Dialogue

“Would you like some tea?”
“I would. Thank you.”
“Careful. It’s hot.”
“I usually prefer iced tea.”
“Mmm. I don’t have any.”
“Maybe I can put ice in this tea.”
“But that’s what I’m saying—I don’t have any cubes.”
“Sorry.”

Conversations between me and my mother had never been the same. After I had been in that accident, tensions had been sky-high. Talking to her was kind of like wearing long pants on a hot summer day in Florida, uncomfortable and sticky. Her dark brunette hair started to gain a touch of gray streaks. She started to use cover-up everyday to cover the bags under her eyes when she lost her sleep. No longer was she able to concentrate and her hand shook like a jackhammer on the sidewalk. Paranoia overwhelmed her and controlled her every thought. I meanwhile, was finally recovering, but seeing my mother was like a setback for me. I was finally out of rehab, but I wanted to go back every time after visiting her.
It was wet and rainy November night with winds around 40mph. Leaves were all over the sidewalks and the streets were slick. I had been a bar, drinking my night away, I had fought with my mother two hours before about my addiction, the addiction I had refused to admit at that time. When she had approached me about it I became defensive and hostile, I slapped her and left a long cut on her face. But it was more like I stabbed her in the heart. My mother was in shock and I stormed out, cursing her under my breath in utter fury. When I had arrived the beer soothed me and I could not stop, I soon stumbled out of the bar to my car. It took me five minuets to put my key in the ignition. The link was set and the car started, I whipped out from the sidewalk, unable to judge my speed and distance from everything, and I sped down my block, which is when my life changed. I flew onto my mothers block, unconsciously doing this for I was simply out of my mind, and drove straight towards her house. I did not know what I was doing there, but I could not control my reactions and when I took my foot off the gas, I put it back on thinking it was the brake. The car did not stop and I made a grand entrance into the glass window of my mother’s living room, destroying the brick wall around it. I departed my vehicle through the windshield, getting thrown through the kitchen wall; I lay lifelessly on the kitchen floor. My mother ran down the stairs only to find the horror that was left, her heart dropped and she had a massive heart attack.
I had been in rehab 45 days before I got out for a one week vacation. I went to visit my mother. My face was still sliced and the wounds although scarring over, were still sore and visible. My left leg had broken in the crash and my both were full of glass and debris. I broke 4 ribs from landing into the counter, puncturing a lung. But I had not cared about my own injuries. In fact now, in retrospect I only cared that I hurt my mother so much and that their was nothing I could do to take back what I did. We avoided the big gray elephant in the middle of the room, working around the problem that neither of us wanted to reopen. Soon my mother would need to enter an olds people home because the heart attack had affected her so much hat she could no live on her own for much longer. I promised that I would take over the house when I was ready to. But this conversation took place well after my first visit. Mother did not talk much, and was seemingly distressed, I cried. Mother comforted me like she did when I was little and I got a boo boo. It felt nice to be back in her arms.