I think I can build the bitch and just lie in it myself.
Tuck myself right in.
“He has alexithymia.” She doesn't follow me into the bar. “It’s not that he doesn’t have emotions. He just has... a hard time feeling them.”
The ripples.
The ripples I saw in his energy.
When I called him a monster.
Turns out, I’ve been God's little inside joke this whole time.
And the bastard's been giggling for years.
I swig big gulps from my newly poured glass. The warm brown liquid is a fire that goes straight to my stomach. That burns my throat all the way down.
“Your father and I had to teach it to him. What was right and wrong. How to prioritize what’s important. He’s still our son. He’s still the man who will take over the family. So we kept it quiet. We taught him how to—”
“How to pretend,” I place the empty glass back on the table. “How to play puppet with his face and his body.”
Twenty-eight years and only now do I finally understand my brother.
When I've said things I can't take back.
‘He hasn't felt a single thing since he was born.’
‘We both know the monster in the room isn't Christian, it’s you.’
Fucking hell, Reuben.
There has to be a better role for you in this script than ‘stupid fucking clown’.
My mother places a hand on my shoulder, and even though her expression is stiff, her energy is filled with apology. Regret. Guilt. “Your brother pushes himself every day, to be… normal. For you. For his family—”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” My words are pointed but I don't even have it in me to be angry anymore. “I lived my whole life thinking Aster was the stuff monsters were made of,” I confess. “That he didn’t love anything—not me, not you, not the family. Why are you telling me after all this time that he’s sick? Why would you keep that from me, knowing the things I see?”
Her brows furrow, a new surprise and worry crowding into her energy, “You… still see them? Those colours?”
He reaction is like a low roll of thunder passing through my body.
Despondency. Disappointment.
Right.
Of course.
The last time I mentioned it to you would have been years ago.
I pull out of her touch slowly and she grabs my hand as if sensing the numbness she’s placed inside me.
“But I suppose it isn’t a condition you can name as easily as Aster’s,” I cut off her words before she can say them, matter-of-factly. “There’s no fancy, medical name you can put on it… so it was easier to throw hallucination meds at me and hope they go away.”
“You said they worked—”
“I was 15,Mama.” There’s no blame in my words. No hatred or anger. Just resignation. “Three years of meds and doctors and therapy.”
Of course I’d say they fucking worked.
