Hospitals were boring.
The same smells, the same sounds, the same cries, the same despair.
To be frank, when you went through one, it's like you went through all of them and even though it would not seem the case, I would indeed confirm that with the fact that the current hospital in which I was laying in a bed, one of the richest and thus the most founded and state of art of Montreal if not of Canada, the Centre Médical Westmount-Royal, in part thanks to that good old bastard we all called Capitalism that you liked to complain about but that you really liked deep down no matter what you said when your grandparents won at capitalism the game in real life and thus had invested a lot in said hospital I was in and thus why I was treated in a way an American with health insurance problems and the like would literally kill to have, smelled like the same old hospitals I had visited in my youth for one reason or another when I was still living with my bitch of a mom which was when I thought about it really long ago with the fact that it had been more than half a decade since I lived with my grandfather and thus had my medical examinations done by old friends of my grandpa, family doctors coming at our house.
The scent was universal, I thought, this particular cocktail of disinfectant and desperation that seemed to permeate every medical facility regardless of how much money was thrown at the interior design. It didn't matter if the floors were imported marble or cheap linoleum, if the walls were hung with original art or mass-produced prints of flowers that looked like they'd been rendered by someone who'd never actually seen a flower in real life, only heard them described by someone who was deeply apathetic about botany.
The smell remained. Antiseptic and illness, cleaner and bodily fluids, the attempt to mask decay with chemicals that only succeeded in creating a new, more disturbing scent that announced yes, something is very wrong here, we're just trying to hide it.
Anyway, where was I before I went on a tangent? Kinda forgot, ah yes, something something about my grandparents being investors of the private hospital which probably why I was not dead yet even though I felt as if death had warmed me over and was also waiting for me at a corner to jump me. Like some kind of predator in an alley, patient and hungry, knowing that eventually I'd have to walk past, knowing that eventually my luck would run out and there would be no one to intervene, no one to save me from whatever waited in the darkness with teeth and claws and finality.
In other and simple words, I felt like shit and the hospital room no matter how pretty one may argue it looked with its walls painted in that particular shade of cream that was supposed to evoke serenity, that color that design magazines probably called something pretentious like whisper of dawn or breath of tranquility but that really just looked like the color of old teeth, yellowed and dying, with its floor made of some kind of wood that was probably imported from Norway or some other place where trees apparently grew better than in Canada, each plank perfectly aligned and polished to a shine that reflected the fluorescent lights overhead in a way that hurt my eyes when I bothered to look down, with its adjustable bed that had more buttons than the cockpit of a plane and could probably launch me into space if I pressed the right combination, each button labeled with tiny icons that were supposed to be intuitive but really just looked like hieroglyphics, ancient and incomprehensible, with its massive flatscreen TV mounted on the wall that I hadn't bothered turning on because what was the point, what was the fucking point of watching other people live their lives, fictional or otherwise, when my own was apparently circling the drain, with its private bathroom that had heated floors because god forbid your feet get cold while you're dying, and a walk-in shower with seventeen different spray settings as if the water pressure was going to cure whatever the fuck was eating me from the inside out, as if the right combination of massage jets and rainfall simulation was going to knit back together whatever had come unraveled in my brain, with its armchairs upholstered in leather so soft it probably cost more than most people's cars, positioned by the window as if visitors were expected to sit and enjoy the view while discussing my prognosis, with its abstract art hanging on the walls that looked like someone had sneezed paint onto canvas and called it genius, all swirls of blue and grey that were probably meant to be soothing but instead made me think of bruises, of the way skin looked after impact, after violence, with its window that overlooked the city and let in light that felt too bright, too cheerful, too alive for what was happening in this room, light that seemed to mock me with its insistence on illuminating everything, on making me see clearly the situation I was in, but no matter how pretty, the room and the fact that I could hear my grandparents, mostly my grandpa scream just outside my room things like I made this hospital, how dare you, you better heal my grandson or else and all the other kind of things to realistically expect when the hospital you invested more than half a hundred million dollars seemingly couldn't find what was fucking wrong with your only grandchild, said grandchild that was more in a way your child than otherwise, that was not more than seventeen and manifestly dying without the doctors being able to do jack shit didn't change or help or stop the headache I had that really wanted me to jump from my window.
