I don’t want it to sound like I don’t care about the things I fight for. I do. Now more than ever. I do want to fight. I want to keep people safe. I want to make sure no one ever sees what I saw and is haunted by it the way I am. I want to be the activist who makes my family proud, not just for them but because that’s the version of Eden I want to be.
But behind my sword and my shield, I am crumbling. As I write this, there is a bottle of vodka sitting on my desk, next to me. Drinking was the only way I could bring myself to write this. Drinking is the only way I can bring myself to do a lot of things. I drink almost every night just so I can make everything in my head fuzzy. Because when it’s sharp, it hurts too much. And I keep telling myself that I’m fine and that I have it under control. That I’m a college student and college students drink sometimes and it’s not impacting my grades or anything so I’m fine.
But if I’m fine, then why am I hiding a bottle of vodka in my desk drawer, only to take it out and drink when nobody’s around?
Jenny and Misty only know about the drinking at parties, which is when I tend to drink so much it makes me sick. I know they’re tired of it. I know they’re getting angry with me. And they’d be furious—and worried—if they knew I was drinking on weeknights, too. Not enough to be hungover the next day. Just enough to get by.
I don’t think I’m fine.
And I’m scared.
Misty’s mom is having health problems, so she’s transferring to a school closer to home, back in Tennessee. I’m going to have to live with someone new. As frustrated as I know Misty must be with me lately, she’s been the best friend I could imagine. She’s helped me through panic attacks, rewritten speeches and sent emails when I couldn’t handle it, and made me laugh when I needed it most.
And Jenny is graduating this year. God, just the thought of that makes me feel sick. If Misty leaving scares me, Jenny leaving has me terrified.
Jenny Stewart-Goo is my first girlfriend. We met a few weeks into my first semester, at an Anime Club meeting, of all things. The club was actually terrible. It was mostly just a bunch of white guys who tossed out random Japanese words for no reason other than to impress each other. They insisted on watching illegally downloaded anime with subtitles, because it was “just better that way,” even though one of the other girls who had shown up was legally blind and couldn’t see the screen well enough to read subtitles. She didn’t come back after the first meeting. I almost didn’t, either. The only reason I did was because Misty was on a date that night and I didn’t want to be alone in my dorm.
So while the boys in the club tried to out-Japanophile each other, I sat in a corner and sketched. I didn’t think anyone even noticed I was there until a voice next to me said, “You’re really good.”
I jumped and let out a little yelp. Jenny was nice enough to act like this wasn’t weird, though.
“Sorry,” she said. “But your drawings are really good. Can I see more?”
I showed her the rest of the stuff in my sketchbook. Turns out, she was into comics and had always wished she could draw, but she was more of a writer. She loved fantasy, especially stories with witches and magical creatures. By the end of the movie we were supposed to be watching, we’d already brainstormed out an idea for our first webcomic. That’s whereCalliopewas born.
We stopped going to Anime Club gatherings and started meeting in the library instead. She’d write and I’d draw, and by midterms, I had both a beautiful, talented girlfriend and my first webcomic.
Calliopeisn’t very well known, and when we published it, I chose to alter my name a little—to E. B. Martinez—so that I had one thing in my life that wasn’t connected to activism or the shooting. Working with Jenny means getting to escape into this fantasy world where guns aren’t even a thing, where we can just play and explore. It’s the only thingfunin my life. And I don’t know what’s going to happen withCalliopeor with my relationship when Jenny leaves.
“We’ll make it work,” she told me a few days ago when I brought up her moving back to California. “We can take turns visiting each other over the summer. I’ll come back to see you in the autumn or maybe over your winter break. And you can come visit me during spring break.”
“What about between visits, though?” I asked. We were sitting on the quad with our textbooks in our laps. “You’ll be in Los Angeles. I feel like everyone there is so … pretty.”
“You’re pretty,” she said.
I shrugged. “Maybe. But I’m pretty and here. And they’ll be pretty andthere. With you.”
“Do you really think pretty is enough to make me cheat on you?”
“No,” I said. “I know you wouldn’t do that. But …”
“But nothing.” She raised to her knees, knocking the books off her lap, and reached across the space between us to put a hand on either side of my face. “I love you, you stupid freshman. That’s not changing, even if my time zone does.”
She kissed me then, and I wanted to believe her.
But I remember the look on her face the other night, while she and Lee dragged me, drunk and stumbling, back to my room. She looked worried, but also exhausted. Like taking care of her mess of a girlfriend is weighing on her.
And if I’m a mess now, where will I be in a year? When she and Misty are gone and there’s no one to bother hiding the vodka bottle from?
I know I need to ask for help, but I don’t feel like I’m allowed to. I feel like I’ll be letting everyone down. I don’twantto be weak. I want to spite all of those jerks who send me death threats on social media because they think I’m here to take their guns away. I want to show those arrogant white guys on my campus who try to argue Second Amendment rights with me that I am just as smart and powerful and loud as they are. I want to keep making my family proud so that they never have to think that the wrong girl died.
I want to be a warrior.
But that version of me is a lie. I can get on a stage and deliver a presentation I’ve rehearsed a dozen times. But the minute someone gets in my face and asks me to go off book, I crumble. That’s my truth.
I’m not a warrior. I’m a fraud. And trying to keep up the charade is killing me.
I’m going to regret sending this email to Lee tomorrow. I know it. I’m going to wish I hadn’t shared all of this, but if I don’t, I might never say it. I might never get help. So here it is. The truth. The real Eden Martinez.
