December 1st
5:35 p.m.
The therapist said I should keep a journal, but I disputed that journals were for girls and other people not of my nature. Definitely not of my nature. I was never one to write down my inner thoughts, feelings. But Mom agreed and she paid the therapist with a green check. Yes, I have a therapist, but I'm not crazy. I swear. I'm only forced to wait on a black coffee-colored leather couch in a silent waiting room to visit her in her sixty-five degree office because I have some social problems. With my dad. So severe it tears our family apart. Social anxiety. With everybody. So bad it leaves me being the descending petals of a blooming wallflower.
On the way home from the bookstore--my favorite store--Mom struck up a conversation despite my current state of mind. It's a place where you can write down your thoughts, she just wants to know what's going on in that head of yours. It'll be good for you, sweetie. And just write how you would normally talk, don't make it too...
She waves her hand to replace the forgotten word. "Elaborate?" I fill in for her. A simple word, how could she forget? Not that I'm questioning the intellegence of my own mother. She was a very intellegent woman as a matter of fact, a teacher at the elementary school. Guess it takes her a moment to switch gears from her six-year-old students to her sixteen-year-old son.
Yes, elaborate. She stretches out the syllables. That's what I meant. But it would also be nice to add a little detail. Maybe this way I can avoid answering unneccesary questions.
Maybe I could write about how my father drinks more than recommended, less responsibly than the commercials enforce. Maybe I should say how I long for this menial experiment to scrub away the bruises and wash away the insults. (But not really since I have almost zero faith in this method.) How my dad calls me names. And just maybe I'd like him to call me "sport" and "kiddo" like common 1990's sitcoms did. All fictional. Instead I'm called forth by "boy" and expected to pay attention to "faggot". I wasn't even sure what that meant the first time he sputtered it in such disgust. So I asked Franco the next afternoon and he laughed as he lit a cigarette.
It means you like your ass popped by a wanker. And he tapped the tips of his horizontal index fingers together.
I guess he put it lightly.
I guess the therapist figured that after meandering throughout my brain, she could pinpoint a diagnosis. A sentiment. But she found nothing because I refused to let my skin unfold. Especially to a complete stranger who claimed to know more about me than my own mother. It's appalling how much she assumes, but calls it "denial" when I tell her she's wrong. Usually I leave there digging my nails into my palms to keep the tears from spilling over.
But Mom still drives me to every session in the Kia and pays her in green checks.
8:26 p.m.
Mom says I shoud write a little about myself, stuff the therapist doesn't know, hasn't unlocked from the depths of my stubborn brain. I guess. Worth a shot.
Name: Silas Demetry Casperson
Age: 16 (born February 17)
A defining feature? A short story to tell? Why not, this is her assignment. Might as well enlighten her.
I have a pale white scar connecting my elbow to my wrist. Where the hair never returned and the skin didn't grow back quite the same. It was a stupid incident, a test of endurance. And I most definitely failed. Franco and Davis made it clean across the barbed-wire fence, Obviously, I can't say the same.
I'm more feminine than most, rather spend the day shopping with my mom than lending a greased hand to my father. Boy, did he love his truck. It's bright red and he says it "purs like a cougar", that it "runs like a jaguar." But a Jaguar is another type of car and his truck was a Ford.
More on the topic of being feminine, I guess that's why Dad thinks he has permission to refer to me in such repulsing ways. 'Cause I didn't turn out to be manly enough. It wasn't all of my interests though; my cheekbones and jawline were exclusively feminine. A thin face. A thin nose. Zero to none muscle mass.
And after all this time of living and years of school, I never really had a best friend, like the ones who ask if you got your hair done, or the ones who keeps secrets locked away. Just like they promised. I never had someone to put all of my trust in, to spend time on the weekends with and call to soothe me down from crying. Suicide.
But I had Franco and Davis, whatever they were. They didn't prefer labels, and Franco--who was sitting on a picnic table at the park--told me this as he lit a cigarette.
Franco Aguirre and Davis McClellan were my "brothers", but Mom never liked me getting acquanted with older boys. Trouble-makers to the T.
We're like a wolf pack, Franco once said.
And I believed him.
I like being alone. Total silence, not even waves of mellow thoughts. Stress. The fan circulating is the only sound I need to feel content. School is too loud, too full. Maybe that's why I'm not a big fan. But we moved here to Chicago in November. Hopefully it's better.
