Peri

Chapter 4: Why Would I Want to Go by My Own Name Anyways?

I took Peri a couple minutes out of the neighborhood and down a forested backroad full of little dips and curves that my mom regularly had me drive when I still had my learner's permit. I'm not sure why I took her there, maybe because it was familiar. To be honest, I didn't even know where it led. Mom would always have me drive half-way then practice my K-turn before taking her back. All-in-all, the trip took about twenty minutes, the most time my mom could spend in the car with me behind the wheel before getting a massive stress migraine, despite the fact that I was a much safer driver than she was.

Though usually a very pretty route, at that time of year it was a two-tone strip of gray sandwiched in brown. Except for when we rounded a bend, the faded asphalt narrowed out toward the horizon until it gave way to a cloudy sky that was just as gray, if only little lighter. On either side of the road was exposed, frost-covered dirt, brown foliage, and skeletal trees that stretched thin, brittle limbs out toward the sky. With the sun sinking lower behind us, each tree's harsh, dark shadow remained visible for a moment after the tree itself slipped out of view. The wind was bitter and sharp, agitating the dead plant-life and rustling the spindly branches.

I hadn't meant for it to be a melancholy, self-reflective drive, but with an atmosphere like that it was pretty unavoidable, especially after we'd just had such a heavy conversation about Peri's home life. We took turns trying to lighten the mood, but we never seemed to pick a time where the other was fully present. I kept slipping back inside my own thoughts, spacing out while I stared straight ahead at that mesmerizingly constant horizon. I had to walk a fine line though, because I didn't want to let myself slip too far and get depressive. I had been avoiding that kind of thing more and more lately, because I'd noticed that when I gave in to that urge to simply lay there, motionless, and withdraw inside myself as the hours slipped by, I came down with this sort of stuffy weightlessness. It was like my head was packed with light, airy cotton that crowded out the will to do anything anymore. I didn't want to browse YouTube. I didn't want to play video games. I didn't want to hang out with my friends. I just wanted to go back to lying there and getting lost in the emptiness again, but at the same time I didn't really want to do that either. I would get up, go to the bathroom, raid the pantry, maybe go to the bathroom again for something to do, lay down for a while, and then repeat that until I fell asleep and woke up the next morning, fresh and ready to fall into the spiral all over again.

Being with friends seemed to help me out of it. There had been one time I slipped into that idle state of mind a few hours before we had planned to go hang out in the park, and I spent the first half hour we were together spaced out and quiet. But, after that, I picked back up and returned to my normal self. That knowledge was all well and good, but it only really helped if we had already planned something before I grayed out, because I was liable to ignore the group chat if I was in the full throes of that all-consuming low mood. Because everyone was so busy that time of year, we hadn't vibed in a while, so I didn't have that or school to keep me busy. That meant most of my break had blurred together into one monotonous, weeks-long day. However, now that Peri had shown up, I was hopeful to break that cycle and feel like I'd done something since the semester had ended. Truth be told, I had tried to start writing a book right before Thanksgiving, and had intended to put a lot of effort into it during the time off, but it had mostly fallen through. I had tried to build a narrative off of one scene that popped into my head, and the plot just kind of wound and wound until finally ending up nowhere. It had no message, and going back and reading the outlines of chapters I had frantically typed up left me feeling like the whole was somehow worth less than the sum of its parts, as if the narrative was missing that crucial connective tissue to hold all the individual elements together. Besides, while the act of writing itself felt amazing with the way hunger, fatigue, and every other nagging urge that stemmed from inhabiting a body slipped out of existence, I always came out afterwards utterly drained and lower than I had been before I'd started. Chasing that buzz in the hopes of creating a truly meaningful story had kept me going for a while, but once it all crumbled, I completely lost my only motivation and gave in to the very exhaustion writing had been meant to stave off. The whole experience had been so thoroughly demoralizing that I had pretty much given up on that dream, which scared me, because it felt like I had no goal for my future and no idea of what I wanted to do as an adult. All of my friends seemed to have their life plans figured out (even if only loosely for a couple of them), yet mine had fallen to pieces the moment I tried to pursue them. I was terrified it meant I had lost my chance at having a happy adult life. If I got stuck in some dead-end job, I would never be able to save up the money I needed to transition, and the thought of spending the rest of my life as a man was enough to give me a panic attack and an existential crisis at the same time. I could already feel my throat closing and my heart racing as my palms grew clammy. I began to shift my fingers on the steering wheel in discomfort. My whole body trembled as I realized that chances were, I was doomed to...