The boy I couldn't save

I am at the mechanic’s to see to a loose wheel. It’s blazing hot. A tall and sweet mechanic covered in grease offers me a seat in the shade and a plastic disc for my car license.

How much do I owe you? I ask sincerely.

Only your number. I’m joking.

Okay, I say, and give him my number.

That night he calls and we go out on a date and eat T-bones and drink tequila.

He’s so gentle and mild mannered and polite it never occurs that in a few months of living together he will be drinking his sorrows in cheap brandy and smashing anything of any sentimental value to me while pelting me with raw eggs, only to apologise in the cold, hard light of the morning.

But he has known nothing but abuse in his life. He’s told me, stoned.

I think I have enough love, all the love in the world to heal him.

But it’s never enough.

I am always having to go to the ends of the earth and then some to prove my life to him, and still it’s never enough. The abuse turns physical. Especially on those long nights with a bottle of brandy.

It will end. In a furious screaming match.

And I will have him escorted off the property by security. Far from our new apartment. No more. But he will win me back again, after another visit for me to a psych ward, for I have loved him maybe more than I have ever loved another.

Don’t we all just love a hopeless case?

And I reason with myself…

Without me, who will care for his diabetes?

Without me, who will manage his finances?

Without me, who will make sure he doesn’t work himself into an early grave?

And I will go back into his loving arms but it will not be long before the treacherous road into brandy and drugs and the demand for endless shows of love begin again, never to appease the beast of his insecurity.

And I will leave again because if it comes down to saving him or saving myself I have to choose me. And I will later learn that he left a work related wound unattended to and lost his hand in the process. And I will sob and sob and sob for all I might have saved him.

But I had to choose me.

Shoes by Vincent van Gogh