Page 53 of The Truth About Love

“What? You think because I’m fucked in the head that I can’t tell when something’s up with my boy?”

I don’t mention how she has spent the majority of the last thirteen years oblivious to the tribulations I’ve been forced to survive alone. All those times I lay crying in bed while she screamed into the night. The heartbreak of watching her mental health deteriorate. The anguish of pubescent teenage melodramas.

But Mama seems completely lucid today.

Almost like her schizophrenia doesn’t exist at all.

“Just shit with Summer-Raine, Mama.”

She signals with her hand for me to elaborate and, surprisingly, I do. I tell her about the other night with Summer-Raine. How sick it makes me feel to think I’d have been complicit in her warped attempt at self-harm had I not realised what was happening when I did. How angry I am with her for trying to make me do something she knows I’d never have been comfortable with.

Mama listens to it all.

And when I’m done, she takes my hand and holds it gently in her lap.

“Baby,” she says, rubbing her thumb up and down my pinkie finger the way she used to do when I was very little. The way she sometimes does when her illness has taken her back in time. “She’s a lot like me, you know? Has those demons in her head that make her do crazy shit sometimes. That’s how demons work. They fuck you up, make you do shit you don’t really want to do, until you don’t even know who you are anymore.”

“But she hurt me, Mama.” I drag my hands down my face, sighing. “The idea of causing her pain like that, of causing her painat all, makes me wanna throw up. And she knew that, but she did it anyway.”

Mama sighs, reaching up to softly pull my hands away from my face. “I hate that you feel like this. But that girl loves you, I can promise you that. She might be going through shit right now, but I’ve seen how she looks at you.” She takes a breath, thinking. “I’m not saying you don’t have a right to be pissed, cause baby you do, but I know she’d never hurt you on purpose. I know how hard she’s trying to protect you from the shit inside her head.”

I blink.

“I know, because every day I’m the same. You think I don’t see the way I hurt you sometimes? I can’t fucking help it and it kills me. But it’s the monsters that make us this way.”

My eyes burn unexpectedly.

Hearing that she’s aware of what’s happening sometimes, that even during the darkest moments, my Mama is still there, buried somewhere deep beneath her diagnoses and psychotic episodes and the blankness in her eyes, is so startling, so staggering, that suddenly all I want to do is cry.

I curl myself up into a ball and lay my head across Mama’s lap as I process all she’s just said. She strokes my hair and whispers gentle words. And for a little while, I’m just a boy being comforted by his mother.

“Look at me,” she says eventually. “Go to her and give her hell for making you feel like this. And then forgive her. Cause she loves you, Auden, almost as much as I do. It’s clear as the damn day to see.” She sighs and cups my cheek in her cold hand. “And please, always know that I love you too. I know it’s hard to remember, but I do, baby, I love you. So much.”

It’s the first time in years that my mother has been lucid enough to tell me that she loves me. I didn’t realise how much I needed to hear those words from her until now.

And for the second time tonight, I want to cry. Though this time with tears of relief, because I’ve been reminded that my mother still loves me.

But I don’t.

Because, as if a switch has been flicked, I watch as the clouds close in across her eyes. The sparkle of life that was glittering there before has been replaced by a barren stare. The colour of her fades, the essence of her lost once again to the darkness, until all that’s left of her is the colour grey and a chasm of nothingness.

I may as well be alone in the room.

Leaving her there, I go up to my bedroom and lay down on the bed. I need to call Summer-Raine. It’s been long enough now. The distance between us is eating away at me andfuck, I just miss her so much.

There’s a message from an unknown number blinking at me when I pull out my phone.

Unknown:Hey, Auden, it’s Marlowe. I got your number from Tyler, who got it from Fred. Hope you don’t mind me messaging, but I just had this really weird conversation with Summer. She was saying something about cliff-diving and wanting to do some dangerous shit, I don’t even know, but it worried me. I’d go find her myself, but Tyler’s taken me to Miami and it’ll take a few hours to get back. Thought you might wanna know. Maybe go check on her? Let me know if you do.

Shit.

I check the time stamp and see that she sent the message twenty minutes ago.

That’s plenty of time for Summer-Raine to have done something stupid in her pursuit of trying to feel something.

What the fuck have I done leaving her alone for four days?

I’ve been such a selfish asshole, licking my wounds for so long when she’s been needing me.

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