The Gentle Giant and the Melancholy Monster

Chapter 12

With burning, pink eyes, and a half smile, I shakily hold up a fork full of steaming hot spaghetti to my mouth. The smell of the meatballs grossed me out beyond anything else I've ever smelt. My eyes were itchy and uncomfortable, and I felt like running away. Like this was all a huge mistake.
"Careful, it's gonna be hot."

I shake my head, trying to pull myself out of the daze I was in. "Sorry, sorry."

"No need to be sorry. I just figured you wouldn't want to burn your mouth off," my aunt points out.

"Sorry, habit."

"And enough apologizing! I don't know what you were taught back at home, but you should never feel like you have to apologize for simply existing."

"Well, back at home, I was only apologizing to keep things civil. Being myself wasn't an option."

"True. But here, people are much more accepting," she says with a smile.

I tried eating, even after it cooled off, but food just didn't sound great at the moment. I drank half a glass of ice water, ate a couple of bites of bread, and finally stopped pretending. My head was pounding as hard as my heart, and the knots in my stomach began to consume me as I kept replaying the ugly scene.

***

"What- what is this? Tara, you cut your hair!" My mom drops a duffel bag full of clothes and runs to me like I just broke an arm. "Did Lora do this to you?"

"What? No! I'm sick of you playing her out to be the villain in this situation!" I probably looked absolutely insane, with two pigtails in my hands and screaming from the deck, having a tantrum.

"Don't you have anything to tell her, Mihai? She's being ridiculous!" I knew exactly what I had to do. Prepare to never face them again. "Mom, you'll never understand. And I hate that you never even tried. At least dad tries to be heard, but you just smother all of us! Poor Stefan is in that car waiting for you two to head back home to that massive mansion you selfishly took because you wanted a picture-perfect life with two picture-perfect kids. I'll never be picture perfect. And if you can't accept that, then I'm not your kid."

After that, I can't recall much. But how dare she? How dare I? I destroyed her, and I know that much. She picked away at me until I was so sensitive that as soon as I stepped out of Aunt Laura's house, I was somebody different. Hurt and scared. But I terrified my own mother at that moment. Finally, she heard what I had wanted to say for years. I finally gave up, and while it gave me one of my best victories, it was also going to cause severe heartbreak. My dad, regardless of where he stands, had as little control in his actions as I did, growing up. I either broke the silence, or just broke mom.

***

"I'm sorry. I can't."

"You can't what, sweetheart? It's okay if you're not hungry. Is spaghetti not your favorite?"

"No, I actually love spaghetti. And, thank you so much for everything. But it's all starting to feel real."

"What is, hon?"

"Just, me. My identity. The last my parents saw of me was a sobbing... thing, with their hair cut off, screaming at them until they could hardly breathe to get them to stop yelling. I felt insane."

"Thing? You're not just a thing, Lucian. You're a boy, still trying to figure things out. Growing up as a trans kid wasn't easy for me either. I got called every name in the book, until I started feeling like the monster everyone depicted us as. I could physically feel myself getting sick and twisting into knots on the inside."