The headache felt like its own entity, as if it was alive. Not just pain but a something, something living behind my eyes that pulsed with my heartbeat, that expanded with each breath until it felt like my skull was too small to contain it, like my head was going to crack open like an egg and spill its contents across these expensive Norwegian floors. The doctors had given me painkillers, of course, had pumped me full of drugs with names I couldn't pronounce and didn't care to learn, but they did nothing except make me feel disconnected from my body, floating slightly above it, watching my own deterioration from a distance that should have been comforting but wasn't. The pain remained, distant but present, like watching someone else being tortured through a thick pane of glass.
That was life I guessed, some days, everything went well and others you follow advice from the sketchy too good looking ala K-pop idol new philosophy teacher replacing the old one from a week which is why you looked above and realize the sun is missing before feeling something burst in your head before falling and losing consciousness. You know, completely normal, all average fucked up day.
The sun was gone.
Where there should have been a sun in the sky there was just nothing, like a void of absolute darkness that seemed to extend infinitely upward, and then something in my head had gone pop, like a balloon overinflated, like a bubble stretched too thin, and the world had tilted sideways and I'd been falling, falling, falling into that darkness that had apparently been waiting inside my own skull this whole time.
Fuck, now that I thought about it I probably lost consciousness in front of everyone, teachers, students and the like which meant that all the uppercrust of Quebec and most likely beyond would know if they didn't already that me, the youngest of the Archambault, pupil of my grandparents could bite it probably before said old grandparents.
The social implications of dying were almost funny if you thought about it long enough. Not the dying itself, that was just terrifying and painful and exhausting, but the way other people would react to it, the way they'd perform their grief or their shock or their schadenfreude depending on who they were and how they'd felt about me when I was still breathing. The Archambault name carried weight in certain circles, the kind of weight that came with old money and older influence, and my grandparents had spent years carefully constructing a particular image, a particular narrative about their family, their legacy, their place in the world. And here I was, about to ruin it all by having the audacity to die young, to become a tragedy instead of a triumph, a cautionary tale instead of a success story.
I could already imagine the conversations, the whispered gossip at fundraisers and galas, did you hear about the Archambault boy, such a shame, they tried everything you know, poor Louis Philippe and his wife, imagine investing all that money in a hospital only for it to fail your own grandson, there must be some kind of curse on that family, didn't the boy have issues with his parents, maybe it's genetic, bad blood, you know how it is, all that mixing, not being firm and pure enough.
As if this was what my grandparents fucking needed at the moment and it also meant that my father and my mother may know, I truly hoped they didn't, I didn't want to see them again, my fucking coward of a father and the fucking monster that was my mom.
The thought of them arriving, of my mother walking through that door with whatever expression she'd decided was appropriate for the occasion, made my stomach turn in a way that had nothing to do with my illness. She'd probably cry, I thought, would probably put on a performance worthy of an Oscar, would clutch her chest and wail about her baby boy, her precious child, would rewrite history so thoroughly that anyone listening would think she'd been mother of the year, that she'd done everything right and fate had simply been cruel to her, had taken her son too soon, had robbed her of the chance to see him grow up despite the fact that she'd spent the first decade of my life actively trying to destroy me.
My father would stand behind her, silent and useless as always, would wear a suit too expensive for the occasion and would shake hands with the doctors and would say things like we appreciate everything you've done in that voice that conveyed absolutely nothing, no emotion, no real concern, just the bland pleasantness of someone commenting on the weather or the traffic. He'd probably be relieved, actually, relieved that the evidence of his cowardice was finally being erased, that the son he'd failed to protect was being removed from the equation entirely, making his own life simpler, cleaner, easier to explain at dinner parties.
Seriously, if I was truly already destined for the other side, I got to make some kind of testament or will or something that would not allow them at my funeral. I made a mental note to ask my grandmother about this, about legally barring certain people from attending certain events, about whether you could write into your funeral arrangements that specific individuals were not welcome to perform grief over your corpse. It seemed like the kind of thing that should be possible, the kind of final fuck you that the dying should be entitled to, one last boundary that couldn't be crossed, one last door that could be locked against people who'd spent years ignoring all the other doors I'd tried to close.
Hey, I may hurt my grandparents when I am gone won't I?
The thought arrived with the weight of a guillotine blade, sudden and severing, cutting through all the other thoughts. This was the real horror, wasn't it? Not the dying itself, not the pain or the fear or the uncertainty, but the knowledge of what my death would do to the two people who'd actually loved me, who'd actually tried, who'd saved me when saving me must have seemed impossible.
