“That’s the problem,” I say, voice low. “He leans on me so hard I’m starting to lean wrong, too. Every silence is a cliff. Every missed call is… ” I shake my head. “I’d bleed for him, Mama. Gladly. You know that. But I’m starting to worry that if I keep bleeding like this, one day I’ll look down and realize there’s nothing left.”
Her face softens with a pain I recognize, the pain of watching someone you love hurt and being able to fix only pieces.
“I’m not saying he’s doing anything wrong,” I add quickly. “This is trauma. This is his brain trying not to drown, and I want to be the one he calls. I want to be his first number. I just… don’t know how to be that without burning myself out to keep him warm.”
My mom reaches across the table and puts her hand over mine. Her palm is small and warm, the same hand that bandaged my scraped knees and smacked the back of my head when I got smart-mouthed.
“Mijo,” she says quietly. “You cannot hold him together alone.”
“I know,” I say.
“You say you know,” she replies, “but your actions say you don’t believe it. You rush to campus when his phone dies. You take days off work without telling anyone why. You sleep on half of a twin bed to make sure he doesn’t disappear in the night.” Her eyes shine. “I love that you love him like this. I am so proud of the man you are. But you’re not a full-time caregiver. You’re his step—” She pauses and sighs, “His partner. His… husband in all but paperwork. You can’t be his only support.”
The word "husband" hits me sideways, but I let it pass.
“What, you want me to stop answering when he calls?” I snap, then immediately regret the edge in my tone. “Sorry. That was?—”
She squeezes my hand. “No. I want you to have someone to call, too. I want you to talk to someone who can help you carry this in a way that doesn’t break you. Dr. Kaur, maybe. Or someone else. I want you to have your own support. Your own plan.”
I stare at her. “You think I should… see his therapist?”
“You could ask,” she says. “Maybe not as her patient. Maybe as… a partner who wants to support someone in crisis. She can’t tell you his secrets, but she can give you tools. And if not her, then maybe she can direct you to someone for you. You’re living in his war zone without armor.”
The thought of sitting in a room like that, like the one he described, talking about the way fear coils in my gut when I see his name on my phone… Makes me want to crawl out of my skin.
Also makes an ugly kind of sense.
“I don’t want him to feel betrayed,” I say. “Like I went behind his back.”
“So don’t go behind his back,” she says simply. “Tell him, ‘I love you and I want to support you without drowning, so I’m going to get help learning how to do that.’ You think he’d be angry at that?”
I picture his face when I showed up at his dorm.
The way he said,“You’re gonna burn yourself out on me.”
Maybe he’s been waiting for me to realize it.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “Maybe. Maybe not. But… I can’t keep doing this like it’s just me and him against the world when the world is bigger than both of us.”
She smiles and nods. “Good. Then call. Asking never hurt anybody, find out what help looks like for you.”
I stare at our hands, her thumb rubbing circles on my knuckles like she used to do when I couldn’t sleep as a kid. The lump in my throat feels too big to swallow.
“If I lost him…” I start, then stop, because the words are too heavy.
She hears them anyway.
“I know,” she says softly. “That’s why you need more people holding the net.”
“Ma, what about Dad?”
Patting my hand, she gives me one of her signature looks. “You let me worry about him. And when you’re ready… when both of you are ready… we can tackle that.”
Later,back at the condo, I stand in the middle of the living room with my phone in my hand and a knot forming in my stomach.
The number is already in my contacts. Dr. Kaur. Caleb took a picture of her business card once and sent it to me “just in case you ever need to yell at her on my behalf.”
Looks like I might need something different.
