Something I don’t want to admit to.
When I don’t know how to respond, she looks elsewhere and throws up her hands to shake them some more. “Never mind! Forget I asked. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s come over me.”
There’s something I can answer.
“Safety. You’re feeling more safe here. Speaking your mind is in the rules, cupcake. You’re doing perfectly.” Resting back against my machine, I let my eyes close. “I’m sorry I didn’t answer your question—it’s just that the answer didn’t feel pretty in my head. I’m not proud of how self-centered I am, and I’m worried that you won’t like what you see if I let you see too much of the truth about me.”
“Really?” she asks.
Keeping my eyes closed, I nod. “I’m painfully aware of how I am. That is to say, I’m hyperaware of myself. I scare myself. I don’t want to incite moments that lead to rejection. Rejection…” My fist clenches against my leg. “…thathorrifiesme. I want the assurance that if I bare all my terrible pieces, the person who sees them will adore them as much as I hate them. It’s why I’ve never been in a relationship with a woman.”
Clara gasps, shocked. “You haven’t?”
I smile. “The media’s had a few misconceptions here and there, but no. I haven’t ever actually been with someone or gone farther than what you see in my music videos. I need the emotional depth first, something that suggests I’ll…still be enough. Even when it becomes clear how repulsive I am.” I free a tight breath. “I’ve never found someone who’s seemed able to love me as much as I need them to.”
“You’re…ashamed of who you are?” The question stings with its truth, but Clara—sweet, wonderful Clara—doesn’t leave my poor ego without a tender pat. “You?”
Yeah, I want to say.I’m like my horrific, abusive parents, so of course I’m ashamed.Instead, I tuck that raw truth away, though, and murmur, “Isn’t everyone a little bit ashamed of themselves? Feels like a human condition to me.”
The fascination in her eyes when I finally find the strength to meet them causes my heart to stumble.
Soft,angelic, she reaches for my hand.
I commit the sensation to memory, etch it into the very cells that make me up. She hasneverreached for me before. This is the first time thatshehas touchedme. Of her own volition. By her own choice.
And it accompanies her saying, “You’re very…odd, King…but I really treasure your mind.”
My brows rise.
She comes aware of herself and jerks away, taking my whole soul with her. “I just… I mean… The way you think. The way you lay all of who you are out and challenge it, try to understand it. I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time. It feels like everything inside me is spaghetti or static. I can’t place many of my emotions or what any behaviors stem from. Seeing how you can trace reasons and identify why’s…it’s remarkable. I’ve always liked how you piece together songs and unfoldhuman conditionswith such clarity.” She pushes her pretty hair over her ear as her cheeks tint. “It’s just…yeah.”
It’s just the result of massive amounts of overthinking, paired with parents whose main legacy to their children wasyou’re gonna need therapy. The inability to get therapy without having that highly-stigmatized decision blasted around the world meant becoming self-aware through the use of online tools instead.
It’s less remarkable and more survival, I think.
But everyone manages their trauma differently.
“What sorts of things feel like spaghetti?” I ask. “Do you want to tell me about it on the way to the bookstore?”
Clara’s eyes widen, but since this woman is so unbelievably smart and fully understands the assignment after very little prompting, she says, “Yes, please.”
The monster in me revels. I beat it down with a stick. Rising, I skate my fingertips across the top of Clara’s head. “Thank youfor honoring me with an opportunity to treasure you. Let me shower off, then we’ll go.”
?
“I think the biggest thing is that everything’s confusing. I feel stupid. All the time. And there’s nothing I can do about it,” the smartest woman I know says.
My grip on the wheel solidifies the longer Clara talks—in not so many words—about how she’s been gaslit and blamed and humiliatedher entire life. To her, people are just imperfect, so having her “imperfections” ridiculed and punished isnormal, but—thank everything good—this horror she’s describing hasnotbeen normal.
For twenty days.
But, of course, that’s confusing. When you grow up in a world that’s unstable, you get used to it. When it changes, you aren’t so inclined to immediately believe it’s because the world you lived in was wrong; you instead do what you’ve been taught to: pin thatwrongnesson yourself.
She continues, “All my life, I’ve wished things would be more consistent. Good or bad doesn’t matter, justthe same. If I’m stupid, can I be the same level of stupid? All the time? And I know that’s stupid to ask for, because people change and grow, and that’s part of what makes people beautiful, but…” She flattens her hands against her skirt. “I don’t know. No one else makes me feel stupid at all in your home, King. Just…me.”
Shining truths are hard to believe. Blanket statements that contradict current belief systems are harder to adopt. So I say, “Everyone’s stupid at some things, but no one’s stupid with everything. It’s important that your environment allows you to participate in the things you’re smart at while nurturing any interest and intellectual growth in the stuff you’re not so great at.”
“That…makes a lot of sense.”