I had not wanted to imagine a world without them and in a way, it felt like getting my wish, because if I died first then I'd never have to know that world, never have to experience their absence, never have to figure out how to exist without them. But they'd have to know a world without me, would have to bury me, would have to go back to that big house on the hill and pass by my empty room every day, would have to sit at breakfast and dinner with one chair perpetually empty, would have to answer questions from their friends and colleagues about how they were holding up, would have to perform recovery while dying inside themselves.
I didn't really care about living or dying, not in the abstract sense, not in the philosophical way that my old Philosophy Teacher probably wanted his students to care, not in the way that made for good discussions about the meaning of existence and the value of consciousness. I just was sorry that it seems that by dying I would make all the care and the time invested by my grandparents in me wasted, that I may hurt them, that I ironically may be the reason why they die before the hour due to the grief.
Like some kind of poison, slow-acting and cruel, seeping through their lives until there was nothing left but the memory of a boy who couldn't even manage to survive long enough to justify their love. I imagined my grandfather, that strong man who'd built an empire through sheer willpower and strategic thinking, crumbling under the weight of loss, becoming smaller, older, frailer, until there was nothing left of the titan who'd once commanded boardrooms and terrified competitors. I imagined my grandmother, so elegant and composed, so carefully put together, falling apart at the seams, the grief unraveling her thread by thread until she was just fragments, pieces of a person who used to be whole.
The guilt of it was worse than the pain, worse than the headache, worse than the tremors in my hands or the exhaustion in my bones. The guilt was an ocean and I was drowning in it, choking on it, and there was no surface, no air, no relief.
I wished I could leave something for them, not money of course. The money was a joke, a punchline to a bad comedy about inheritance and wealth and the illusion that material possessions could ever substitute for presence, for life, for the simple act of continuing to exist in the world. All the money I had both available and not yet available even if both being very consequential like the one I had access to and with the less amount being nearly 2 million dollars consequential, it was nothing before what my grandparents had.
Pocket lint in comparison. A rounding error in their accounting. The kind of money that they probably spent on a single fundraiser or a weekend trip or a new painting for one of their houses. What was 2 million dollars when you were worth hundreds of millions? What was any amount of money when what you were losing was irreplaceable, invaluable, impossible to quantify in any currency that mattered?
More than that, I wanted to leave them something that may make them want to fight, to go on. Something intangible but essential, some piece of myself that they could hold onto, that would make the world feel less empty, that would remind them that my life, however short, had mattered, had meant something, had been worth the effort they'd put into saving me. But what could I possibly create or write or record that would serve that purpose? What words could I string together that would have the power to keep them tethered to life when their reason for living was being lowered into the ground?
Maybe I should write letters, I thought. Long ones, the kind that covered page after page with memories and gratitude and apologies for not being stronger, for not fighting harder, for not loving myself as much as they'd loved me. Maybe I should make videos, record myself talking so they'd have my voice, have my face, have some digital ghost that they could summon when the silence got too heavy. Maybe I should plant a tree or start a scholarship or do something else equally symbolic and ultimately useless because what good was a tree or a scholarship when what they wanted was me, alive, healthy, whole?
Kinda hard to do so with millions that was less than pocket change by that, maybe I shoul—
The sound of my door opening cut through my thoughts like a knife through the skin, sharp and sudden and impossible to ignore.
Entering and closing it behind her, my grandma, sa Mamie.
The sight of her hit me like a physical blow, like someone had reached into my chest and grabbed my heart and squeezed. I tried to repress tears. It was like my grandma had taken twenty more years of age in just this afternoon and it was because of me. Her posture, usually so straight it could shame a ballet dancer, now curved inward like a question mark written in flesh and bone, like her spine had decided it could no longer support the weight of what she was carrying. Her hair, always so carefully styled, swept up in that elegant way that made her look ageless, timeless, like she'd stepped out of a portrait from another era, now hung loose around her face in a way that made her look unmoored, adrift, vulnerable in a way that she'd never allowed herself to be in public.
She looked fragile in a way that made my chest constrict, made breathing feel like swallowing glass. She looked devastated and it was because of me.
The guilt crashed over me in waves, each one higher than the last, threatening to pull me under. This woman who'd raised me, who'd saved me, who'd shown me what love was supposed to look like, was being destroyed by my failing body, by whatever malfunction was eating me alive from the inside out. I'd done this to her, or rather, my weakness had, my inability to stay healthy, to stay whole, to be the grandson she deserved instead of this dying thing taking up space in an expensive hospital bed.
