Slip

In relationships, there's a point where trust - or maybe comfortability - finds a hold and on a late, late night where insomnia and a bit of coffee drives you to stay up so late that one of the guys who you might call a friend and has saved your life just as many times as you've saved his comes to find you and make you sleep but doesn't because he can feel something's off about you. And so instead he sits his ass down and waits for that comfortability (or maybe trust) to work its magic and make your spill you guts like a fourteen-year-old kid just off a tilt a whirl.

He knows something's wrong that night and you know something's wrong with you too, but what differs between you two is - you know exactly what's wrong with you. However, you don't know that you're going to say what's wrong until he's suddenly sitting on one of the many stools hanging around your lab looking at you with patience. And suddenly, you're licking your chapped lips and can feel it rolling off your tongue with the a rushed slur only the truth ever has.

"Y'know, my dad's birthday's this week - so's my mom's for that matter. They were born ten years apart but somehow they have their birthdays just days apart, it probably one of those funny little things that are supposed to make a couple happier. Because how can you forget someone's birthday when it's right before yours? Or after it? You can't, I'd say."

And as you babble, he's still looking at you with all the solemnity of a psychiatrist (but you never liked quacks, so you forget that as soon as it plays through your mind).

"Buy, y'see my parents weren't like that. My dad was absent a lot - business trips - and he'd forget his own birthday and so, my mom's too." Taking a gulp of air, you try and not let the horrors of childhood overwhelm you as your hands begin to shake so much that you have to grab onto one of the desks in the room. "I'd try and remind him, y'know? Get the telephone number for his hotels and call him up and tell him happy birthday and I'd hope maybe this year he'll remember that it means he should call mom for her birthday or arrange for a flower delivery or something, but he didn't. Not once."

Crossing his legs, your friend looks at you and asks "What happened when he forgot, Rodney?"

"My mom wasn't really awful - not like some of the mom's you hear about. But..." you remember the tirades. How sometimes your sister cried all night. How you did the same.

Breathing harsh, you whisper "She didn't get physical - not ever - but she really knew how to make you feel like crap for something that wasn't your fault. Every damn year she'd say for days after her birthday how 'worthless' and 'stupid' and 'ugly' and 'ungrateful' we were and that it was thanks to our no good father that we were so terrible. Sometimes she'd get on such a roll that if we got too close to her, you'd get your face sprayed with spit as she told you what a bunch of crap you were."

Running a shaky hand through your thinning hair, you send your friend a deprecating smirk. "I'm surprised neither Jeannie or I ever threw ourselves off a bridge during that time of year. When I think back on it, I feel like that would have been a thousand times less painful than getting a new one ripped by your mother."

Gaze very dark and very serious, your companion declares "Whatever she told you were, she was wrong. Every year. You're not a bad guy, you're a good one, not perfect, but nobody is. Everything you do everyday for us here is proof of how wrong she was and is, okay?"

You laugh in disbelief. Of course your mother is wrong! But...she isn't the only who ever told you you were worthless either, so she can't be wrong by too much.

"Thanks," you tell your friend. He's doing his best to make you feel better, so the least you can do is show a little gratitude and at least prove your mother wrong on that front.

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