Everything was a secret. Everything important still is. One of us craves truth, loud and certain. One of us, silence. The others, only the hum of their own worlds, turning for themselves alone.
Our secrets included everything: my father’s first marriage to a woman so critically ill she spent much of her life in a sanitarium; my mother’s first marriage, which included my oldest brother, whom I did not meet at all
The first time it happened, maybe, was sixth grade. I had missed the bus and it was raining, a prickly mid-March storm where the rain is semi-frozen without quite being sleet. I was waiting in the parking lot instead of my middle school’s lobby because I felt, by virtue of having carelessly missed the bus, I deserved the pain of half-ice slapping against my skin. My back was pressed against the red brick wall of…
It wasn’t the first time I’d cut, it wasn’t even the worst, but I still found myself biking to the emergency room at 1:30 on a Sunday morning. My original intention had been to call my company’s Employee Assistance Program so that they would help me find a counselor. I wanted to get back on antidepressants; I wanted to spend fewer nights crying in the dark with a box cutter. While my intentions were clear,…
