He knows exactly how to hurt me, especially when so many of mytragedies were broadcast all over the news.
Breaking News: Regina D’Amour Found Dead at 39 After Apparent Suicide.
There was nothing‘apparent’about it, though. She tied a rope around her neck and hung herself from a rafter in the garage on my eighteenth birthday.
I left for school that morning, a foreboding feeling in the pit of my stomach. For the first time since Lionel went to prison, she was chipper.
His sentencing sent her into a deep depression, and for the following years, she was nothing more than a shell. The episodes would come in waves, but even when she was on the upswing, she didn’t care for me very well. I learned to cook, clean, and function by myself, as most days, she opted for rocking in her husband’s recliner and staring out the window instead.
Luckily, Lionel was very good at selling cars and paid off the house a few years prior to his arrest. He also had a pretty substantial savings that kept us afloat until I turned fifteen and got a job. I used my meager income to pay the bills so we didn't eat through the rest of the savings. I'd hoped one day, she'd snap out of it and would have less reason to resent me when she realized she wasn't left with no money.
But that never happened, and she never stopped resenting me. In fact, she hated that I was still alive. She wasn’t a monster for having postpartum psychosis and hurting me, but she became one when Lionel was taken away from her.
And those moments… those are harder to forgive.
However, that morning, she met my stare, a strange glimmer in her dull blue eyes. Then, she wished me a happy birthday and told me she loved me.
It was the first time she said that to me in over a decade. Except it didn’t make me happy. It was deeply unsettling.
I felt off that entire day, despite my friends trying their best to keep me distracted. They planned a party for me that night, and I was supposed to go straight to one of their houses to get ready for it.
But I insisted on going home first, claiming I forgot my birthday outfit.
Returning to an eerily quiet house wasn’t out of the ordinary, but that day, the emptiness was screaming at me. There was a noticeable shift in the energy, and I knew instantly my mom was gone. The door leading to the garage was within sight of the front entrance, slightlycracked open, and, like a ship called to a beacon, I walked to it in a trance.
She was long dead when I saw her hanging there, the rope creaking as she swayed ever so slightly. And while I could do nothing more than stare, part of me was relieved.
Even before Lionel went to prison, I don’t know that I’d ever seen such peace on her face. It reminded me of what I felt when she drowned me.
I was happy for her, even a little jealous.
I was definitely relieved.
But it undoubtedly broke me, too.
She was all I had left.
That was four years ago to the very day—January seventeenth.
Happy fucking birthday to me.
Sniffling, I bundle up the rope and toss it into a small trash can before slumping on the edge of my bed and bowing my head into my hands. Dread didn’t hang up the rope to threaten me. He hung it to mock me for my mother’s suicide.
She isn’t exempt from his hatred, even in death. Not only did she not believe Dread, but she happily told the world—inmanyinterviews—about what a liar he was. And when strangers lavished us with gifts and sympathy cards after Lionel’s imprisonment, she lapped it up.
I think it was the only thing that gave her life meaning when she wasn't chained to that recliner.
In some ways, she was nearly as bad as Lionel. She may not have killed Dread's mom with her own hands, but she certainly went out of her way to kill his spirit afterward. She damn near did everything in her power to, in fact.
Yet, knowing all of that doesn’t make this shit hurt any less.
I resented her. I judged her. I pitied her. I hated her a little, too.
But I also loved her, even if she still fucking terrified me most days.
My heart aches as tears stream down my cheeks, but I force my lungs to continue inhaling and exhaling, warring against a panic attack until, eventually, I feel it ebb.
My phone buzzes on the bed beside me, where I carelessly threw it before going to shower. I startle from the unexpected sound, hand over my racing heart as I stare at the lit screen.
