Chapter 10
The only thing I can think to do when I wake is drive.
My head is pounding and I am afraid to lie here in bed too long, pickling in sour thoughts.
Getting out of this house is essential; I am on the run.
There is a road I need to take, and it is best in the morning light.
I take Dad’s car because it is older, of less sentimental and literal value, plus I know where he hangs the keys.
Driving, for me, is a way of coming home to myself.
There are several key components to that – air-conditioning set to twenty degrees, favourite song on a loop, windows all the way up to seal me inside the cabin with only myself for company.
I can stretch to fill more of the space than another person ever could.
I will stop somewhere for a drink to take the rest of the way; this gives the journey outward purpose, but it already has everything it needs.
Of course, little treats are never unwelcome.
Little treats might actually be the meaning of life.
Iced coffees and caramel slices and post-mix Coke – what else are we here for?
Being in motion with all of these elements working in harmony is the closest to bliss I have found alone thus far.
It is no wonder I failed in Melbourne; I didn’t even have a car I could borrow.
Buckled in and with my song cued up on repeat, I breathe. Here we go.
The drive-through place does not do the best coffee but it does the best at keeping me in my car, so as not to break the flow.
The small amount of small talk needed to order my latte and gluten-free muffin rattles my nerves and I fear I may cry, but the teenager at the window does not seem to notice or mind.
He says, ‘Enjoy your drive,’ as though he knows, as though he too might need to drive his way back to himself every now and again.
I reply, ‘You too,’ and immediately want to die.
But the sky is blue and the muffin is warm and I don’t have to talk to another person all day if I don’t want to, so I claim this as a victory and steer my way to the road that crosses the ridge.
The muffin helps with my reflux, and I devour it in a few frenzied bites.
This road makes me lose my stomach at the same point every time – ocean on one side, rolling farmlands on the other.
It is hard to keep my mind on the wheel, but there is enough to go round, and there is no one around.
It makes no sense how I could both drive for the entire day like this and come home with more energy than I left with, but not be able to walk upstairs to the kitchen and prepare myself a meal.
Nothing about how I work makes any sense to anyone, although the recent diagnoses have some thoughts about that.
It is just hard to merge that information with twenty-one years of viewing myself in one particular way.
I am lazy, I am selfish, I am stubborn, I am rude.
I do these things to other people; I make their lives harder just to have my own way.
Of course, I know more now, I understand why things are hard for me, and how much harder they are for other people with brains like mine who have higher needs or do not hold the same privileges I do.
I know, I know, I know. But that is not how I feel.
Because no matter how many colourful infographics I see, or funny TikTok videos I watch, or shared experiences I consume, I will always be working against the original wiring of my brain, the default of being at fault.
And I am tired. I am bone-tired, and twenty-one (already a burden to my parents, and frightened, etc).
Dr Montague says it takes people at least a year to ‘process and integrate’ the new version of themselves into their psyche, and as it has only been a month, officially, I am trying to be kind.
But it is hard to be kind, because of the aforementioned reasons.
My brain literally does not know how. And every video out there aimed at teaching people to ‘rewire your brain!’ makes me want to violently assault someone, so really I am out of options.
I try not to think about Fran and last night, because I am barely coping without having to process that titbit of unfortunate information.
If I let my brain really run free, it will eat itself alive.
And what happened after, which I seem to want to frame as something that happened, and not something I chose to do, remains altogether separate to my other recollections of the night.
I have sectioned it off, a bad dream, a different person.
But it was me; that is the uncomfortable truth.
Dr Montague is not going to be impressed with my decision to engage in random sex with an almost stranger as a way to avoid regulating my own feelings of hurt and rejection.
Or perhaps that is projection, perhaps I have positioned her as a stand-in for Elsie and the issues I could never discuss with my mother, due to the mother issues I am now all too aware I possess.
I suppose I do not even have to tell her, though I know I will, confession still a default to absolve me of my sins, and professional psychology the perfect realm to enact this ritual.
And then a baby cow appears in the corner of my eye, and I pull over in a wild, cinematic kind of way.
Stones go flying and I am thrown back into my seat with the force of this choice.
The calf, brown and fluffy, with eyelashes people would probably rip out of its head for themselves if they could, is unperturbed by my vehicular dramatics.
She blinks and continues to watch me. I turn off my music, but I do not have the capacity to open my car door, or even my window, to say hello.
This is not one of those days. This is a ‘sit in my car and observe the beauty of this cow until I am full to bursting and must move on’ kind of day.
She seems to know it, and she bends down to get herself some grass.
Perhaps she is enjoying the human view, or perhaps she knows the value she brings to our visual landscape just by existing.
She eats her grass and I sip my coffee. My breathing slows.
I feel the acidity levels in my body start to drop.
Not everything is bad and not everyone is awful.
I even try to summon some semblance of positivity around Fran being in a relationship with a person who is not me, but that is overcooking things.
At least I gave it a go there for a second, Rome wasn’t built in a day and so on.
Eventually, the baby cow senses it is time for us both to move on, and she initiates the transition because she knows I will not.
My pummelled heart thanks her, and I start my engine and my song once more.
