I never wanted anything more than
what I thought other people had; what I was entitled to. A normal life.
Happiness. The ability to pursue the things that I found most important.
Independence. It always sounded distinctly American. I figured I was basically
entitled to these things, like they were my birthright.
I couldn’t explain this to my
therapist. Now here she was, staring at me with an expectant look on her face.
This was the third time I’d been here in the past month and it was decidedly
clear at this point that we weren’t exactly making progress.
She laced her fingers behind her
graying hair, wrapped in a bun, and leaned back, tilting her head to the
ceiling and staring in deep thought. “I’m still not entirely sure what you’re
expecting to accomplish here, Brendon.”
I was only twenty-one years old and
already feeling fatigued, weary from years of stress and worry. I once heard
that men had their first midlife crisis in their twenties and continued to have
one every five years afterward. At the time it was intended to be a joke, but
it took on an ominous air of resonance in light of the series of events that
brought me here.
“You’re not suicidal?”
I firmly shook my head. Panicky and
anxious? Sure. Morbidly depressed? Absolutely. Frantically searching for
answers? Without a doubt. But suicidal? No. Never. The thought had never
crossed my mind. Taking your own life was selfish and cowardly, not to mention
counterproductive to the purpose of my now sitting down in front of a
professional. I had no desire to kill myself, and I wasn’t afraid of that
happening. I was afraid of the world doing the job for me.
“Well that’s good, at least. How
long have you been feeling depressed?”
Tough question. Months now? No, that
wasn’t right. It had at least been a year. Perhaps more. These things are
impossible to trace back. You cannot point to a single event and say with any
definiteness that it was the turning point. It’s something that grows on you
gradually, like adding a brick on your back once every morning and carrying it
with you all day, every day, until one day you wake up and realize you cannot
carry the weight anymore. It is literally crippling you. “It’s only been
interfering with my studies for a little over a month now.”
Click of a pen. Nodding. But
dissatisfied. No doubt she was going to table that question for now, come back
to it later.
“When I was younger, all the
messages I received from my parents and other adults, teachers, counselors,
etcetera, were reinforcing this idea that I was somehow exceptionally gifted.
Very smart. Smarter than everyone else, in fact. That I didn’t belong in the
school I was enrolled in, or with the other kids in my classes.” I swallowed. “I
made perfect grades. And when they weren’t perfect, it wasn’t for lack of
trying or knowledge. It was because I was bored. Disinterested. I wasn’t being
‘challenged enough.’ My mother told me the reason I didn’t have any friends is
because they were scared of me. Scared of my intelligence.” I looked out the
window and sighed. “I always hated hearing that.”
“So you were lonely?”
That was one way to put it. I knew
all the kids in my neighborhood but never spent time with them. Never went to
their houses. I always rode my bicycle alone. On the playground, I always went
on long walks by myself, kicking at dust and rocks and shadows of the
afternoon. There was a fairly sizable area of blacktop that surrounded the play
area proper, where no other kids ever hung out or played. That was my exile. A
literal outsider. I could distinctly remember one night, on my birthday, I
forget which one, when I had invited three friends to spend the night at my
house. I rented movies, asked my dad for a box of popcorn all to myself. I even
managed to convince my sister to let me use the living room all night. Only two
showed up, and one of them had to go home early because he suddenly struck
horribly ill. My social life never had a chance to blossom, and I was never
given an opportunity to grow and branch out. I always had the strange
impression that I wasn’t growing, but rather shrinking, descending further into
myself while the world kept turning without me. “Yes, extremely.”
Well, maybe it had something to do
with the other thing too. It started innocently enough, and the only time I
ever dared ask my father about it he quickly assured me that it was completely
natural. Plenty of boys liked to experiment at my age. I was just like everyone
else. He buried the subject right then and there, held a tasteful funeral and
read it its last rites.
I quickly realized just how big of a
fucking lie that was. Of course my natural instinct was to suppress it and
ignore it. I was literally terrified of it. It was worse than any monster in
the closet or bogeyman hiding under the bed, more vicious than all the violence
and death on television. Nothing could ever compare to the absolute,
inarguable, horrible wrongness of
being attracted to other boys. To say that I was uncomfortable with my sexuality
would be a radical understatement.
“I remember once, it had to have
been like third grade, if that, I went over to the house of a buddy of mine.
One of the rare friends I had managed to cultivate at the time. We were
watching a movie in his bedroom, something animated, really childish stuff. I
wasn’t awfully interested in it, but I was grateful just to be spending time
with someone my age. He was nice. Genuinely cool.” I wiped my nose and stared
at the floor. “At some point, maybe three quarters of the way through this
movie, he looks over at me and asks if I want to play the ‘boyfriend game.’ I
had no idea what he meant. But he said that the rules were basically that I
play the girl, and lie back on the bed, and he would do all the things to me that
the boyfriend would do to his girlfriend.”
She didn’t say anything, just stared
at me, nonjudgmental.
“But so anyway he starts kissing me,
but I stopped him. I didn’t like it. But then he put his hand on my shorts,
between my legs. And I liked that. I liked it a lot. And suddenly I felt very
sick, like I literally almost threw up. And I pushed him away and moved to the
other side of the bed. Thankfully his dad walked in just a couple seconds later
to ask us if we wanted anything to eat. We told him no, we’re fine. But maybe
ten minutes later, he decides he wants to play again.” My eyes grew misty, and
the spot on the floor I was staring at suddenly grew hazy and seemed to melt
away in my vision. I felt like I was staring into a portal to the past. “He got
up and stood by the side of the bed, and unbuttoned his shorts, and dropped
them to the ground. Then he pulled off his underwear, and stared right at me as
he masturbated.” Tears silently welled up and trickled down my face. I barely
noticed. “I was entranced…I couldn’t look away. And he didn’t either. He just
stared at me the whole time. It felt incredibly wrong and forbidden, but it
also felt good. It was like I could
feel what he was feeling. And at the same time I felt something swelling inside
me.” I exhaled slowly, felt a distinct lack of air in my lungs. My words were
strained. “It was just about that time that his mother walked in, to put some
laundry away. She dropped the basket immediately, and the folded clothes fell
all over the floor. And she yelled at him. He tried to step back but his shorts
were still around his ankles so he tripped and fell backwards. She went right
past me, picked him up, and dragged him out of the room. Then she slammed the
door and left me in there.” I inhaled sharply, suddenly gasping for air. I
realized I was sobbing. “She didn’t come back for nearly forty minutes. It was
the scariest thing I had ever experienced. I thought she was going to kill me.
Or kill him. And if she didn’t, she would definitely tell my dad. And then he would definitely kill me. Definitely
kill me. Definitely. Kill me.” I stopped to blow my nose. The therapist was
staring at me with wide eyes, hands folded beneath her chin. “I never got to
hang out with him again.”
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