Now.
"How have you been, Sadie? How's Madden?" asked Karen a fortnight later as we sat down to our next session. Her frizzy white hair was standing up at odd angles from her head, having just stepped outside into the wind to get her phone out of her car in the parking lot. It made me think that if Madden was here, there would be no way he wouldn't be laughing at her right now. He had no filter like that.
"Yeah, I've been alright and he's beautiful, as always. He actually wanted me to say hello to you, and to thank you for helping me get better," I said, recalling our conversation this morning when I dropped him off at school. I honestly wasn't really feeling any different compared to when I first started seeing her, but he was apparently noticing a difference. 'It's not a big difference, Sade. It's just a baby one. I can't describe it though, so please don't ask me to. But I will tell you when I understand it better myself.'
I explained that conversation to Karen when she enquired more into what he had said, and she replied once she was able to stop giggling. "My, he really is something, isn't he?"
"He is. I'm not looking forward to adolescence with his smarts and quick wit. I assume it will be my ultimate demise."
Karen laughed freely, more like a person than a counsellor. It was nice to see because she was usually very professional and reserved in most of her interactions with me. "While I want to disagree with you, believing that you've been through enough in life to be able to withstand anything else life throws at you, he does seem to possess a lot of qualities that might make his adolescence challenging for you. But don't worry too much, Sadie. If he's anything like you—which I'm beginning to imagine he is—you really have nothing to worry about. Trust me."
Get a grip, Sadie. You haven't even made it through the usual pleasantries. You can't cry yet. There's still fifty-seven minutes to go.
I thanked Karen for her praise and approval of my parenting of Madden and his striking similarities to myself, trying to glaze over the topic as soon as I could to keep the tears from flowing. She knew what I was doing when I asked her about how her work has been since I saw her, but she went along with it and returned my question to me after she answered herself.
"Work's been as stressful as always. You know how it is. Quite a few kids who aren't going so well at the moment. A lot of self-harming actually, which has been a little harder to manage recently considering everything I've started talking about in here with you. Similar wounds being reopened from my own past, I guess . . ." I said.
"Your own wounds, or that of others?" she asked carefully.
"Both, I guess. And the general distress of seeing others so deeply unhappy."
"Tell me a little more about that."
Then.
Things with Ruben were good following that eventful week. We both had a small amount of time off over the Christmas and New Year's period while our bosses were both away holidaying with their families. It meant we were able to spend a few full days together, which was nice. We went down to the beach a couple of those days, once with the kids and once with Tanner and Morgan before they headed off to go camping up near the New South Wales border with Tanner's family. We escaped the heat with the kids by going to the movies, watching some awful animated film Hadley wanted to see and Ruben couldn't say no to when she batted her eyelashes at him skillfully, but it was just nice to be out of the house.
My stepfather hated the heat, and so was usually more agitated than usual during those especially hot weeks over Christmas and New Year's. With the extra heat came extra beer, so he was even more a raging dickhead than usual. In those moments, he would demand to know why I wasn't working, highlighting that I hadn't worked in a week and that I needed to contribute to the house instead of just lazing around. He never remembered the next day that I explained that my work was closed over the holiday period, and so we had the very same conversation the next day, and the day after that, and on further until I finally went back to work and he had enough evidence in front of him to shut the hell up.
Most days I managed to steer reasonably clear of him though, or at least exercised enough restraint in keeping my tongue relatively wit-free so as not to bait him into another argument or fight. Ruben's ever-present willingness to include my siblings and nephew in our days together made things so much easier at home, because I wasn't laden with guilt worrying about what was happening to them when I was with him, or otherwise punishing myself for something that had happened while I wasn't there to protect them.
Once both our bosses were back a few days after the start of the New Year, Ruben and I were back at work full-time, so it was harder to look after the kids and even harder to spend time with each other. If he was working nearby, sometimes he would actually encourage his Uncle Jack to take lunch at Greenies when I was working, which was always entertaining. Jack was mortified the first time they came in, learning only after he had eaten the full meal that it was all vegan and filled with mock meats. After that, I only ever saw him order the sweets, which I guess were the safer option for your typical meat-eating tradie.
Everything was as good as it could be, given the circumstances.
Then one night, half way through January, I got a call in the early hours of the morning from a very wasted Camden in Adelaide. I hadn't heard from him since his last message, which I still hadn't replied to because I just didn't feel any desire to try to mask my annoyance with him. When he called, it was to tell me he had seen a photo I had been tagged in online and asked if he—meaning Ruben—was who I was with when I cancelled our plans together before Christmas.
I knew the photo. It was one Tanner had taken of us at the beach the day beforehand. Ruben was shirtless, holding me from behind and kissing playfully into my neck. Camden claimed that he was so 'heartbroken' at seeing it that he had got drunk with his mates out on the beach in Port Adelaide, jumped off the pier and cracked his head open on a rock at the bottom of the shallow water where he fell. His idiot mates didn't think it was a good idea to stop him from doing this, nor did they think it would be a smart idea to take him to a hospital immediately considering they were all drunk and high too, despite him bleeding out on the sand.
