Work Text:
It's hard to grieve someone who isn't dead
Matt doesn't think that any of this, him and Ma, would be improved if she was dead, instead of a smoke-and-mirror entity. In many ways it would be worse, in so many unimaginable ways, it would be so much worse. Its only benefit, as cruel and disgusting as it makes him feel to think of it as such, would be that he would have a reason to feel weighted down and empty, gutted and stuffed full of so many emotions he thought he would split apart at the seams. Grieving the lack of her wouldn't feel so odd and stupid and morose if she was truly dead, and not just gone.
He hated the word gone and its vaguity. It gave no dimension, not of time or of space or of depth. Instead, it attempted to describe something by its lack. By the simple fact that it was missing.
His Ma is gone. Not dead, just gone. Not dead, not here, just gone. Just gone.
It felt like someone had come in and sawed off his leg as he slept. It felt like something had been psychically taken from him. He was off-balance, off-kilter, teetering on the edge of what felt suspiciously like an endless abyss. It was an all consuming phantom pain. It had been more than 6 months since he last saw her and there were still days when he felt so crushingly sad that he couldn't breathe. He couldn’t think. These trains of thought get worse at night. Sometimes, even though he wishes he didn't, he gets lost in that hollowed out feeling.
He had long been under the impression that the sickly weight of sadness would stop constricting his stomach and lungs and heart eventually. Half a year had elapsed and nothing and everything had changed at the same time. He still doesn't know how to live with it, the weight. But he knew that in a place of fear the best thing to do was to keep moving, so he did. He kept up his daily routines, he kept up with schoolwork, even kept up with his readings. He just kept clawing his way through each day, in desperation, knowing deep down that if he stopped, he wouldn't be able to start again. He wouldn't be able to force himself back up, to keep going. So he couldn't take the pain of rest, no matter how badly he wanted or needed it.
Sometimes, Matt just really, really wants his Ma. He wants her to hold him close to her chest until he's enveloped in the vanilla suncream and cigarette smoke smell of her. Until he's close enough to feel her chest rise and fall underneath his cheekbone, her heart pounding sure in the cage of her ribs. To see the night sky quality of her eyes and feel the reassuring press of her hands, her fingers, as she holds onto him.
Sometimes, Matt just misses his Ma.