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He wasn’t hurting her anymore.
My arms went limp, jerking against my sides.
“I love you. I love you. I love you,” he said over and over again, his tears soaking his t-shirt, my tears soaking the hands squeezing the last of the air from my tired body.
My vision blurred, and my body was enveloped by a comforting warmth.
It’s over now.
He won’t hurt her anymore.
My last attempt to call his name failed. I closed my eyes, my mind and body ready to fall into a deep and peaceful sleep.
My fingers clutch at the rug under my feet, desperate for something to come and take the pain away.
Anything to feel numb again.
People think feeling numb is a bad thing.
Not to me. Not when the alternative is this.
I try to stop it—the tsunami rushing over me, pushing me down, further and further until there’s no chance of air.
No light.
Darkness everywhere.
I fight against it, unmoving, but inside I’m kicking to the surface until every cell in my body burns.
And it all comes crashing down. The memories I always fight to bury—the sounds of screams, clashes, dishes smashing, the sound of flesh breaking.
And after…Silence.
Silence always followed. I promised myself that someday I’d open my mouth, but I swallowed the silence until it ate at my words, and my voice drifted away because the day I opened my mouth and fought the silence, I lost myself to my screams. I fought to win, but in the end, I lost. I lost more than my voice that night.
All the tiny memories repeat in my head. Everything that has gotten me here and my mother there.
All the times she looked at me but saw somebody else.
“Claire!”
I don’t hear the door opening or what must be the rush of feet, but another silent roar escapes my tired lungs when his arms wrap around my waist, scooping me up from the ground with ease, and out of whatever depths I was climbing into.
“Christ, Claire.” Frantically, he brushes my hair off my shoulders. “Sweetheart, look at me.”
Everything feels heavy.
My shoulders.
My tears.
My thoughts.
Everything is so dark and weighted.
It’s not always like this.
But facing my reality with an outsider there to witness it may have made it too real. It burst the bubble around where I’d tucked the memory of that night.
