Page 78 of Unloved

“It’s the same old thing over here,” she says flippantly. “Just another year older, you know that. And how are those beautiful boys of yours?”

Those beautiful boys of mine are still tangled up in bed together, but I figure she doesn’t need to know all the details about our life together.

It’s so funny to me how much she loved them in such a short amount of time, and yet it isn’t surprising at all. My mother is a woman with a lot of love to give. Even growing up with my friends from school, she was always a safe space.

The mother you could tell your secrets to and she would still manage to console or reprimand you while making you feel like you were heard and understood.

I’m so lucky to have her.

And it’s another reason as to why when I finally found the time to tell her about Lennox and Rhys, it was probably the most anticlimactic conversation she and I have had to date. I didn’t anticipate any one single reaction, but I expected some questions, or at least some poking and prodding. Some curiosity when I mentioned that not only am I bisexual, but more importantly I’m part of a throuple.

She’s the one who uses that word. I couldn’t give a shit about any of that stuff, but she thinks she’s hilarious for it, while I just continue to bask in the love of a mother, Iknownot everyone receives.

After my dad died, we kind of fell into this understanding where you didn’t leave any stone unturned when it came to the ones you loved. You didn’t make decisions based on assumptions and you always asked for clarification when needed.

People find it annoying.

People often push you away.

But later on, you learn that the same people really just want you to stay, want you to care, want you to love them, they just don’t know how to ask.

I learned this all from my mother, and it’s the reason after Rhys’s overdose, she’s the only person who understands exactly what I’m feeling.

The hurt.

The confusion.

Thefear.

I tried not to let it show, but for the first few weeks I was scared all the time. Scared that there was such a fine line between relapse and suicide. Scared that one mistake could have such grave consequences. I was scared to lose him, period.

But there was my mother, reminding me constantly about the things I should and could be changing. She reminded me every day to normalize conversations between men about their feelings. She reminded me every day to normalize conversations betweenmymen.

Mymen.

I absolutely love it when she calls them that, because that’s what they are; they’re mine. And I want to protect and love and cherish what’s mine any way I can.

Rhys’s overdose brought up both a lot of old and many new feelings for me. There was so much unresolved trauma that I didn’t even know existed, but the truth is, it’s hard to know if you’ve processed something as enormous as suicide at the age of ten.

I mean, I knew my father was dead.

He was gone and not coming back.

Those concepts as a ten-year-old are hard to understand but not impossible. What’s impossible is trying to explain to your ten-year-old son that suicide is not a reflection on how much you loved your loved one.

Like Rhys himself had told me once, my father’s love for me and my love for him had nothing to do with why he took his own life. Those things weren’t at all mutually exclusive, and that’s what made it all so much more difficult to process.

It was such a nuanced topic and my thoughts were black and white. They were sometimes too innocent and childlike, because I knew the difference, and I knew reality. I just didn’t ever want to have to deal with the truth.

“And what’s got you thinking so hard over there?” my mother asks me, reading me like a book.

“Nothing,” I assure her. “Nothing that can’t wait till it’s not your birthday.”

She offers me a sad, yet beautiful, smile as her doorbell rings. Her face scrunches up, looking so put out.

“Are you going to answer it?” I ask her.

She shakes her head. “No, if it’s a package, they can just leave it at the door.”

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