Personal Prose - Tumblr Posts

I love you, and I am so tired of hearing you.

You've been sick, I know, and it's heartless of me to feel burdened by that but here I am, heartlessly thinking of leaving the house- running off somewhere the rattle of your lungs can't reach, where I can't feel your coughing as sure as the vibration of a phone constantly receiving notifications. It reaches me in my dreams, where monsters of the plague claw their way out of your mouth and rouse me from my sleep to find you trembling beside me. It's been a sleepless week and I know you're more tired than I am but I can feel my teeth going slightly out of alignment from the way I clench my jaw.

I can't talk over people, I've never been able to do so without feeling like I'm inflicting harm on myself. Maybe it's the autism or maybe it's an excerpt from the dark chapters I wrote before loving you but each cough of yours silences me completely. I sit frozen as your stuttered breath turns into doubled-over barks of pain, waiting as 13 of them wrack your body before I can finish telling you about my day. It hurts me the way a slammed door does, the way clapping hands near my sensitive ears hurts me, and the way the sounds of my mother hurt me. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's because of her, again.

It's always seemed to me that my mother could not exist without sounds. A sigh as she came home each day, puffing and stomping up the stairs. The grunts of exasperation as she would labor around the house in this hateful, exaggerated way that I knew meant she wanted me to help without her asking. Her asthma, and allergies, and constant colds could be heard from anywhere in the house. And her loud southern way of talking. Every golden silence, every pocket of quiet in which I stowed my daydreams would be filled with her sounds that I could do nothing about.

I grew up in my room, desperate for reprieve but feeling frozen. I started saving money to buy my way to sanctuary as a teenager, and got it last year- moving in with you.

But darling, when I hear a sound like ripping in your chest I'm not in our little reprieve from the world. I'm in my childhood bedroom, tired and wide awake at 3am as my mother hacks sickness into a sink and I feel just as helpless. Forgive me, love, for being just as unwell as you are right now. Ignore my flinches, my tortured glances, my tightened jaw.

Get well soon.