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Fast forward two days later when I finally felt like myself again after months of being doped up on whatever cocktail of meds they’d been forcing down my throat, I finally snapped.
First thing I did was go downstairs to find my parents and tell them what happened. My limbs were trembling, my voice quivering…sweat dripping down my temples.
I barely noticed though.
But they did.
Nor did I see how skinny I had gotten, and I don’t think they noticed either until I was seizing on my bathroom floor not even a half hour later and no longer invisible to them.
Just another nail in my metaphorical coffin…
I don’t even remember all that I told them when I found them seated at the dinner table. It spilled from my lips like a dam had broken.
Everything that was done to me.
What Adam did.
What the Pastors did to me.
It’s all a blur and not—something intangible, yet still feels like a serrated blade scoring my insides every time I think about it or talk about it. Like I’m looking on from the outside, yet still feeling it as if I was still there, still back in the basement of Canaan.
One of the few things that stands out bright from that evening, is when my mother stood up from her chair, stormed over to me in her heels, and slapped me across the face—not hard, no, never hard enough to leave a mark, but hard enough to effectively shut me up, halting me in my tracks.
She hadn’t done that in years.
But I also hadn’t acted like that in years—rocking back and forth on my heels, muttering, mumbling, barely in control of my own voice as I rambled and hyperventilated my way through what had happened to me.
I remember how Mother had turned away from me, throwing out an irate hand.“Well so much for that,”she’d said with a huff.
And I remember shaking my head, holding my cheek—my ear—feeling like I was sinking, falling,drowning…
“Didn’t you hear me?”I whisper.
There’s a scoff, then,“What, that you’re gay? We figured as much. It’s not a big deal.”
Something knocks loose in my chest, and nausea swells my throat. The dining room floor swims through a veil of unshed tears. “Did…did you know what they’d do to me…” I barely manage to get out before she interrupts me.
“Oh, Skyler,” Mother intones in that way she does when she thinks I’m being dramatic. It’s a tone I’m well familiar with, and it hits me—hit me so hard, it’s a wonder it doesn’t send me flying across the room.
It will never end. Never stop. This…this is my life. I turned eighteen—became a legal adult—and nothing. Changed.
My father takes that moment to finally speak up, but I barely register what he’s saying as a sort of numbness falls over me. “I sincerely doubt it was like what you’re describing, son. I’ve heard their methods can be intense, but it’s to help you. We don’t care that you’re gay, and I doubt they did either. It was about curbing these little tantrums of yours so you could be a functioning and contributing member in society.”
I feel myself nodding, not knowing what else to do.
They don’t care.
“You look at us when we speak to you!” my mother screeches, and I flinch, but do as she says. As I always do, even though it hurts.
What I see looking back at me is the same thing I always see. But I’m no longer the same person I was.
When she turns away from me, I quickly leave the room. Their heated voices follow, but it’s between them, never them and me, so I ignore it. Knowing they won’t follow.
My feet move on autopilot, carrying me to the liquor cabinet in my father’s study. With a handle of vodka in hand, I make my way upstairs and to my parent’s en-suite bathroom.
It’s like my brain has already decided for me. My body knowing exactly what to do.
Everything hurts. Everything shakes—like I’m caught in an earthquake, barely able to stand up straight, much less get my mother’s bottle of pills open. Xanax. Her favorite, and such a cliché.
