Trauma

“It’s always going to be like this,” she whispers. “Always.”

She hiccups violently and I brace myself for more vomiting, but none comes this time. I’m quiet, petting her hair and dabbing her mouth with a wet washcloth. I have no response to this. She’s right.

“I’m always going to be touched, grabbed, laughed at. There’s no end. There’s nowhere I can go and nothing I can do.” She opens her eyes in a flash of lucidity and I think maybe she’s sobering up, but she only says “I want to die” and lays her head back down onto my lap to cry again - a bleat this time, the defeated, strangled cry of an animal trapped to be slaughtered.

“I know,” I hear myself say. “I know, but I love you. I love you. I’m sorry.”

“I know you love me. I love you too. But Maddie,” she holds her face in her hands and, squeezing her temples, sobs without holding back. “I want to die.”

And she means it, I know she does. Someone doesn’t drink that much pure alcohol unless they mean it. So I cradle her in my arms like mother with child, like God with man, like love with hopelessness. I try to make her know that no matter how much she wants to die I won’t let her, not ever. But she’s unconscious now, so I pick little pieces of throw up out of her hair and try to throw them into the trash without waking her up. I know that this love is going to be the end of me as I know me to be, this love is going to reap all it can sow and then leave me waiting desperately for an explanation, empty and burning for her to come back and try to understand.

But this is my explanation, my reason, my justification. She’s still alive tonight. And that’s reason enough.