It became a curse.
And though I’d started to suspect it after the breakup with Tara and my failure to get her back, hearing my mother speak cemented something for me. My stubbornness, my hardheadedness, my refusal to accept any outcome other than the one I wanted wasn’t a gift that would set me up for success when others would have quit.
It made me foolish. It made me stupid. It made me susceptible to heartache and tragedy.
It wasn’t just my mother’s curse. It was my own.
My mom had never been able to break the curse, and I could see now what it had done to her. She had stopped caring about others for fear of hurting them, but more than that, she had stopped caring about herself. She took pills and ate the occasional vegetable just so she wouldn’t look like she wanted to die, but there was no doubt that she wasn’t looking to live, either.
And when people did try to help her, whether it was me or a nurse, she just lashed out at them. She thought everyone who was trying to help her was actually trying to hurt her. It had taken a heart attack and me admitting I had gone to visit the rest of our family for her to realize that my visiting wasn’t to harm her, but to be present.
And if I wasn’t careful, that was going to be me in the future.
It kind of already was. Elizabeth questioning me as she had on Thursday…I hadn’t taken it as an attack on me, I hadn’t seen it as her trying to hurt me. But my leaving abruptly made it seem that way.
She hadn’t asked me those questions to harm me or to make me feel like shit. She’d asked to understand. And I had reacted as my mother would.
“It’s not too late, Mom,” I said. “It’s not too late.”
“For me? No, it is,” she said with a sigh. “I got lucky, but I have let myself go for far too long to have any hope of suddenly healing my body. I’m sorry, Stan—I mean, Steele.”
At least she corrected herself.
“I will try and be better with you, but don’t spend any time worrying about me. Today is not my day, but it is coming soon. Thank you for visiting me.”
I smiled, leaned forward, and kissed her on her forehead. Her skin felt cold to the touch, as if death had started to embrace her in its arms. I had no fear that she would die tonight, but I understood what she meant.
Even if there wasn’t a biological or medical reason to believe death was near for her, she could sense it. She could feel it.
I stood up, squeezed her hand gently, opened my mouth to say something, and then shut it with a smile and walked out.You better say it next time you see her.
I walked out of the hospital in something of a daze. I didn’t need to push away other people. I needed to bring them in. I needed to…
I needed to let go of the idea that I could control everything that would happen, and I needed to embrace the idea that other people could know less nice things about me.
I looked down at my phone. I pulled up my texts with Brock. The last thing he’d sent me was a message saying that he’d be there to offer anything if I needed it tonight. I thought about reaching out to him, but he wasn’t the person that I’d hurt most recently. Not that I wanted it from him, but if anything, he was in more of a guilty position between us than I was.
However, there was someone I did need to talk to.
I pulled up Elizabeth’s contact in my phone and her messages. I started to type out a response.
“What are you doing right now? I want to see you and talk about what happened Thursday.”
This looks like an invite for sex.
This is too vulnerable.
This is too weak. Send something stronger.
Don’t send this. This—
I hit send before I could change my mind.
I needed to fight my first instinct here. Otherwise, I wouldn’t need to let go of guessing the future. I just needed to go up to the fourth floor of the hospital to know what it looked like.
