Page 32 of I’m Fine Save Me (The Spiral Duet #1)
It’s a horrible process and I never feel like I’m doing enough.
It always feels like I lose a piece of my soul listening to her struggle through regulating herself.
Early on, I tried letting her just cry it out, but those meltdowns lasted far longer.
At one point she cried so hard she nearly choked. I can’t let that happen again.
Rolling my head back against the wall, I have to blink several times to keep myself from crying.
I can’t break. I’ll never put myself back together fast enough.
“What did I do wrong?” Cooper asks and it almost shatters me, but I tamp it all down.
I’m fine.
Lifting my head, I meet his eyes and offer that sad smile one more time. Holding up an index finger for him to wait, I continue singing. We hear our daughter’s sniffles and hiccups signaling the gracious, tapering end of this meltdown.
“Mama? Deddy?” Those little whimpered words are so broken, but also so fucking welcome.
Peering into the bedroom and signaling Cooper to look as well, I slowly get up to my feet to enter the bedroom. I hold up the letter E block that she threw at her father’s head and that bottom lip of hers starts to quiver.
“Sorry, Deddy.”
The moment Cooper’s heart melts, I see it in his eyes and in the way the tension leaves his body. He crouches down in front of her again and holds his arms open.
Watching as Hannah climbs out of her weighted cocoon and into her father’s arms to cling to him like a monkey, my heart swells.
They’re okay. We made it through another one and we’re all okay.
“I didn’t mean to scare you, Kiddo.” Cooper murmurs while rubbing her back and kissing the top of her head through a mop of dark blonde waves. “I thought you needed a hug, but I think I was wrong.”
“Deddy doesn’t know the rules about what happens when there’s crawlies.” I tell Hannah gently.
Crawlies are what she calls the feeling of everything hitting her at once. It’s when she has big feelings and nothing works to make them go away, according to her therapist.
“I’m going to teach him, but you understand that throwing things at Mama and Deddy isn’t how you tell us something is wrong, right?”
She nods her head without lifting it away from Cooper’s shoulder, her eyes are aimed in my direction.
“When you’re ready, I want you to clean up this mess and then it’ll be bath time, alright?”
My brilliant child nods. After a few moments, she kisses Cooper’s cheek and comes to give me a hug.
Soon she’s picking up her stuffed animals to put them back in their place.
I watch as she puts her favorites on her bed while the rest go into a sling net hanging in the corner of her room.
Once she’s folded her weighted blanket in the way only a child can do, she’s back in Cooper’s arms.
He handles bath time while I throw together something for each of us to eat. Hannah falls asleep, and Cooper and I shower together before curling into bed where he lays his head on my chest. His arms snake around me in a tight hold like I’m going to float away if he doesn’t cling to me.
Gently, I run my fingers along the French braid he let me put into his hair after our shower. “What is it, baby?”
“What did I do wrong?” he asks me again in that same broken whisper as he’d asked in the hallway earlier.
Leaning down, I kiss the top of his head before sitting back against the pillows again, still stroking that braid.
“When Hannah gets extremely frustrated with therapy, or if she has any really big emotions, she’s a lot like you.
Instead of slamming doors, punching walls, or doing other things…
” I trail off, waiting to see if he’ll talk about the branding and the cutting I know he does.
I’ve seen the scars and the new marks, but he always shuts me down when I ask about them.
When he says nothing, I continue. “She starts tapping her foot on the floor at first or clicking her teeth together. Those are the subtle signs, then the snapping fingers start and her breathing gets heavy. By that point, I’m too late.
If I miss the foot or the teeth, there’s going to be an episode like tonight.
She’ll start screaming and throwing her stuffed animals, because we decided those were safe to throw in her room only.
That’s why I never put shelves in her room and there’s nothing stacked on top of her dresser anymore.
She doesn’t like to be touched because she says it hurts.
Even something like me playing with your hair right now is perceived as pain when she’s in that state.
It hurts like hell not to hug her or hold her, but I’ve learned that just being there is really all I can do while she self regulates.
The blanket helps, but she has to do it herself or she thinks I’m going to touch her and it makes it worse. ”
“I tried to brush her hair out of her face…” he whispers and sounds so pained with guilt.
“You didn’t know.” I try to assure him.
He shakes his head and squeezes me tighter. “I should have known. I’m not here enough to know how you handle all of this, or how bad the bad days get. I’m so goddamn sorry.”
All I can do is press more kisses to the top of his head and run a hand down along his arm. “She’s okay, Coop. You didn’t hurt her. She still thinks you hung the moon. You’re the bravest person on this planet. Her Hero. No one comes close to how awesome you are.”
That doesn’t even get him to crack a smile and my heart breaks all over again.
We lay like that until Cooper rolls over and falls asleep comfortably. I check my phone because it’s been hours since I looked at the damn thing.
I see that Cooper had texted me that he was on his way home early.
There’s a message from Chris wondering why I haven’t logged in. I simply send my mandatory good night text as a response with the short explanation of “bad mental health night here.”
One month of the silent treatment in addition to the night I’ve had, have me not caring if I have to answer for that short response later.
My family will always be more important; and tonight I had to comfort them both while keeping myself from shattering.
Tonight I had to be doubly strong and I don’t have the mental capacity to deal with him telling me I fucked something up.
There’s another message but this one is from a number I don’t recognize.
Unknown
Hey, sweetheart. This is my new number. I had to get a prepaid cell phone. I want you to come over and have dinner with me next week. I will be better. I promise.
There’s only one person in the world who calls me sweetheart and that’s my biological father. My head rolls back against the headboard. I close my eyes and breathe in deeply through my nose.
Every fiber of my being wants me to respond for him to fuck off and block this new number of his.
I’ve changed my number twice, and I don’t know who keeps giving him the new ones.
I hear all the voices of family members, old friends, and other people who know Wayne.
Some of whom I haven’t gotten around to blocking on social media.
That’s your dad, you at least owe it to him to try.
You only get one father, and one day you’ll regret that you didn’t have him in your life.
What will you tell your daughter when she only has one grandfather coming around?
He’s your father, you should see it from his side.
Blood is thicker than water.
One day he won’t be here and then you’ll always wonder what could’ve been if you had forgiven him.
None of them accept the truth of what he’s done.
Of course they think I’m being dramatic and they won’t hear my accounts of events.
How he never stood up for his daughters, or how he stole my identity.
They don’t believe that he confessed to cheating on my mother multiple times, because he felt like she didn’t offer him enough affection.
They don’t care that I’ve tried so many times to push all of that aside; but he won’t admit he’s done anything wrong.
Give him the chance to be better.
It’s my mother’s voice I hear, and the woman is a fucking saint. For all the shit our father did, she’s never once tried to turn us against him. She’s always let it be our choice. The first few times after the divorce, we felt like we owed her loyalty.
My mom said that his infidelity was not a testament to his ability to be a father and we could make our own decisions.
Then she encouraged us to try to spend time with him, because she thought it would make him a better person to have us in his life.
There’s never been a day when my mother didn’t tell us that we were the greatest part of her life…
I just don’t think her ex-husband ever saw us that way.
And yet… It's her voice I hear telling me to give him a chance. After a day of failing in so many ways, I just want to do something to earn some good Karma. So, I type out a message and hit send before I can talk myself out of it.
Tegan
Alright. I’ll see you Sunday evening. Text me what I should bring.