Page 116 of Bad at Love
"I wasn't trouble..."
"You stole candy from the store down the street when you were eight years old. At eleven I caught you drinking your father's gin. At thirteen you were taking my razors and making marks up and down your arm."
Fuck. Jesus. She remembers that. "Every...a lot of kids do that. It’s not right but it’s common. It’s a cry for help. Maybe it's what I did in order to deal with the pain."
"What pain?"
'The pain of having a father like mine. He hit you. He hit me. He abused us. Inside and outside. You know he did."
"He never did such a thing."
"I didn't imagine it!" I yell, getting off my stool. "He did it and you know it."
"Your father was a drunk."
"I know. That was another thing. There were so many things, how could you not understand that as a young kid I didn't know how to deal with it. I still don't. Not even in the slightest. I can’t deal with people, with relationships, with love. I’m fucked up because of what you put me through.”
She waves me away with her hand. "You're trying to make me feel guilty for something he did."
"I am not. I'm just telling you why these things happened. You can't pretend he didn't leave us, mum."
"He left you, Laz," she says stiffly, her jaw firm as she looks at me. "Youwere the reason your father left."
Cold. Inside me there is nothing but cold. A wasteland. Frozen tundra.
My heart died the day when I learned it wasn't enough.
My heart died the day when love ceased to save me.
I don't know why the words are coming in my head right now, but they are. They are and they're real.
I can't believe this is happening.
"Mum," I manage to say, my stomach churning with the poison in her words. "Why did he…why would he leave because of me?"
She looks away, walks over to the kettle which is now boiling over. "He was afraid of you."
Afraid ofme? ”Why?"
"He was afraid that you would love him. I was afraid of it too. You never should have done such a thing."
I am dumbfounded by this. None of it makes any sense, it sounds like the rantings of a loon.
And yet, at the same time, they reach deep inside me. They check all the boxes.
I was always there for my father. He would be a piece of shit and I was there, playing with the Magic 8 Ball, I was there giving him fake gin, I was there cleaning up after him. I did all the things my mother didn't want to do. Good cop, bad cop. I was the good cop.
And my father didn't like that. Didn't think he deserved it. Or maybe just didn't want what I was giving. It made him uncomfortable. Angry.
My love was unwarranted. It was wrong.
It chased him away.
Everything inside me sinks, like the very fabric of my soul, what I knew about myself, is plummeting to its death.
My mother just told me my father left us because I loved him when I shouldn't have.
What the actual fuck?
