In the Family

She carries me into my room. She lies me down in the bed, and gives me a warm kiss upon my forehead. A small tear runs down her cheek as she just stands above me for a moment. She doesn’t bother to say much, she knows I can hardly respond at this point in time. Maybe in the future, if I make it that far. 

“I love you so much my baby.” She tells me one more time. I want to follow her, but I can’t even walk. I feel safe, warm, comforted in her presence. I wish I could open my mouth and put together the words to tell her how much I love her. But I can’t do anything. 

“I want you to know, I am always here for you.” She turns away and goes to shut the door, glancing inside one more time with a tired sigh before she fully pulls it closed. 

I know it bothers her how she has to care for me. How she has to feed me soft blended meals and ensure I never choke. How she has to provide for me and spend her days slaving away to make sure there is food on the table. How she has to wipe the feces from my bare ass while slobber runs down my chin and tears well in both of our eyes. 

I can tell it was never easy on her not having a man around to help care for me. Its been about four years now and I see her growing more weary by the day. I guess that is why he was here today. A new man, one who I had never met but a man who greeted me as if I was his own son. He probably found it to be sweet and telling that he cares for me. To me, however? To me it was nothing but disgusting and disrespectful. An insult to my intelligence and to my manhood. Sure I can’t walk now, but I am just as much of a man as you or anyone else. 

So I lay there, knowing that she has gone back to the room with him. I hear them faintly through the walls, trying to gather whatever intel I can. I know that I can’t have her, but is he good enough for her at least? Is he going to take the sad look off of her face. Is he going to step up and care for me like she has for all of these years? Maybe they will just up and leave me here to rot by myself without the comfort of the woman I love more than anything in this world.

One day I hope that I can get onto my feet, and I can show her how much I appreciate everything she has done for me, but I know that won’t happen. My line of thinking is cut short as I hear sounds, sounds that disturb and enrage me. I hear the rhythmic thumping against the wall. I hear the light creak of the bed. I hear soft hushed moans that get louder momentarily before returning to their hushed state. 

Tears roll down my cheeks and onto my pillow. I know they think I don’t know what is going on, but I do. They think that mentally I am so detached from them that my innocence cannot even be robbed from me in this state. But they are all wrong. I know that it's nothing personal, not an attack on me, but it sort of is in a way. Especially on her end. 

“Stopppp…. You're going to wake him up.” I hear her say, softly but with energy in her voice making it shake and tremble.

“Yeah, and what the fuck is he going to do about it?” I hear him respond.

I expect to hear an argument, the sound of him being forcibly removed from the house, glass being broken, anything. Just a reminder that I am the man in her life and that nothing and no one will ever come between us. The way she always promised me it would be as she tucked me in at night and let me know nothing would ever change.

However, I know I have lost her when I hear nothing but the return of the thumping, the creaking, the moans, only this time they aren’t so soft. They are damn near exaggerated. A hyperbolic sexual display that makes my stomach turn and my heart ache. Shame has been abandoned, and I no longer have a say in the matter.

When I got into that car accident. I thought that my life would be taken from me. As I lie in that seat motionless, as I hear the jaws of life tearing through steel all around me, and I realized I couldn’t move a single muscle in my body. I was sure it was the end.

Sometimes I almost wish it was. See, I had accepted my fate. If I had died in that accident, my life would have ended on a high note. I had the girl of my dreams, I was in the prime of my life, and there was nothing but progress ahead of me. 

We were going to get married. I had bought her a ring. She even wore it for a few months after the fact. I still remember the day I didn’t see it on her finger anymore. I still remember the pain that washed over me. I can’t feel anything anymore, but in that moment I relived my accident ten times over. The pain immeasurable and incomparable to any physical sensation.

If there is one thing I have learned, it's that life goes on. People may never forget you or what you did for them, but once your time is up and you have nothing left to offer, people need to move on and forget about you. That’s the saddest part of it all. The accident left me completely paralyzed, but mentally lucid enough to watch her move on.