Love You Hard by Abby Maslin

Author:Abby Maslin
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-03-12T04:00:00+00:00

* * *

I miss my best friend. It’s a fact I can’t escape. At night, as the black countryside obscures the light of our bedroom, I talk to him in my mind as he sleeps beside me.

TC, you wouldn’t believe how difficult things are. I don’t know who to tell since you’re not here. No one can know how lonely I feel, how I looked at your face tonight as we sat watching the nightly news on TV. There was a shooting, a terrible one at a school in Connecticut. We watched for hours, coverage from the helicopters that flew over the school building, the close-ups of the broken parents, their hands over their faces. It was the most awful thing I’ve ever seen, and all I could think was that today is their Before and After.

I could’ve cried for hours, and it wasn’t even my loss. I just felt it more deeply than any tragedy before. These days I seem to feel everything more deeply. And then I looked at you, and your face was blank. I couldn’t understand how you didn’t feel what I felt—the depth of despair—the utter agony of the loss. You just watched the news and sipped your water, and I wondered if you were even there at all.

Depression thrives on aimlessness, a lack of utility. Since the two of us, Depression and I, seem to be gearing up for war these days, I am doing everything I can to arm myself with scraps of purpose, determined not to slide further into the blackness.

Brain School, as I’ve named it, is where I direct my efforts. I’m increasingly worried about the limited number of speech, occupational, and physical therapy sessions TC is entitled to by our health insurance. As far as insurance goes, it’s fairly generous, but it’s certainly not enough if TC is ever going to regain enough language to function independently again.

It’s painful to watch him struggle as he does, to wonder if he’ll ever conquer any part of the existence he once enjoyed. I am caring for a man who is still relearning my name, and as I reflect deeply on what makes this suffering so unbearable for me, the witness, I have to wonder whether it’s simply because I know all the effort TC put into building his former life. It’s my duty, my ambitious wish, to return that life to him—in whatever small and modest form I can.

I have an advantage on my side: I am a teacher. This is what I do. Utilizing what is perhaps the greatest selling point of the cottage, its light-basked sunroom overlooking the bay, I set up a makeshift classroom, complete with an easel and giant chart paper, each day’s agenda spelled out in large block letters. Now that Jack has recently started attending a nearby daycare, I am able to devote my days entirely to TC.

Over the past several weeks, I’ve made full use of my Amazon Prime account, buying flash cards to teach

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