I looked away from her with tears having pushed through any possible defense because I didn't want her to see me cry, didn't want to hurt her even more even though I knew it was probably pointless. My vision blurred and the cream-colored walls became watercolor smudges, bleeding at the edges like the world itself was coming apart. I turned my head toward the window, toward that too-bright light, and let my eyes unfocus until the city below became just shapes and colors, abstract and meaningless, easier to look at than my grandmother's face.
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I really was the worst wasn't I, the worst grandchild one may have, the worst of the worst, truly child of my mother and my father, all their sins and cruelties and curses all at once and worse.
A culmination of genetic failure, a monument to everything wrong that could be passed down through blood and bone, proof that sometimes the apple didn't fall far from the tree no matter how hard you threw it, no matter how much distance you tried to create. Maybe my mother had been right all those years, maybe I was worthless, maybe I was nothing, maybe I was exactly what she'd always said I was and my grandparents had just been too kind, too hopeful, too loving to see the truth.
The thought spiraled through my mind like poison, like acid eating through whatever remained of my self-worth. I was my mother's son, would always be my mother's son, carried her DNA in every cell, her capacity for destruction coded into my very existence. And maybe this was just the next evolution of that destruction, turned inward instead of outward, eating me alive instead of hurting others, the same violence just differently directed.
Softly, I felt her hand cradle my face. The touch was so gentle it made me want to scream, made me want to pull away, made me want to tell her not to waste her softness on me, not to spend her tenderness on something that was already broken beyond repair. I didn't fight as she made me turn my head back to look at her, did nothing, stayed still as I felt her handkerchief trying to dry my tears.
The fabric was soft against my skin, softer than I deserved, and it smelled like her perfume, that particular scent of jasmine and something else I could never name but that meant home in a way nothing else did. The smell of safety, of love, of everything good that had happened in my life since the day my grandparents had taken me away from that house of horrors and brought me into theirs. I wanted to press my face into that handkerchief and breathe it in until my lungs were full of it, until it replaced whatever was wrong inside me, until the scent of jasmine could cure whatever the doctors couldn't diagnose.
I really wanted to stop crying but I didn't know why it was so hard to not do so. The tears kept coming like they had a life of their own, like my body had decided to betray me in yet another way, adding humiliation to the growing list of my failures today. Couldn't even control my own tear ducts, couldn't even manage the simple task of not crying in front of the person I least wanted to hurt, couldn't even give her that small mercy.
Finally, I dared look from up close to the face of my grandmother, forced myself to meet her eyes even though every instinct screamed at me to look away, to spare myself the sight of what my dying was doing to her.
Oh, Mémé is crying too.
The realization hit me like a fist to the sternum, knocked whatever air remained in my lungs out in a rush that left me gasping. Her eyes seemed so dark, so full of despair, sadness and anger that no one would have never believed them to originally be sky blue. They looked like oceans after an oil spill, all that natural color drowned under something toxic and thick, something that shouldn't be there but was, contaminating everything, ruining everything. The whites were threaded with red, tiny rivers of blood vessels that spoke of sleeplessness and tears shed when I couldn't see, when she thought she had to be strong, when she'd been alone in some other room of this hospital crying where no one could witness it.
There were many things I wanted to say. I wanted to joke, say something like it is that bad huh and a joke on top of that to make her stop thinking about all of this even if just for a second, even if just to make her laugh, feel anything other than what she currently did but I couldn't, looking at her, it was like I was frozen.
My tongue felt heavy in my mouth, made of lead or cement or whatever material was the opposite of words, the opposite of communication, the opposite of connection. My throat closed up and the joke died there, unborn, joining all the other things I wanted to say but never could. I'm sorry felt inadequate. Thank you felt insufficient. I love you felt like it should mean more, do more, fix more than it possibly could.
The handkerchief retreated only for all the work my Mamie did to be ruined by new tears, fresh ones that spilled over and traced the same paths down my cheeks that the previous ones had carved, little rivers of salt water and failure.
Really being the worst of the worst aren't you Artemis? I asked myself, and the answer was yes, obviously yes, undeniably yes.
