Page 59 of A Love So Sweet
“Max—”
“No, Ryan. I honestly don’t want to hear your excuses. They’re meaningless.”
“Max, I was sick. Okay? It’s not an excuse.”
Max pulled her shoulders back. She was ready for lies. She’d expected them. “Right, Ryan. I was there, remember? You weren’t sick. You just changed. You stopped talking to everyone, stopped talking to me. You’d look at me with this cold stare sometimes, and it was like you had been hiding your meanness, or your hatred for me, for all those months, and then you just released them.”
“Max—”
“I’m not stupid. I took the hint. I just took it one night too late,” she seethed. “And I know it had to do with agreeing to move wherever I got a job instead of where you did. I’ve finally figured it all out—”
“Max!”
His deep, loud voice startled her out of her rant.
“Max.” He lowered his voice and said, “I’m schizophrenic. They missed all the signs over that year or so. We all did. After you left, I fell apart. I spiraled out of control so badly at times that I was afraid to even go home.”
“Schizophrenic?” Max had not seen that coming. She narrowed her eyes, looking for signs of deceit.
“Think about it, Max. My behavior changed radically. When I look back now, I see it. That night I…hurt you? It wasn’t even you I was seeing or yelling at. I was sexually abused when I was little, but I’d blocked it out. I was delusional. In my mind, it wasn’t you I was hurting. It was the woman who had molested me.”
“Oh, Ryan.” All the bravado that had built up in her chest came tumbling down. “How did you figure it out?”
“One night I hurt someone else. Badly. She didn’t call the police or anything, but she could have. In fact,” he said with his eyebrows drawn together, “she probably should have. That’s when I knew something was really wrong. I went home and told my parents that I wasn’t going to leave their house because I was afraid of what I might do to someone else.”
Max had considered calling the police when Ryan had hurt her, but the shame of willingly allowing him to use that thing on her had held her back. Now she realized she might have saved the other woman from being hurt if she’d filed a police report.
Swallowing past a painful lump in her throat, she said, “You hurt someone else?”
Ryan explained that he’d hooked up with another girl a few nights after Max had left him, and they’d gone back to her apartment off campus. While they were in bed, she’d taken the dominant role, and Ryan’s memories had come rushing back. “It was like I blacked out. I didn’t remember hurting her, or calling her names, and by the time I regained control, she had locked herself in the bathroom, bruised and bleeding. She told me that if I left, she wouldn’t report me to the police. After I was back home for a week or two, my parents began to notice—or maybeacceptis a better word—the changes. My father tracked down psychiatrists and psychologists. He took me to just about every doctor he could find. They all made the same diagnosis, but he didn’t want to accept it. I didn’t want to accept it either, but I also didn’t want to be the person who hurt others.”
“Should I have seen something in particular? Did I miss a major sign? Was it triggered by the thought of moving with me out of state?” Max asked.All these years I thought your anger was aimed at me specifically. What else have I misjudged?
“No. It had nothing to do with that. They don’t really know why I started recalling the memories, but I went through an inpatient program, where they assessed and treated and reassessed. You know my mom. She was nowhere near prepared to deal with this. I’ve gone through years of therapy, and it took forever for them to find the right protocol of drugs to even things out. But it’s been a few years since they figured it out and got it right.” He shrugged. “And now it’s just a part of who I am and who I will always be. Luckily, with medication, I’m not violent, and I don’t have delusions anymore. I just kind of live a regular life with all of that hanging over me.”
Max’s heart hurt for him, and for herself.
He took a drink of water and then said, “Max, I’m not telling you this to gain your sympathy. I take full responsibility for my illness and for my actions. But I am glad that you got in touch with me. I have been wanting to explain this to you and to apologize. I know you, Max, and I know you probably blamed yourself all these years. You’re so sensitive. It’s one of the things I loved about you. I’m so sorry for those weeks, that night, and for all the nights since that you’ve relived it. If I could erase it all from your mind and add your burden to mine, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”
It wasn’t me. It wasn’t because he was going to move with me.The thoughts of her misplaced blame were quickly pushed aside and replaced with thoughts of Ryan, the boy she’d known before he changed and the man he was, bravely sitting there with her, exposing the most vulnerable parts of himself.
“You must have been so scared when you were going through it,” she said.As scared as I was that night.
“Petrified. Imagine not wanting to live in your own skin. That’s what it was like,” he said with a hefty dose of shame. “When I think back to how I hurt you, the awful things I said, and that night…and then the other woman, who I have since explained my situation to and apologized. I just wish it all never happened.”
She saw pain and honesty in his eyes, and beyond that, she saw something that she had never expected to see again. She saw the young man who had been her friend, and she remembered what Savannah had said about forgiveness. Maybe this was just what they both needed.
If someone had asked her yesterday if she’d ever forgive Ryan Cobain, she would have said,Never, without hesitation. As she looked at him sitting across from her, not hiding behind his illness, not shirking the responsibility of having done those hurtful acts, but laying his life out for her like an open book, she felt the anger leaving her body, floating out with the words as they rolled off her tongue. “Ryan,” she said with a shaky voice. “I forgive you.”
He looked down at his lap. A little nag in the back of Max’s mind worried that when he looked up again, it would be with the cold eyes she remembered—but he didn’t. The same warm man who had apologized only moments before was right there in front of her, looking at her with empathy, honesty, and tears in his eyes.
“I can’t tell you what that means to me,” he admitted, and then shifted his gaze around the room as he blinked away tears. “I’m sorry I’m so emotional.”
“How could you not be? This whole thing is emotional. Those years were emotional. Do you remember what we were like when we first met? Everything had us on an emotional high.” She was astonished that she’d said it, much less wanted to remember those better times, but it felt good.
“Yeah, I do.” He wrinkled his brow. “Max, I have to ask, why now? After all these years, why are you just tracking me down now? You don’t have to tell me. It’s none of my business. I’m just curious.”
Max touched her shirt.Treat.“It’s okay. I don’t mind telling you. I met someone, and, well, I’m not the same person I was when I was with you. After I left, I grew up and became self-sufficient.”But remained scared, until now.“He makes me even stronger.”
