Flesh Wounds (excerpt)
In which I discuss parachutes...
Some children have confidantes, best friends to whom they tell absolutely everything. I had friends, but the idea of a “best” friend made me anxious. I didn’t want to be anyone’s second-best friend. How would you know if deep in your friend’s heart of hearts you weren’t actually the best but only the runner-up? This bothered me.
In some ways it didn’t really matter. Best or second-best, there were still some things I never told my friends, and would never tell them regardless of rank. My friends didn’t need to know that my mother could be so cutting, so condescending, and so relentless that I sometimes begged her to just hit me and get it over with. She never obliged. Hitting me had to be her idea, which it usually wasn’t. She made a point of that more than once, in fact, explaining to me that I had nothing to complain about in the parent department because unlike some other children’s parents, she only hit her children when they really, really deserved it. None of my friends needed to know about that conversation.
My friends also didn’t need to know that my father’s house was always so filthy it made my skin crawl. I also didn’t tell them that whenever I was there I was regularly humiliated to the point of tears by stepbrothers who would do things like “accidentally” crash open the door to the half-bath so that it would slam into my kneecaps as I sat on the toilet in one of the few spots where I could hope for any privacy, then saunter away jeering at me for being so fucking sensitive.
My friends didn’t need to know these things because I knew without being told that, well, they just didn’t, that was all. My mother was always professional at the school where she taught, my father never gave the slightest hint that anything was amiss when the mildew rotted the bathmat, and I never mentioned anything that I thought would raise an eyebrow. The idea that someone might find out about some of these things horrified me. I could not imagine the humiliation. No one who knew about any of these things would possibly want to still be around me if they knew how I crumpled when things were bad, if they knew that I went quiet and still instead of putting up a fight, that I did whatever I needed to do in a given shitty moment to get to a less-bad one.
I knew I should’ve fought back. That was what my mother, in particular, told me I should do with bullies at school. If I didn’t put up some kind of a fight I was just letting them do it, and moreover, if I didn’t immediately shake it off I was actively allowing them to make me feel bad. It was almost as if the bullies didn’t even have to be involved at all, really. I was sure all my friends knew this already. If I was upset it was because I allowed other people to upset me. If I was being treated badly it was because I didn’t push back and refuse to let it happen. It wasn’t exactly something to be proud of.
There was no fight to be put up against my parents anyway, or at least none that ever got me anything more than punishment. That was another thing I didn’t tell my friends. They wouldn’t believe it anyhow. Everyone knew how to fight. Boys on the playground in elementary school always knew exactly what they’d do if a bad guy ever showed up. They said so, even demonstrated with karate chops and finger guns how they’d just go *bam!* and then kick the bad guy in the nuts and then he’d go *whump!* and then they’d take a pistol and *bang!* and save the day. I could never figure out where the pistol was supposed to come from but I never asked because it was obvious how a fight went, duh. And if it was that obvious how a fight went but I failed to do it, then it could only be because I was too stupid, too cowardly, or too weak. That was obvious too. Duh. No one needed to know.
No one needed to know I had already decided to kill myself, either. It wasn’t the sort of thing you told people, plus I definitely didn’t need anyone spreading it around. I mean, someone might tell their parents. The only thing I could imagine if that happened was that the parent would go to my mother, and that would be a nightmare whose outlines I could vaguely imagine and never wanted to see.