She put a hand in her bag and from it, she retrieved a Tupperware, the kind generally used when you either meal planned or in my case preferred homemade packed stuff more than what is in restaurants or even a cafeteria with Michelin level chefs. The container was blue with a white lid, the same ones she'd been using for years, the same ones she'd packed my lunches in when I first came to live with them and was too afraid to eat the food at my new school because I kept waiting for someone to tell me it was a mistake, that I had to go back, that this was all temporary and I hadn't really escaped at all.
I remembered those first lunches, how I'd open the Tupperware in the bathroom stall because I couldn't bear to eat in the cafeteria where people might see me, might judge me, might realize I didn't belong. How the food had tasted like love, like safety, like everything I'd never had before, and how I'd cried while eating it, overwhelmed by the simple fact that someone had cared enough to cut my sandwich into triangles, to include a little note that said have a good day, to pack my favorite cookies without me even having to beg for it. Care, love given freely.
"I brought you strawberries," she said, and her voice cracked on the last syllable like ice fracturing, like something solid giving way under pressure it was never meant to withstand. "I know you like them so I thought it was the least I could do."
The least she could do.
The least she could do.
As if she hadn't already done everything, given me everything, saved me from a life that would have killed me years ago if not in body then in spirit. As if bringing me strawberries was somehow insufficient, as if she needed to do more, be more, give more when she'd already given me my entire life, my entire self, everything good that I was or could have been.
She opened it and put it between us on the bed. The strawberries were cut into perfect quarters, the way she knew I preferred, each piece a small red jewel against the white plastic. They looked impossibly fresh, impossibly vibrant, impossibly alive in this room that smelled like death trying to be sanitized. She'd even brought the fork I liked, the one with the blue handle that matched the Tupperware, because of course she remembered, of course she paid attention, of course she knew me well enough to know these tiny details that no one else would think mattered.
I tried to move my left hand but it felt as if fate was indeed dead set to fuck with me because not only moving my hand felt as if I was pushing a dumbbell, as if someone had replaced my bones with iron rods, my muscles with concrete, my tendons with rusted chains, but as if that wasn't enough, my hand was shaking and couldn't fucking stay still no matter how much I willed it to be.
The tremor was violent, uncontrollable, my fingers twitching like they were receiving electric shocks, like my nervous system was misfiring, sending wrong signals, betraying me in this new and humiliating way. I watched my own hand as if it belonged to someone else, this traitorous appendage that refused to obey the simplest commands, that had apparently decided to stage a rebellion against my brain, against my will, against every desperate plea for just five minutes of normal function.
I tried to take hold of the fork that had come with the Tupperware only to miss it again and again and again and again, my shaking fingers closing on empty air, on plastic container, on bed sheets, on everything except the one thing I was actually trying to grab.
Come on, I thought desperately, come on come on come on, willing my hand to cooperate, to just work for one fucking second, to let me have this one small victory, to let me show my grandmother that I could still do this one simple thing, that I wasn't completely useless, that bringing me strawberries wasn't a completely pointless gesture.
And when finally, I was able to hold it, the metal slipping against my sweaty palm, my fingers cramping from the effort of maintaining their grip, it was only for it to fall from my hand when I tried stabbing into one of the strawberries, my arm jerking involuntarily, the tremor intensifying at the precise wrong moment, sending the fork clattering against the plastic container with a sound that felt enormous in the quiet of the room.
I couldn't help it. The laugh that came out, bitter and acidic turning midway into a chest hurting cough that rattled my ribs and burned my throat and brought tears to my eyes that had nothing to do with emotion and everything to do with the physical act of my body trying to turn itself inside out.
Still, even in the pain, the laugh didn't stop because wasn't it so sad that it was funny? I couldn't even hold a fork. How pathetic was that?
The absurdity of it wrapped around my ribs and squeezed, this cosmic joke where the punchline was my own deteriorating body, where the setup had been my entire life and the payoff was this moment, dying in an expensive hospital room because I couldn't hold a fork, because my hand shook too much, because my body had decided to quit on me before I'd even really gotten to use it.
Sa Mamie brought me strawberries and I couldn't be grateful enough to do the simple thing to eat said strawberries, to try to make her stop worrying, couldn't perform even this basic act of appreciation, couldn't show her that her effort mattered, that she mattered, that I loved her enough to try.
When the coughing stopped, it was to me left hunched, looking at the fork that had fallen in my lap, this small piece of metal that had defeated me, that had proven itself stronger than my will, more powerful than my desire, more capable than my failing nervous system. At least, like that, I didn't have to look at my grandmother. At least like that, she didn't have to look at me, didn't have to see the full extent of how broken I was, how useless, how close to the end.
