drink, and drink herself senseless. I’d make myself disappear and only come out after she fell asleep to wrap her up with a blanket, because it was like the sight of me triggered her. One minute she’d be drunk-crying, and if she saw me everything changed. She’d talk down on me, hit me if I looked at her the wrong way, or anyway at all. Hit me if I even spoke to answer a rhetorical question. Even after I got taller than her she’d hit me, but I could never bring myself to hit back, because she was my mum and it messed me up, the idea that a small part of her, the good part, was inside, screaming, begging her to stop. And she always did, right before she got too far, because she didn’t like questions.

She steered clear of my face after the first few beatings, when the teacher in my grade called to ask if everything was alright at home after seeing the scratches on my face the next day I went to school.

She was always very deliberate when she hit me, but on that day something was different. I’d just gotten back from my job about an hour late and came home to meet her going through this really old laptop I had at the time, and when I got closer I found she was plastered. Turns out that she’d lost her job that day and had already invited a guy over, but I’d only find that out later.

In that moment all I could think of was her going through all the entries I’d written about leaving, getting as far away from her as I could, maybe heading out to look for my father who she’d never told me about―because I needed space from all that toxicity, and being with her was killing me.

When I made a grab for it she held it away from me, I could smell the liquor in her breath and I was scared shitless, but I needed that laptop because it held everything that meant anything to me, about me. That laptop was months and months of saving, old as fuck and you had to press down on some keys extra hard to get them to work, but it was mine, and I was so goddamned proud of it.

So I reached for it again and she held it over her head, letting it fall so it just broke, and then she began to cry about me leaving her and I just stood there, looking at the cracked screen, and shattered keyboard. At first it was apologies for being a bad parent, but then she started screaming at me to say something and I just stood there mute, until she had enough and hit me.

Something snapped, and I pushed her off me so she fell and hit her head I think, but I didn’t care. I went into my room and started packing my shit, because I was done with her bullshit. I was done.

It must have been the anger as I didn’t hear her come up behind me, because the next thing I felt was her bottle of wine breaking on my head, and I was on the floor, dazed. She must’ve gone away, because when I opened my eyes she held the baseball bat she kept in her room for burglars―we lived in a trailer park, and shit gets real there sometimes.

Then she said she would kill me the way she should’ve when she found out about me, and I thought it was a joke, because she’d threatened to do this many times. But then she began to hit me, slowly at first, and then her blows grew steadier.

I had a concussion from the bottle over my head, so my efforts to get away were useless as she intercepted any exits and hit me, till I begged her to stop. But she didn’t, and at one point I lost consciousness.

I woke up in a hospital three days later to find that the guy she’d had over―a college student―forgot his jacket, and when he walked in to find her sitting beside me, motionless, in a pool of blood, he called 911. At first they thought we’d been hurt, but when they found that the blood only belonged to me, with testimonies from my teachers, the rest was history.

She damaged an eardrum, so I’m deaf in my left ear―

Wyatt’s eyes widen when he says this, but he forges ahead, refusing to accept the look of pity he sees in them.

―hence the Japanese characters on the left side of my face, which means 'Hear no evil.' The world ended that day for me on so many levels and I lost everything, but I don’t have nightmares.

I don’t have them because my whole life is one, and I could be in the middle of something when I hear the sound of the bat as it came down, and I’d freeze because I’m sure I’ll get hit. I’m sure of it.

It’s why I don’t like being called Wes, because that was what she called me. It’s also why I took up smoking.

The shorter boy opens his mouth to talk but Wesley pins him with a baleful glare.

This is my story and you asked for it, now please let me finish.

A nod indicates assent to his request, and he throws away the cigarette he has smoked down to a stub, pulling out another one and ignoring the look of disapproval Wyatt shoots him.

Shit calms me down, makes me feel heavy and sets my mind free. I wrote a lot of stuff in that journal after a cigarette. And I know it kills, but I’ll probably never stop because sometimes I’m sure I wanna die. I mean that, quite literally and not in a poetic way, but a swallow-a-bottle-of-pills-and-never-wake-up-again way. Or shoot myself in the head, pick your poison.

I’m a wreck and I don’t care, because I’m ruined―from the day I was born, if you believe that apparently―and I can’t love you the way you want me to. I can’t feel the same way.

He laughs bitterly and pauses to throw away his unfinished cigarette, before delivering what is sure to be the final blow.

But if I’m being honest, I don’t think I want to.