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Your mother never hit you. It was the sickness inside of her, you knew that, you knew it, you did. You just- it sometimes felt like it was all her fault, even though the sickness took her from you and it ruined her life too.
After she hit you, it was always during an episode, so after she hit you she always forgot. And she’d find you later and ask you where in the world you got those bruises, Crash.
She’d always call you that- Crash.
Because when she asked you where you got the bruises you told her they were from running into things, from having your head buried in books all the time.
You know that she suspected it was actually the bullies at school that hurt you, so that’s why you never minded the nickname. It was her telling you that she trusted you to handle yourself. And even though you were a ten year old boy and you really, really needed help, you appreciated it.
Appreciated her never digging into it because you knew she would be devastated if she ever found out what she was doing in her fits of delusion.
You were ten years old and you thought it was your job to protect her, so you did your best.
…
Crash, she called you. Crash.
You knew the crash of her fists against your back, of her hands digging into your hair, of your heart against your chest in terror. You knew the crash of your door against the frame when you really couldn’t handle the look in her eyes. Crash, crash, crash while she tore through the house searching for bugs that weren't there.
The crash of your hands against your ears in desperation. Your books crashed too, crashed paper against paper while you flipped through them desperately to escape escape escape.
She loved you, you knew this. And as much as it wasn’t her, it was. And sometimes when you looked at her you flinched, and every time you did hot hot shame flooded through your body and your skin itched because inside you knew, you knew it wasn’t her but it really always was.
And when you wanted to claw the skin off of your body, all the times it hurt to look at her all the way through and your eyes watered and your heart crash crash crashed, all those times you burned inside so sad you hid away and prayed that you could forget. That you could forget anything at all.
But that’s a skill you’ve never had.
And your mother never meant it, so you just had to survive. You holed yourself up in your room and read read read and learned so much. And just like your mother always said, a book could be a whole world. A whole new world in which everything was okay. Facts were sometimes painful but never ever cruel.
So you learned and you worked as hard as you could and you got to the point where you could leave, finally get out, escape the endless hurt hurt hurt, but you couldn’t leave your mother. You could leave the sickness inside her, that's what you’d been trying to do for years. But the woman who rubbed your head and read you literature, her, your mother, you couldn’t hurt.
So you stayed, you always stayed.
Crash
Crash
Crash.
...
Eventually she realized that you were always there. That it was you and you and her and you. That you were hers with every crashing beat of your blood through the valves in your chest.
It became the crash of your bodies to the floor, her trying to save you from the eyes of the spies that were always always watching. It was the crash of shaking limbs around your torso in a hug so tight too tight.
It was the crashing of hearts together, because you were one, the same, a front line against the enemy.
Every crash was of a wave against the shore reassuring you that she's still here she's still here. But you were 12 years old. And when it became too much and you finally had to go off to school because the crashing jarred your body too rough and too fast for you to keep it up, it became a different crash; it never ever stopped.
It became the crashing of phones against receivers, of eyelids forced together, of tears against wet cheeks. The crashing of blood in your ears and vibrations echoing through your skull.
The crash of words against your lonely barricade of one. You had to keep her out, stop the crashing of your heart caving in from the guilt. Because it was never your mother's fault but every time you saw her face, heard her voice, read her letters your thoughts all crashed into a fire that burned much too hot.
And instead of extinguishing the fear that festered inside you, the fire made your traitorous terror glow brighter, hot hot metal red. Unavoidable and too real, always too real to forget.
Crash, she'd call you. Like she didn't have a clue. Because she never did. And you never ever told. Crash, she called you. So that's how it went. Crash crash crashing until everything went still.
...
And then one day she tells you all about how you used to be Crash, how cute you were as a child, like a newborn deer. Stuck in your head too much to focus on controlling your body.
And you smile like it doesn't hurt, like you haven't realized since then that a ten year old shouldn’t be left to hurt alone, like she never knew that bumping into a wall couldn't leave hand print bruises on your throat.
She has Alzheimer's now, and forgetting is all too easy for her. You have always wished and wished and wished it was like that for you, that you could forget the bad days, the hurts she didn't mean.
Now the prospect of forgetting terrifies you all the way through.
Everything you are is going to disappear. You're going to be just like her. Maybe, when it finally hits you, you’ll forget about the episodes, the long nights, the monster that lived inside of your mother. Maybe you’ll be able to love her completely, lose the voice in your heart that screams about injustice, about it always being her that hurt you no matter how sick she was.
And maybe one day your memories will crash crash crash against each other fighting to be the first to leave your head forever.
Maybe one day you’ll hear the name Crash and the only thing inside you that will mirror the word is the crash of your teeth as they come together to form a grin, because all you’ll remember is your mother using the endearment fondly, smiling down on you like a mother should, like nothing could ever be wrong.
Crash, she called you. Crash.