I felt tired, I felt exhausted, the kind of exhausted when exhaustion is the only feeling you can muster, when everything else has been burned away and all that remains is this bone-deep weariness that makes existing feel like running a marathon, like climbing a mountain, like doing something heroic when really you're just breathing, just blinking, just continuing to take up space in the world.
Everything hurt, everything and I was exhausted. My bones ached like they were being hollowed out from the inside, scraped clean by invisible hands that worked tirelessly to remove whatever made me solid, whatever gave me structure, whatever allowed me to be a person instead of just a collection of pain held together by skin that was too thin to contain it. My muscles felt like they'd been soaked in acid and wrung out to dry, every fiber screaming, every movement requiring more energy than I possessed, more strength than remained. Even my eyelids hurt when I blinked, the simple act of keeping my eyes open requiring more effort than climbing stairs, than walking across a room, than doing any of the million other things that healthy people did without thinking, without appreciating, without understanding how much of a gift simple function was.
Why did I do to deserve that?
The question echoed in the hollow spaces of my ribs, bouncing between vertebrae, settling in the marrow of my bones like something that intended to stay forever, to haunt me until there was nothing left to haunt.
I had lived around a decade of what could only be called hell in the hands of my mother, due to the cowardice of my father and in the end, I had been saved, my grandparents had made everything better like in those stories where knights slay the dragon and save the princess even if a fucked up thing like me was very far from a princess, was probably closer to the dragon actually, or maybe something worse, something that didn't even merit a role in the story, just a footnote.
Those stories where good triumphs and evil gets punished and everyone learns a valuable lesson about the power of love or hope or whatever other abstract concept made people feel better about the randomness of existence, about the fact that sometimes bad things happened to good people and good things happened to bad people and there was no moral framework, no cosmic justice, no balancing of scales.
Still, it should have been my happy ending. That is how it is in those stories right? The hero suffers, the hero escapes, the hero gets to live peacefully ever after in a castle or a cottage or wherever heroes went when the story was done with them, when their function had been fulfilled, when they'd learned whatever lesson the narrative required and could finally rest.
Then why wasn't it happening to me, to my grandparents, why couldn't we have our happily ever after, our and they lived happy forevermore? The happy ever after was supposed to last longer than all the badness and the wrong things and the suffering and the humiliations and the pain and the bullshit I went through due to my mom, not whatever I was living right now.
Not this room that smelled like antiseptic trying to mask decay. Not my grandfather screaming at doctors who had no answers, who could run test after test and find nothing wrong even though everything was clearly, obviously, undeniably wrong. Not my grandmother crying while trying to feed me strawberries I couldn't eat, offering me comfort I couldn't accept, loving me in ways I couldn't reciprocate because my body had betrayed me, because whatever was inside me eating me alive had decided that less than ten years of happiness was enough, was more than I deserved, was the limit of what fate would allow.
Am I such a sinner, so sinful that this is god's punishment toward me?
The question burned itself across my mind like a brand, like something hot and permanent that would leave a scar even if I somehow survived this, even if the doctors finally figured out what was wrong and fixed it, even if I got my miracle and lived to see eighteen, twenty, thirty, old age.
Not enough of honor thy mother and thy father even though they literally abused me?
Abused me bad enough that it was barely an inconvenience, barely cost anything to my grandparents for them to become my legal guardians so many years ago, the courts taking one look at the evidence, at the medical records and saying yes, of course, take him, save him, he can't stay there, no child should stay there.
I was beaten up until I bled and it was hard to breathe when I was six, had knives and forks and even pans thrown at me with the phrase I am your mom so I can do everything I want to you, as if motherhood was a license for violence, as if giving birth granted absolute power over the life you'd created, as if love and abuse were somehow compatible, somehow able to coexist in the same person, in the same relationship.
I remembered being told that I was worthless, that I was nothing, that I should have never been born, that she'd ruined her body carrying me, that she'd sacrificed everything for me and I'd given her nothing in return except disappointment, except trouble, except reasons to be angry. I remembered being so scared of doing anything, of saying anything because when I didn't say anything, it was a fault, I was being sullen, being manipulative, being passive-aggressive, but when I did, it was disrespect, it was talking back, it was proof that I didn't love her, didn't appreciate her, didn't understand everything she'd done for me.
