Birthday(50)
It isn’t always easy. I still have bad days, when my skull feels like it’s full of bees and my heart is empty and all I want to do is lie on my back and melt into the pavement forever, only now Dad can tell when it’s happening and I’ll watch a brittle panic wash over him. It makes me feel guilty for being depressed, and I get frustrated sometimes, but I do my best not to fight with him. I even think he might be dating again—if his occasional late nights and the receipts for movies and restaurants I find when I do laundry are any indication. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I tell myself that I’m happy if he’s happy.
Watching Eric’s family disintegrate has reminded me how lucky I am, at least in this one way—what would my life be like if Carson were my dad? Jasmine’s parents got divorced a few years ago, and she’s been walking me through what Eric needs and doesn’t need while he goes through this: let him talk about it at his own pace and just hang out with him so he knows I’m there for him. The last one’s been hard because of his football practice and my AV club and yearbook committee, but I’m trying my best.
I try not to think of how little time we have left together before life pulls us in different directions. Used to be I assumed Eric would head off to play college football like Isaac did before he was drafted by the Seahawks, and I would stay here to rot in Thebes. Maybe I’d get to see Eric when he came home for Christmas and try to hide how much I resented his life while I plugged away behind a gas station counter or whatever. Now I’m the one thinking about film school. I’m the one who looks like they’re going to get out of this place. Maybe Eric will stay behind.
Either way, we’ll have a distance between us that’s never existed before.
The song finishes and I switch off my iPod and turn off the car.
Taking a breath, I force a smile and wave to my therapist’s assistant as I slam my car door closed. Gavin is a broad-shouldered, bearded graduate student from UTK who’s doing some kind of survey of LGBT mental health in the South.
“Hey, girl,” he says, as a grin cracks his face.
At the word girl I feel a flush of warmth in my neck and back.
“Hey, Gavin,” I say as I pop the door open with my hip.
“Cool haircut,” he says as he follows me inside.
I reach up to touch my hair, a messy bob with dark brown highlights, for maybe the three hundredth time in the last twenty-four hours. It felt risky asking Jasmine to give me a girlish haircut, but unless I style it, I think it looks a bit like Kurt Cobain’s hair. When I did style it, in the bathroom alone, it looked more like a sort of Joan Jett kind of thing. My heart ached as I watched my reflection in the mirror, the wispy brown strands framing my face, the idea that I could be a woman like she’s a woman.
“Thanks,” I say. “My friend Jasmine did it.” I think, not for the first time since it happened, about how readily she took me back, and how supportive she’s been.
“The doc’s last appointment canceled,” Gavin says, pulling me out of my thoughts.
We head down the hallway and then through the door that leads to Judith’s lobby. “Hello, Morgan,” Judith says when we reach the door. Her voice sounds like a school librarian mixed with iron, but I learned not to be intimidated months ago.
She’s reading someone’s file over the tops of her thick-rimmed black glasses. Dirty-blond hair falls over her shoulders and down her back in oscillating waves, shot through with bright silver. I knew I would like her the first time I saw her lobby. Judith’s office walls were decorated with B-movie posters, everything from Forbidden Planet to The Blob to Plan 9 From Outer Space. There’s even a signed photo of Vincent Price in the bathroom, his piercing gaze following my every move. I had expected, I don’t know, motivational posters, daily affirmations, maybe some prayer guides and Bibles.
Thebes isn’t the middle of nowhere but it isn’t somewhere, you know?
I once asked Judith if it was okay to have those posters up, if people found them weird. She laughed and said, “Nobody identifies more with monsters than LGBT people and the mentally ill. My clients tend to be both. I think it helps reassure them there’s no normalcy here to worry about violating.” And then she winked. “Plus, what’s the point of owning a business if you can’t decorate it how you want. Right?”
And after months of coming here, of feeling safe in this space, I agree with her.
Judith checks her watch as I approach. “Let’s head back to the lab.”
“The lab” is an office arrayed with scented candles, stim toys like kinetic sand and bubble wrap, and an array of overstuffed, earth-tone furniture. Relaxing music burbles from a speaker somewhere nearby while incense burns on the table between us. She hands me a mug of coffee, my favorite drink since getting sober, and falls into a papasan with a cup of tea clasped in both hands.
“Happy birthday, Morgan,” she says as she settles in and pulls out her notebook.
“Thanks,” I say. Unlike past years, I’ve been counting down to this day. Seventeen marks the year when I want to make a change—to finally tell the world who I truly am—inside and out. I still don’t know what my future will look like, but this birthday I want to take a step in the right direction. Judith watches me as I sink into the big, cozy chair across from her. Her eyes are dark and deep as the ocean at night, something a person could fall into if they aren’t careful. It was hard not to be unnerved by her at first, but she was the only therapist I could find within reasonable driving distance who handled “gender and sexuality” so I gave it a shot.