PLAYLIST: NEVER LET ME GO – FLORENCE + THE MACHINE
Iwatch her get triggered, and while it is hard for me to regulate myself, this is the window. For her.
“Tell me what happened with your brother,” I say as I grasp her face. She needs to push through this, or she might never.
She wants to pull back, push me away, but I won’t let her.
“Tell me. Say it, right now.”
She is retreating, evading. Her eyelids twitch, and she shakes uncontrollably.
“Say it out loud,” I order her. “NOW!”
One wild gaze, before she shouts at me.
“I KILLED HIM! I was mad at him because he ripped off my barbie’s head, and I told him to vanish himself so I don’t have to see his face ever again. He hid. We didn’t find him for days. He suffocated in our underground storage. He didn’t know better, he took me literally, he was autistic, a severe form—he, he just did exactly what I told him?—“
And suddenly, all the pieces come together. The reason she knew how to deal with me, and also why she thinks El killed herself because of what Amelie said.
“How old were you when your brother died?”
“Seven,” she says.
“Seven,” I repeat. “You were a child. None of it is your fault. You were a child. You didn’t know better. Just like your brother didn’t know better.”
She looks at me in total bewilderment.
“But I told him?—“
“You were a child. You were not meant to take on your parents’ job to take care of your autistic brother. You were a child yourself. You needed protection. You needed guidance.”
The tears flood down like a waterfall over her cheeks.
“My father,” she says. “He—he told me?—“
I pull her into me and say, “Your father should have told you this: It is not your fault. You are a child. You didn’t know better. It is my fault that I didn’t watch you, that I wasn’t there. I am so sorry that you feel responsible for something you are not. I want you to grow up knowing that none of it is your fault. Accidents happen. And I love you. I will always love you.”
She completely collapses into me.
I hold her.
It is such an emotional moment that even I shed a tear as I rock her softly back and forth and caress her hair.
A nurse enters, I shake my head and tell her to leave with my head—gladly, she nods and leaves silently.
At some point, I just lie down with Amelie in the hospital bed, because I can’t sit anymore. My butt still hurts like shit, a vivid reminder of what happened.
None of it was okay.
But it was the only way to get her and me through.
I know she didn’t mean to.
She wasn’t herself that night, in the most literal way possible. It is not an excuse, but it is my decision to see the person she was before she was triggered.
I thought she would break me that night.
By all means, I wanted her to.
