“Yes, you are. You’re scared—that’s different than not being certain or not knowing,” she points out.
God, she’s good. I suppose it’s both a blessing and a curse how well she knows me.
I sigh, dropping the paper plate on the table and brushing the crumbs off my hands. “Yes, I still want to marry her.”
“Then there’s a hard truth you need to hear,” she explains, crossing her arms on top of the table. “Marriage has many seasons, Kai. Hard ones and easy ones, long ones and short ones, ups and downs and highs and lows. Seasons of beauty and seasons of grief. Marriage is about carrying each other and loving each other through all of them.”
I swallow because objectively, I know my mom is right. Kendall and I have been through so much together, we could get through this rough patch too. I just don’t know how. I don’t know where to start. And I’m scared she won’t want all thebroken, haunted parts of me. My damaged pieces and jagged edges.
“What if she can’t love me like this?” I posit without looking at my mom. “I don’t even like myself right now,” I admit. I’m jaded, terrified. Leaving the house feels like a monumental task. So, I just haven’t left…in weeks. I’ve stopped trying, stopped caring. And that paralyzing numbness is a slippery slope.
“She’s theonlyone who knows how to love you like this. Kendall will meet you exactly where you are and love you more for it. You have always done that for each other.”
“I don’t want to burden her. To ask her to do that.”
“Kai, I think she wants to carry you through this difficult season. And she can. She’s much stronger than you think she is. She’s just been waiting for your permission.” She lets me chew on that for a moment. “I don’t think this is really even about Kendall. I think this is about you,” she surmises.
“I have nothing to offer her. I look around and I don’t even recognize my life,” I whisper, holding my hands out and palms up. I haven’t admitted this out loud, not to anyone. And it doesn’t change the circumstances, but I do feel a little lighter.
“You still haveeverythingto offer her. She hasn’t stopped loving you because your career path has changed. And of course you don’t recognize your life. You went through something unimaginable and horrific.Youhave to create this new version of your life. You have to reinvent yourself and rebuild. You, my beautiful, brilliant son, have to rise from the ashes.”
“And if I can’t?” Because that’s my fear, isn’t it? Not just that I would lose Kendall. But that I’d lose everything. That I alreadyhave. This thing that’s gnawing at me, this stain on my soul, would eventually swallow me up and spit out my bones.
My mom grins like she’s privy to information I’m not. “Don’t tell the others but you're my favorite and you’re also the smartest.”
I scoff. “I won’t breathe a word because you’ll deny it to the death. And I’m not the smartest, Ryo is. I’ve been knocked down, Mom, but I’m not delusional.”
“You’re damn right I’ll deny it,” she laughs. “Ryo might have the highest IQ but you are the smartest and most emotionally intelligent. He still has a ways to go in that department.”
I snort in response because she’s spot on.
“You can do this, Kai. You know why?” I shake my head. I glance at her, her eyes are bright and she’s radiating love and warmth.
Thank god for her.
“Because you came fromme. You forget I had to reinvent myself too, to rebuild all of it from the ground up. I had to fight tooth and nail for my miserable life and learn how to love it again,” she explains, choking up a bit.
“You thought your life was miserable?” I ask.
She hesitates for a couple seconds trying to figure out her wording. “Not anymore, but yes, when things were at their worst. I did.”
“I haven’t forgotten, Mom,” I respond my voice low.
I could never forget that day no matter how many times I’ve tried.The sound of tires screeching, the crunch of metal and glass, the smell of burning rubber and acrid smoke singing my lungs. My screams penetrated the crisp winter air.
“Haven’t you?” she implores, her tone probably a bit harsher than intended. We don’t talk about this time much, this period of her life and mine that’s been drowned in shadows and ripe with suffering. It’s a breeding ground for pain, turmoil, and instability.
And yet, here we stand. We’ve survived it.
“I had to learn how to navigate my entire environment in a wheelchair. To survive knowing I was the only person in most rooms that wasn’t able bodied. To enter a room full of my peers,people who used to be my friends and know they pitied me. I had to give up my independence and rely on people way more than I’d like to. To fight that little voice in the back of my head that said dying would be better than the way I was living. I had to make peace with the fact that the first thing people notice about me is that I’m in a wheelchair. And I did it all with three young children.”
“I know, Mom.”
“Your life is very different now and that doesn’t mean bad. It's justdifferent.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“I’m not going to pretend to understand what you went through and your lived experience. And I know you won’t pretend to know mine. But what I’m saying is that it can be done. Youcanstart over,” she says, covering one of my hands with both of hers.
