What You Took From Me

You're shouting at me again.

This same tired song and dance that started from an argument as stupid as who gets the last of the milk for their coffee. My money that bought it, your fridge that keeps it cold…and of course we've escalated to the same worn plateau that peaks every argument we have.

I should have just let you have the damn milk. I take my coffee with or without, I just wanted to tease fun at you like we used to when we were kids dealing with who got the last cookie, the last popsicle, the last squeeze of toothpaste from the tube. We would always pretend to fight and laugh in the end, splitting the spoils fifty-fifty.

Shame on me for thinking the last tiny bit of milk left over from Mabel and Dipper eating cereal was nothing to go to war about.

I stop talking and dump the milk down the dish drain, an old but tried-and-true method of making things fair. Now nobody gets the milk, and I try to stop the argument now before it escalates into something I cant handle before at LEAST my second cup of coffee.

Apparently, having a tolerance for someone's bullshit be hair-thin before coffee intake is yet another thing we have in common. You start shouting louder, pulling out the cards you KNOW will hurt me. I'm wasteful, I'm selfish, I'm incapable of caring about anyone but myself, I ruined your life, is there anything I WONT take from you?—

I don't know what caused that knee-jerk reaction, but you should be thanking your lucky stars whatever you faced in that portal honed your reflexes, or you'd have a mug filled with hot coffee crashing into your face. It crashes into the wall behind you instead, and I don't stay waiting for your reaction.

I stalked out of the kitchen and into my room, shutting the door and locking it for good measure, grabbing clothes out of my closet and putting them on. I was just happy the kids left early this morning to go fishing with the Corduroys so they didn't have to see that, but I know the fight wouldn't have escalated to that if they were here to remind us to tone it down.

But your words kicked up something painful, Ford. What WONT I take from you?

What wont YOU take from ME!?

We gave to each other so much as kids. I gave you protection from people who would hurt you or stare at your hands. I gave you my support with anything you wanted to do. I gave up boxing for you, because Pops said if he was paying for lessons, it had best be for both of us. But you hated boxing. You hated getting hurt. And I hated seeing you hurt. So I gave you my promising future on a team.

I gave you my pride with every award you won. I WAS proud of you. People would see your intelligence and talent instead of your extra fingers, and the smile on your face put a smile on mine.

But then things changed. YOU changed. You began to TAKE from me without giving anything back.

You took my confidence. I was listening through that door in the principal's office, when everyone called me stupid, directionless, and nothing. I pressed my ear to the door, waiting for you to stand up for me, like I had stood up for you. To tell them about the things I WAS good at, things that only YOU could see because nobody paid attention to me. But I heard nothing. Every possible idea I had apart from that silly dream to go sailing around the word fell apart without you telling me I could do it.

You took my heart. I didn't mean to break your project. I even tried to fix it, but I had no idea how your project worked. It was a mistake and I regret making it every day. I tried to placate you, but there was nothing I could say to get through to you. You stood by and watched as Pops literally threw me out of the house, and didn't say anything. I reached for you, and you instead mourned the loss of a school you knew about for less than a week more than the loss of your twin you've known since the womb. I felt my heart shatter when you pulled those curtains closed.

You took my youth. Your refusal to stand up for me wasted rest of my teen years and young adulthood, the times when I was supposed to be finding myself, dating, maybe finding a wife, were instead spent living out of my car and doing things you couldn't imagine for money. I did things someone would never mention until they were dead and buried and left them written in a shame memoir for someone to find years later. I learned trades, but none were anything to be proud of. There wasn't a day I had contentment or comfort, knowing that I had nowhere to go and no one to turn to.

You took my hope. Oh, you couldn't imagine what I felt when I got that postcard, Stanford. Seeing your normally-neat handwriting scrawled out in big, panicked letters gripped my gut, and all I could think about was what you had gotten yourself into. Were you hurt? In trouble? In real danger? I didn't care, I just knew you needed me. I had heavy debts to pay, but you came first. I drove non-stop to Oregon in freezing weather, and then had to hike two miles in the snow when I couldn't drive any further.

The state you were in worried me. But you told me you trusted me with something big. I wasn't going to waste any hope of reconciliation with you, so I listened to what you had to say, understanding less than half of what it was. You spoke of that one shred of my childhood I had left, the hope of us being together…and then you shattered it. You put your journal in my hands and turned your back to me. That fight we had left a mark on my right shoulder forever sealing all hope of ever having what we used to have.

You took my health. The burn got infected. Bet you didn't know that. The pain kept me awake for three days straight, and I used up every bit of medical supplies you had in your lab to keep it under control. It wasn't even healed before I began working on that stupid portal, my health only declining as I studied your journal and code-breaking, physics, and mechanics books for hours on end, having to start from square one to get basic understanding of ANYTHING.

I've had more pulled muscles than I can count, more days of running my business with my body on fire and brain threatening to shut off mid-tour that I care to remember. I threw my back out when I was thirty-four, and it's never been the same since. My shoulder still aches in bad weather, especially the cold, like a morbid anniversary of when you branded me. I even suffered a minor stroke that took half of my hearing and some of my eyesight, all to bring you back.

But worst of all, after everything that happened, when I saw you come out of that portal alive, and I opened my arms, feeling like I could cry from everything that ever happened since I was seventeen finally coming down to this, and you instead gave me a fist to the face, I realized that worst of all, Stanford, you took my life. Everything. EVERYTHING I had, you took. My hopes, my dreams, my health and my heart, my home of thirty years, and a livelihood I've actually grown to love, EVERYTHING.

And God help me, I still wake up every morning just to see your face, because what else do I have left for you to take?

I grabbed my keys and walked out of my room, not looking at you as I passed you on the way out the door. I hear you say my name, but I don't respond, shutting the door behind me and getting into the car, driving down to the diner so I can have my goddamn cup of coffee.

I have one thing left, Stanford, and it's the last breath in this broken body. And it's for damn sure I wont waste it on you. That's one thing you cant take from me.