AN: Yep, another fill for the glee_angst_meme, this prompt by sj_r:
In 'Ballads', Kurt said it was ten years since his mother died. In 'Home', Burt said it was eight. Probably just a small continuality error, but my brain is screaming: they see her death differently. So give me what you can come up for for this; I just want angst.
WARNINGS: touchy subjects, including alcoholism, suicide
Versus Eight
I was six when I saw my mother binge drink her way into a stupor and nearly choke on her own vomit.
I was six when I called 911 (I was a very precocious child, and knew that this was what I was supposed to do even though my parents hadn't taught it to me).
I was six when I rode in an ambulance for the first time, watching with a detached sort of interest the way that the people (I didn't know they were EMT's at the time) tried to take care of her.
I was six when I watched my mommy get her stomach pumped out while being rushed down a hall, before some nice nurse noticed me and took me away. She had a little make-up bag in the front desk that she let me play with. I appreciated that.
I was six when I was allowed from the waiting room to see her, leaving my father's lap because I was told I was the only one she wanted to see. I thought she just loved me best, but I now realize she couldn't face her husband, not when she'd been drunk as hell when she was supposed to be taking care of her little boy.
But I didn't know. I didn't know just how bad it was until I hopped onto her white bed and started patting down the sheets. Until I looked into her eyes, the emptiness that filled them.
"Oh, baby," she'd said mournfully as I started to cry silent tears, because this couldn't be my mommy, who had problems but always got better in the end. I didn't know the full extent of the problems back then, just that they were there because living with the woman made them plain as day. I didn't know about the addictive, depressive personality then. I do now, though, I know them very well. I do take after her, you know. "I'm so sorry," she whispered, stroking back my hair. "I'll be all better soon enough, you just see."
I'd nodded, a strange feeling that I soon would recognize as desperation filling me, because I wanted nothing more than to believe her at that moment, but I was a perceptive child. So I didn't.
I watched my mother die that way, maybe not in body, but in the most important way.
That's ten years.
I was eight when my mother committed suicide. She hung herself from a rafter in her and dad's room. We both found her, and I caught a glimpse of her hanging lifeless and threw up as my father made horrified sounds.
That's eight years.
I don't care what anybody says.
My mother is dead.
(I love her, still.)
She died ten years ago.
My father says eight.
That isn't true.
It's ten.
I saw.