Washington

The landscape is always different. Like now, sitting in the backseat of a hot car, listening to the professional and the woman who knows him best rattle off diagnoses and issues, hopes for the future and problems from the past. The grass is taller and the sky is bluer and the hills in the distance are nothing like back home, pine trees, most of them young, stretching and stabbing the clear sky with their pointed tops.


Just like Montana, seven years ago, driving across the deserted land with the immense mountains in the distance going to see the boy I grew up with, the other brother who built me forts and taught me how to play sega, but who I didn't know at all, who I was terrified to see because the last memories I had of him were marred with tears and confusion and behaviors that a little girl like me could not possibly understand.


And now it's nothing I haven't heard before, and things that I will surely hear again--executive functioning issues and substance abuse relapses and disappointments and the general unhappiness or inability to survive in a world that he feels doesn't want him--so I drown it out and stare at the passing landscape trying to ignore the anxiety in my stomach at the thought of seeing the one person in this world that I absolutely cannot live with but I also cannot live without.


Last night mommy was screaming in her sleep. When I finally woke her up, I asked her what she was dreaming about. She said she had a dream he was using again. I said it was only a dream.