I remembered fearing waking up, lying in my bed with my eyes closed pretending to still be asleep, hoping that if I stayed still enough, quiet enough, invisible enough, she might forget I existed, might leave me alone for one day, for one morning, for one hour. Walking constantly on eggshells, calculating every movement, every word, every expression, trying to predict her moods like reading weather patterns, trying to avoid the storms that came regardless of what I did or didn't do. Being accused of purposely trying to anger her when the last thing I had ever wanted was her attention, when my greatest wish was to be overlooked, to be forgotten, to somehow become so small and insignificant that she'd stop seeing me entirely.
I remember being told that I am worthless, that I am not enough.
The words had soaked into me like water into soil, had become part of my fundamental understanding of myself, my place in the world, my value as a human being. Even now, even after years with my grandparents, years of therapy, years of being told that I mattered, that I was loved, that none of it had been my fault, those words remained, carved into my psyche like graffiti on a wall, ugly and permanent and impossible to fully remove.
I remember being sexually assaulted by one of my father's friend when I was eight because apparently having too much interest in the nipples of a child, of a little boy, god, I wish I was joking was a thing.
The memory tasted like copper and shame, like something rotting that I couldn't spit out no matter how hard I tried, that lived in the back of my throat, that rose up sometimes when I wasn't expecting it and made me feel like I was drowning, like I was suffocating, like I was back in that room with those hands and that voice saying don't tell anyone, this is our secret, you're such a good boy, your parents don't need to know, this is normal, this is what adults do, stop crying, stop fighting, just let it happen.
I could still feel those hands, still hear that voice, still remember my father walking past the closed door, his footsteps pausing for just a moment as if he'd heard something, as if he'd sensed something wrong, and then continuing, walking away, leaving me there, choosing ignorance over intervention, choosing his friend over his son, choosing the easy path over the right one.
I went through all of this and so much more yet I can't have my happy ending?
The injustice of it swelled in my chest like a balloon inflating past its capacity, stretching skin and bone until something had to give, until something had to break, until the pressure became unbearable and I couldn't contain it anymore.
It is said that God gives his toughest battles to his toughest soldiers but I don't want to be tough, I don't want to fight, I don't want to struggle, to suffer!
I'd been tough, hadn't I? I'd survived my mother, survived my father's cowardice, survived the assault, survived all of it when so many others wouldn't have, when statistically I should have ended up dead or addicted or abusive myself, perpetuating the cycle, becoming the monster that had created me. But I'd broken that cycle, or my grandparents had broken it for me, had given me a chance to be something other than my parents' child, something better, something worth saving.
And this was my reward? This dying at seventeen before I'd even really lived, before I'd done anything meaningful, before I'd become anyone important, before I'd had the chance to prove that saving me had been worth it?
What is wrong with that?
The question echoed in the hollow spaces of my ribs, bouncing between vertebrae, settling in the marrow of my bones.
What is wrong with that?
My vision started to blur, not from tears this time but from something else, something that felt like static creeping in from the edges, like my brain was losing signal, like the connection between my mind and my body was being severed one neuron at a time.
What is fuckin wrong with that?
W H A T I S W R O N G
w i t h
w a n t i n g
t o
l i v e ?
what is wrong with wanting to be happy?
what is wrong with wanting to not hurt anymore?
what is wrong with wanting my grandparents to not cry?
what is wrong with me what is wrong with me what is wrong with me
W H Y C A N ' T I J U S
h o l d
a
f o r k ?
WHY CAN'T I JUST
E A T
S T R A W B E R R I E S
why can't i just be normal why can't i just be good enough why can't i just be worth saving why can't i just
w h y c a n ' t i j u s t b e e n o u g h
W H A T I S
F U C K I N G
W R O N G
with wanting to matter with wanting to stay with wanting to not disappear with wanting to be remembered with wanting to not hurt them with wanting to not be my mother's son with wanting to not be broken with wanting to be fixed with wanting
w i t h
t h a t ?
Toward the end, the format I originally used is fucked and I can not seem to change it. Would have probably made the chapter much better but it is what it is I guess. Anyways, I hope y'all like the story so far. It's kinda a prelude. I know, a long prelude but I want to be proper if that makes sense in how I structure the story. What do y'all think so far of Artemis? The characters? What do y'all think about the missing sun?
Anyways, I got a with two more chapters available for free. I would really be grateful if you could in the case you like my story join the patreon. The chapters are purposefully free but I would not say no to having subscribers and some support.