No wonder I’m fucked up, since my love for her is the reason she stays with the man who hurts her.
I don’t understand her, and I don’t want to.
She’s made every wrong choice a woman can make, and I paid for it.My whole childhood became collateral damage, and I was the price of her weakness.
I took the hits meant for her, swallowed the words that destroyed my self-worth, and stood between them before I even understood what I was protecting her from. The worst part is I’d suffer it all again if it meant she finally chose herself—not me, not him, but her.
“You can’t love him. Love isn’t abuse.”
“He wasn’t always like this. After he left the military…”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, stop making excuses for him. One day, he’ll kill you. You know that.”
“He wouldn’t?—”
“He absolutely would.”
And if that happens, I’ll rip the skin from his bones while he screams, and I’ll make him watch every piece burn.
“Maybe if you came home, you could see that he’s changed.”
“I can see the black eye under your makeup. Don’t insult me with bullshit.”
“I just… I miss you.”
“Then leave him and come to New York with me. I’ll take care of you.”
My mom starts to sob quietly. “I can’t, baby boy. I’m sorry. I just can’t.”
“Then you really are lost,” I whisper. “And as much as I love you… I can’t keep watching you do this.”
That was the last time I saw her.
Seventy-three days later, my mom was gone.
She had a heart attack in her sleep, which wasn’t exactly the ending I’d spent years preparing for, but life’s got a fucked-up sense of humor. The woman survived strangulation, beatings, and broken bones. She survived being thrown down the stairs, nights that should’ve killed her, and a marriage that was nothing more than a long, slow execution.
My father couldn’t kill her outright—not with his hands or his rage—so he did it the slow way.
He broke the one thing she still had control over: her heart.
He chipped at it year after year, bruised it with invisible marks, and reshaped it until it learned that the only escape she’d ever get was to stop beating entirely.
And it did.
It just gave the fuck up when it realized the only way to stop suffering was to stop living in a world where he existed. There was no big dramatic finale to her life, no last words, just a muscle that decided it was done fighting a war it could never win.
“How is she?” Shannen asks.
How is she?
Fucking dead in the ground, that’s how she is. Buried six feet deep, with nothing to show for her life but a son who got screwed up along the way and a husband who probably celebrated with a bottle of whiskey.
“Dead.”
Shannen gasps, her hand flying to her mouth like she’s trying to shove the sound back in. “Phoenix… I’m really sorry… How long?”
“A year ago. I just got back from Indiana. It was the first anniversary.”
