She doesn’t say anything. Turns her body away from mine, resting her head against the window, closing her eyes. Shutting me out, just as I’ve shut her out.
So much for distracting me during our five-hour drive.
In fact, Shay ends up falling asleep until we get to Trondheim, when I reach over and purposefully wake her up. I guess with all this traveling, she’s become a pro at falling asleep in cars, planes, and trains.
My mind goes back to when she first got off that train in Trondheim, at the station, when I first saw her in the flesh after so many years. I had no idea what I was getting myself into with her, but I knew I had to do everything in my power to keep her in my life again. That I wouldn’t make the same mistakes I did before.
And what am I doing now?
Making the exact same fucking mistakes.
When I was a young fuck-up, I hated myself so much. It was hard not to hate myself. I had a father I didn’t see eye-to-eye with, who became a shell of a man after my mother left him. Maybe I reminded him of her too much, but he pushed me away, closed himself off to me, and I rebelled. I rebelled against everything, becoming the very thing I hated. I was tired of being the good son, the dutiful son, when I didn’t get any love in return. If he wanted to treat me like a bad seed, then that’s what I was going to be.
I played a role until it became the threads that held me together.
I lashed out.
I did drugs.
I made my father make the hard decisions.
And then I pretended it didn’t kill me when he made them.
My father sent me away because he couldn’t handle me, because I became the bad son, the fuck-up. He was starting to resent me anyway, why not take it all the way and give him a good reason?
So I went to America.
To my mother, who hated me so much that she left her whole family behind and chased after some guy who barely knew her. I knew my mother didn’t want a family to begin with, I knew she treated me, Astrid, Tove, Lise, like we were unwanted pets running around her house. But knowing that didn’t make it easier, didn’t ease the pain when she suddenly up and left us, breaking our family in half.
My mother definitely didn’t want me with her in New York, fucking up her new perfect life with her new man. But she had no choice. Though she wasn’t my mother in her heart, she was on paper.
And so I was shuffled between two parents who didn’t know what to do with me, who didn’t want much to do with me. How could I not hate myself?
Shay was the only thing I had. When I was with her, I could pretend that her love was all that mattered. I could pretend her love was the thing that was going to save me, redeem me, make me a better man. Make me a man, period, not just some scared damaged little boy.
But then it got to be too much.
I couldn’t keep up the charade forever.
I knew Shay deserved to be with someone that I wasn’t, because what I really was, deep down, beneath the emo poetry and the bad tattoos and everything else that I carefully crafted to hold me up, was someone inherently unwanted and unlovable. And, eventually, she would see that version of me. And she would leave me.
So I never gave her the chance. I pushed her away, put up the walls, started lashing out and cheating and doing more drugs and skipping school, because it was easier than being rejected by her.
That was my biggest mistake and I’m making it all over again.
I’m making excuses for us to be apart, I’m ignoring the fact that I’ve fallen back in love with her, that she makes me feel like a fucking god, and I’m pushing her away because I think it’ll be easier in the end.
But it won’t be easier.
It will hurt worse than before, and once again I’ll only have myself to blame. When you’ve lived most of your life in guilt and shame, the finger pointed inward, relentless in blame, it becomes second nature. You start to think you deserve it.
But she makes me feel like I don’t. Like I’m someone worth loving. That I have more to offer the world than what I’m currently giving.
I can’t lose that. I can’t lose her.
And yet it feels like right now, I’m about to lose it all. Every single thing that I love.
“What is it? Where are we?” Shay says sleepily, lifting her head and looking around.
“Just outside Trondheim,” I tell her. What I don’t add, is that this is her chance to say goodbye if she wants to take it. I don’t tell her because I don’t want to push her away anymore, and that’s exactly how she’s going to take it.