All of the dishes and flatware flew through the air, cast about by his flailing arms. He raged, his fury filling the empty spaces in the room, forcing its will so that inanimate objects temporarily took on a life of their own. The flight of the plates and glasses was short lived, terminating as they collided with either the walls or each other. Just as short lived were their self-cohesion — the plates and glasses were transformed into shards and splinters. The chaos was punctuated by the cacophony of the shattering and settling of the shards.
He always had anger within him. It would pop up in typical ways, but lately it was out of control. He was out of control. He knew that he was different, and that both caused and fed his anger to the point where it easily grew into rage. He knew exactly why he was angry, but he couldn't be bothered to analyze it; that would just feed his rage, and as it was, his rage was already gorging itself.
His breath was ragged and he struggled to find a focal point. Failing to find one, he kept his feet planted and just allowed his breathing to be the sole source of sound in the room. All about him was the destruction that he had caused, and as his rage cooled to a manageable level, he took in the whole room. The walls were a soothing shade of green — which made him bark a bitter laugh to himself — although the uniformity of the paint was now disrupted in areas where the porcelain and glass had struck them. There was a chair rail lining the room that matched the polished cherry wood furniture. It really had been a lovely dining room before his rage reconfigured the place settings. Now, it was an unfortunate victim of someone’s carelessness.
Just like he was.
He permitted himself another bitter chuckle, as a particular realization struck him — as much as he was a product of his environment, his environment was now also a product of him.
This was not how he wanted to live his life.
This was not the life to which he had subscribed.
She ran into the room and her eyes widened as she soaked in the devastation that he had wrought. His breath was still ragged, his rage cooling almost to a manageable level. Almost. His voice was lost somewhere within him, but fortunately she had learned that asking him questions was fruitless; worse, it tended to reignite the rage, since he would then struggle to provide the answers which she was requesting. The look in her eyes was a blanket smothering the fire within him. The look in his eyes softened to meet hers.
Shame filled the vacuum created by the departure of the rage. As if rehearsed, he hung his head and his shoulders slumped. She approached him slowly and while he anticipated a berating, she instead took him into her arms and held him, resting his head on her shoulder. She said not a word — she never did, so why would he expect a berating from her? But he knew the answer to that already — because he felt like he deserved it. He wanted to be punished for his rage response, to be chastised because he knew that he had done wrong, to be berated for having such a childish reaction. But she refused him any of that, offering instead a shoulder upon which he could cry.
And cry he did.
His attempts to choke back sobs and dam his tears failed, and his body shook in her arms as she held him. This was an old, familiar dance for them, and she had never feared him. He had never hurt her, and she knew that he would never hurt her. She did not have a first-hand understanding of his frustrations, but she had spoken with him so much, had known who he was before and how he was now, and she understood his struggles. These were the moments that could have, should have tried them the most, could have, should have been the hardest to endure with repetition. And yet her empathy and his regret made it so that they could survive these moments.
She held him tighter as his tears streamed down his face. All he wanted was to be what he had been, as fast and as sharp as he used to be, and to be the man that he had once been. He had previously expressed those feelings to her, lamented over his loss and moreover, over her loss of him. Each time, she reassured him that no matter what, he was the one that she had chosen, and that she would stay with him, she had promised — vowed, even — and that they would face it all together. He always felt less and less worthy of her promise and her love with each act of rage.
Among all of his struggles, holding back the rage was proving to be the most difficult. Frustration mounted and grew, weeds in the garden of his psyche, and it increased in magnitude each time that he failed to find the word he needed, was unable to recall where he parked the car, or could not recognize the face of someone he knew. Her patience, on the other hand, seemed nigh-infinite, disproportionate to his as his rage increased.
She told him that she was proud of him, since the span between each bout of rage had grown, while the intensity of the devastation had diminished. His control was nowhere near as tenuous as it had been at the start, and she routinely made sure that he was aware that she was aware of that fact. Not that it stopped the guilt and shame from slamming him with the same force of the plates and glasses against the walls mere moments earlier.
The physical injuries of the accident had healed almost to completion, but the psychological trauma persisted. He was exhausted from the battery of tests, both physical and mental. He was tired of feeling that he was less than what he had once been. And yet, he and she had never been closer. He had witnessed all that she had done to keep their lives together while he recovered, playing his role as well as fulfilling her own in their life together.
That was just what a mother did. The knowledge of that only encouraged further weeping. How could she be proud of him? He was a mess, a messy man who made a mess of things. He was diminished, inadequate, less than.
But mothers do not see that. They never do. She reminded him of that as she looked on him with love, unfailingly, and that no matter what, she loved him. He was never less than, could never be less than in her eyes. He was her son, and nothing could diminish that. He felt even more unworthy than ever, standing amidst the chaos and destruction that he had wrought. This was him, this was what he was about now — a swirling, destructive maelstrom.
No, she said. That was what he did, and it was not what he normally did, how he typically was. She asked for him to trust her, trust in her words, because she was his mother and she would never lie to him, she could never lie to him. So she did not lie to him. Even though he struggled to latch onto her words, struggled to hold fast to them, he still managed to do so. Between sobs and around his tears, he promised her that he would do better. It was easy to promise that while she held him. He wanted to make her proud of him. He wanted to stop being so angry and distressed.
For the love of his mother, he could and would do his absolute very best.