So, he was just lying there on the beach, mourning his own pride and lack of effort with me, and resenting that I had chosen Ruben over him. He was so sure we would be together when he got back from his visit to his father's because 'we were the same' and had passions and desires that understood each other; that we could communicate with each other in ways other people couldn't ever understand; and that Ruben was 'just a random jock and that I could never actually be satisfied with someone like him.'
I was furious about what he said about Ruben, and if it weren't three o'clock in the morning and his alcohol-diluted blood not streaming forth from his stupid cut-open head, I would have told him to immediately fuck off. But my instincts in that moment were to talk him out of doing something even more stupid, and to get him to a doctor to fix his head before he passed out and his moronic friends left him there to bleed out or drown with the rising tide after he passed out.
After practicing on my regular test subjects at home over the years, I had perfected the art of talking to drunk people who wouldn't listen to reason or logic by then, and whipped out my 'Dealing with Drunks in the Wee Hours of the Morning 101' playbook, and began reciting my memorised lines. "We'll talk about this more when you're feeling better, but we won't get that opportunity unless you get up and go to a hospital."
"No! Fuck that. I don't care anymore. You were the one, Sadie. You understood. We understood each other. What's the fucking point now? You've chosen him over me. And I won't ever be happy again. I may as well just kill myself now," he said slurring every word, his tone fluctuating between anger, jealousy and despair from one sentence to the next.
I was getting so annoyed with him—his drunkenness and his lack of reason. I dealt with this shit every day at home and I may have been used to it by now, but I didn't want to have to do the same with him. "Camden, just shut the fuck up and go to a hospital, otherwise there really will be no chance for us."
"Us? Wait, so I haven't lost you?" he asked pleadingly.
"Well, we won't know until you go see a doctor and fix your fucking head, will we?" I didn't mean it, but bending the truth with suicidal drunk people seems like not so bad a thing.
"But when I get back, we'll be together?"
"I don't know, Camden."
"Then I'm not going to fucking do anything. There's no point if there's no hope with you. I'd rather die," he said stubbornly, crying again.
"Fine. I'll think about it." I already have thought about it, but he doesn't need to know my conclusion on the matter just now.
"Promise me."
"Promise you what exactly?"
"That you'll think about it. That you'll give me a chance when I get back in a couple days and we'll talk, and things will be good again and . . . and you'll give me a chance."
"You already said that one," I said exasperatedly. "I promise I'll think about it, but I can't promise you anything if you won't get up off your ass and go see a doctor."
"When can I see you? I want to see you, Sadie. I need you."
"You're in Adelaide. I couldn't see you now even if I wanted to. Just go to a hospital, get your head sewn up, and then we can figure something out. And don't just tell me you're going to go and not go. If I don't see proof you've gone to a hospital, the thinking about it is off the table."
"I'll go now then. I swear. I don't know where one is, but I'll find it," he said frantically. I could hear him trying to get up, falling down, dropping his phone in the sand, swearing and finally getting his shit together enough to stand upright, no doubt swaying excessively.
"Should I just call you an ambulance?" I asked.
"No, I'll just walk to the shops. There are some still open, and then someone will help me and I'll go and then you will believe me and keep your promise and we'll work it out."
"Well, what are you waiting for? Go!" I said, both exhausted and annoyed.
"Okay, okay. I'm gone," he said, hanging up. He called back a second later, just to say 'I miss you. Okay, now I'm really gone,' and hung up once more.
I couldn't sleep the rest of the night, especially after I received a photo an hour later of his hospital identification band around his wrist.
Holy fuck. I had never seen anything like it before—scarring like that. Lines upon lines of cuts. There were so many of them. So many different sizes and shades spanning from the old and faded, to the rich, red burgundies of those deeper and fresher slices. I didn't know he did that. He always wore long sleeves, even in the ridiculous heat, and I guess I now know why. It was confronting and so sad, and I felt sorry for him. I didn't want him to be like this and I didn't want to feel responsible for the fact that he was doing this. But I did. I knew I had kept my relationship with Ruben from him because it was really none of his business, but I didn't think I had encouraged him to believe there was something more to our friendship with each other. I certainly never expected him to do this as a result of my being with Ruben.
It was my fault, and I could stop it from happening if I just ended things with Ruben and were instead to be with him. That's clearly what he wants, and I'm sure it wouldn't be all that bad. He's charming and funny, and seriously hot, and we like similar things and have a shared passion for art and music. If I did this, he wouldn't hurt himself anymore. He wouldn't be drunk and high and jumping off piers in the middle of the fucking night trying to kill himself.
He would be okay. I could make him okay.
I don't know why, but I need him to be okay.
- - -
a/n:
Who would you choose?
Comfort and Stability
or
Passion and Freedom?