Wearing My Smile | ✔

Saturday, October 13th, 2007

Six months after your funeral.

I was nervous.

No matter how many times I'd met real psychologists and psychiatrists and professors, or mostly government people like social services, I still got jittery and felt inadequate. They were the experts, knowing full well what they were doing, while I was just a senior in a high school in the middle of nowhere, with only ideas, stubbornness, and goodwill on my arsenal. That day though, one or two investors came along to hear what I could offer.

This was yet another seminar I had with the help of Dr. Quintana who was sitting right at the front. She nodded encouragingly. With the march being successful, the awareness being raised from school to school with the help of my school's principal and Penny, the events I'd attended in other universities the past few months, I was panicking of how fast everything was moving.

I'd gotten sick several times over the months because my body hadn't been used to how busy I'd turned out to be, but another week or two I became used to the four-hour sleep. I still went to school on weekdays so Dr. Quintana helped me out when I couldn't come or Luce would do it for me. After the initial reluctant about my decision, she'd decided to dive in with me throughout the ordeal. I'd asked her if she was sure because I knew how busy she was, but she brushed it off, “Might as well help you since I'm going to keep an eye on you anyway.”

There, right in front of those people inside the modest meeting room, I suddenly recalled that day when you'd told me you'd always put me first and how sad that it was never going to come true.

I'd studied about depression, then post-traumatic stress disorder which Dr. Quintana diagnosed me with after I began talking little by little, and a hell lot other disorders to understand more about myself and then about you. In the process of understanding myself I realized more and more that I wanted to share this with people, with kids my age or younger who didn't understand because no one would explain it to them, who were in denial with their abuse the way you had been. I was reminded again of my purpose and suddenly I was confident. We weren't the only ones who needed this, Sam.

As I began explaining, I remembered my family, in their sometimes achingly absent way, had always put me first and it was enough for me. I think this made me lucky because I knew there were possibly dozens or hundreds kids with the same situation as yours. I didn't want that anymore. I wanted it to stop. Your presence and absence brought me a question.

This was my answer.