#sprout1k

TW: Child Abuse, Mental Illness

When he’s 6 and 1/2, maybe 7, his mother has a mental break. She starts listening to voices only she can hear. Pulls him from school one day, convinced she’s helping. She’s going to let his voice out. It’s trapped in his throat. She can get it out. His father comes home, having forgotten something when he left for work, and in doing so saves Dyns’s life. His throat torn apart by the knife in his mothers hand. 

In the ICU there were doubts that the boy would make it, but he pulled through. Determined. He asked why his mother hated him. And was told that she didn’t. That she was trapped in a dream and didn’t understand what she’d done. That she was going to get help. That she loved him very much. And he believed it. 

His father spiraled downward quickly. With Dyns’s mother in a mental hospital for her safety and the safety of others while she is diagnosed and treated the man found himself suddenly an only father. Mad at himself, at the woman he loved, at the silent child he could project blame onto.

Dyns took to coloring. Learning how first crayons than pencils and eventually a box of paints his mother had bought once and forgotten worked. Thought of the art he’d seen outside on the walls of buildings. The nameless artists who no one ever questioned because no one could find them. He liked to think that one day he could be an artist like that. Hidden and quiet and mysterious. Able to scream through spray paint and defiance. 

While Dyns sought solace in art his father sought it at the bottom of a bottle.

All the misplaced blame. The anger. The sorrow. In the man there was no where for it to go. He allowed himself no outlets. Not until he was too sloshed to stop himself. The first time he struck Dyns was a shock to them both. It would soon enough become commonplace. Dyns was an easy target. No way to alert anyone. Too certain that his mother would come home and fix it to risk being taken away. He was easy to isolate him. Easy to pretend nothing had happened. Easy to drink more and try to forget, new instances stacking on top of the old ones before one set of bruises even had time to heal.

Dyns’s father was increasingly out of money as he tried to keep Dyns in a private school while paying for medical bills and hospital stays and all the normal bills that come with being an adult and the alcohol. Eventually, he believed the only choice was to pull Dyns from his school and send him to public. 

It was not a choice that the boy found ideal.

At the private school everyone Signed. Everyone understood him. He had friends and teachers who believed he was capable. The public school was not the same. No one understood him. The children mistook his silence for either disinterest or deafness. He was upset and frustrated by the time they tried to assign him an interpreter. The boy refused the service. Refused to speak with the man who was only trying to help. He wanted his Mom back. He wanted his old life. 

Dyns was certain he’d get it. Eventually. His mother would get better. She’d wake up from her dream. She’d come home. He’d go back to his old school. His father wouldn’t be angry anymore. It would all go back to how it was supposed to be. If he could just be patient.