My mother, who was the foundation of our family, hid her heartache well, on the surface she went about her daily life as if nothing happened while inside she was slowly breaking. She threw everything she had into helping my father who was diagnosed with Schizophrenia a few months after the incident. I watched my parents fall, rise and fall again in such a short amount of time that I was exhausted. During this entire time, I, myself, was falling apart. I don’t fault my parents for being caught up in their grief, I can only imagine how alone a parent would feel after losing a child but the fact is that for a long time I went unnoticed. Nobody saw that my eight year old heart was breaking into, I was quite possibly more alone than any of them but never said a word. I just went about my life and tried to be as inconspicuous as possible, they were hurting and I did not want them to have more worry.
And it worked, we moved away and things began to get better. That was, until my dad stopped taking his medication and ended up having to enter a psychiatric hospital to help control his illness. After a long stay he came home different, better. He was not completely whole, how could you expect him to be, but he was more like my father than what I had remembered in a very long time. Again, things kept getting better, though it seemed like my mother had become more withdrawn than ever.
Then one day, when I was 10 years old I heard a commotion downstairs. I went down to see what the fuss was about and found my mother with a gun in her hands. My father begged her to put the gun away but she kept yelling at him, saying that she just needed to see her son, that he had nobody to protect him. I remember thinking to myself “What about me, why don’t you protect me? Why don’t you even look at me?” Heck, I had been standing there for at least ten minutes and they never even noticed I was there.
Eventually my father managed to bring my mother back to reality long enough for him to get the gun from her hands. He took it and sat it down on a table right in front of me. They still did not see me, I didn’t try to hide, but I was simply invisible to them. After my father sat down the gun he went to my mother’s side and put his arms around her, but I guess she did not want to be touched because she became completely unglued.
Everything from this moment on I remember in slow motion, I watched her arms fly out from her side and she began to hit my dad over and over again screaming that everything was his fault. That he didn’t try hard enough to keep Nicolai home. She yelled and she hit, over and over again. All I wanted was for everything to stop. I wanted her to stop hitting my father, for him to not be sick anymore and for me to just get some sleep, something I had not done peacefully for quite some time.
I was suddenly very angry and all rational thought seemed to vanish from my young mind. Even now, I don’t completely remember picking up the gun, all I remember for certain is seeing it in my hands. I began to yell at the both of them “I hate you, none of you love me, I want Nicolai...” all kinds of nonsense that I am sure seems very juvenile to you but I was only ten and I only understood as much as any ten year old could.
I saw the look on both of their faces when they finally noticed me standing there with the gun in my hands. They were not only shocked but they were heartbroken. My father mumbled something to me, I don’t remember what, and then he ran to me placing his hand on the top of the gun in my hand. I remember watching his mouth move the whole time but I don’t actually remember a word that he said other than “Jemma baby, let go of the gun princess.” And so I let go only he wasn’t quite expecting my grip to loosen as quickly as it did and the gun hit the ground going off on impact.
I put my hands to my ears and began to scream. My father noticed my mom first; I could barely open my eyes. When I finally did open them I saw that my mother stood in place grasping her stomach with both hands, it took me a moment to realize it was because she had been shot by the escaped bullet. I watched as the blood pooled between her fingers, after a few seconds her hands vanished, covered in red.
When she hit the floor fear spread over me, all I wanted to do was run and so I did. I turned around and bolted up the stairs, my father following me, begging me to stop every step of the way. I was terrified that he was going to hurt me; in my head I had just murdered my mother. It did not matter that the gun went off after hitting the floor. All that mattered was that had I never touched it in the first place my mother would not be bleeding to death in the middle of the living room floor.
I eventually made it to the upstairs bathroom and locked myself inside. When my father started screaming at the door I instantly became overcome with fear, fear of what I do not know, and I began to scream. I felt like someone had their arms around me and was tossing me all around the room. It was not until I heard my father’s first kick that I realized I had destroyed the entire bathroom making that unidentified fear even more intense.