While I busied my nearly fifteen-year-old self finding new ways to dislike my changing body, Fran found himself his first proper girlfriend.
They were in school together; they shared friends and interests.
It was normal; I felt violent. I hated Emma more than I had ever hated anyone, and certainly far more than she deserved.
It was not because she was pretty or athletic or tall in the way I wanted to be, though she was all those things.
It was how she showed up for him so easily, all the time.
She wrote him letters in beautiful curly handwriting and baked him cupcakes and remembered every single thing she was supposed to remember, like his mum’s birthday and the anniversary of his nana’s death.
And even back then, I think I knew I could not give that much of my energy away and still be the version of myself that was acceptable to the world.
Watching someone else do it so effortlessly was more than I could bear.
One afternoon when I was lying in my bed, and I could hear them playing frisbee in Fran’s yard, her laughing and telling stories and being confident in who she was and the sound of her voice, I prayed to a God I didn’t really believe in that Emma would die.
I spent quite some time visualising ways it might happen.
Did you hear? There was a car crash – or an accident at the waterfall – truly awful, a tragedy in every sense of the word.
Upon hearing the news, from Mum or via text from someone at school, I shed tears at the thought of a life lost so young.
Someone my age, unimaginable. And once those tears had dried, I knew what I had to do.
Of course I had to be there for my friend.
I would dress myself in cut-off denim shorts and my pink op-shop rabbit-hair cardigan, because he once said he likes how it feels, and I would rush to be by his side.
I would tell him how heartbroken I was, for him, for her, for everyone lucky enough to know and love her.
And I would be there for him, until he realised it had always been me.
I wish I could say I felt guilty about these imaginative interludes, but I did not.
Not then. I binged on them as often as I could.
Of course now I have enough guilt to kill an elephant.
And I know through social media that Emma is still very much alive, because she started following me while I was in Melbourne and I of course followed her back.
I am not a monster. I want better for her than I want for myself, partially because of the undeserved ill will I sent her way in secret all those years ago, and partially because she seems like a genuinely good person.
But back then, self-reflection seemed like something that was important for me not to partake in.
A ‘don’t stare directly into the sun’ kind of thing.
I chose to be a vindictive little weasel, in the privacy of my own mind, because it felt better than facing the discomfort of inadequacy.
Fran knocked on my window that afternoon, and I remember the fury filling my veins as I rolled over in my bed.
How dare he bring her here, interrupting my important work, poisoning my safe space.
But when I looked through the glass, I saw it was only Fran.
He waved and I gestured for him to come in, trying to stuff my dysregulation down far enough for it to be completely out of sight.
‘Hey, how are you doing?’ he asked, treading lightly as though I might be unwell.
‘I’m okay.’
‘Are you sure? I haven’t seen you in a while. How’s everything at school and home and stuff?’
I wanted to say fine, to keep it folded and hidden and small, but my body betrayed me in an instant with tears and hideous sobs that shook my shoulders until I folded them in on themselves. It was a self-made spectacle that filled me with disgust.
‘Hey, hey.’
Fran sat on the bed next to me and patted my back in a slow, soft rhythm.
I would have screamed or kicked out at anyone else for touching me, but it felt okay because it was him.
I felt like a baby, or a dog, in exactly the kind of way I needed to feel like a baby or a dog.
Like disgust was not an emotion I could register, like it was someone else’s job to look after me, and all I had to do was let them.
When I ran out of tears, I wiped my face and sat up in bed, hugging my knees to my chest and not looking at Fran, because how could I ever look at him again once he’d seen me like that? Vulnerability was a horrific disease.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he asked, his hand still touching me.
I shook my head, wiping my eyes on my knees.
‘Have I done anything to upset you? I know I’ve been a bit busy lately; I’m sorry I haven’t been around as much.’
‘You haven’t done anything. You’re great,’ I replied.
‘Is it your mum?’
‘It’s not not my mum. But it’s not really her either. It’s me. I’m just . . .’
I couldn’t find a way to tell Fran exactly how wrong, how damaged I was without making him hate me, and him hating me was the thing I was most afraid of in life.
‘Is it your mental health? We can always talk, you know. Are you feeling sick, depressed, anxious, or anything like that?’
‘I’m all of those things, all together all the time.’
It did not really explain what I wanted to explain, because how could I explain to someone else what I did not yet understand myself?
It was impossible to put into words how stress felt the same as fear felt the same as anger felt the same as anxiety felt the same as shame.
It was one snarling knot that only ever grew larger and more difficult to contain.
How trying to bear it meant I needed to be a part-time participant in life, how my mind always had a backlog of private work to do and was constantly falling behind.
How awful I often felt, and how big, how uncomfortable, how out of control, how tiring that awfulness was.
How all my emotions built up, how it made me feel like I was like an old-fashioned roll of film that needed to go into the shop for a few days to be developed.
How without that processing time, none of it made any sense and I was useless.
How I needed deep rest, away from everything, more regularly than I needed food.
Fran put his arms around my whole curled-up body and hugged me.
I could not tolerate how much I needed him to stay.
‘What can I do? Can I make you a tea, or get you some chocolate? The shop will still be open, I could ride up.’
‘Could you just . . . lie with me?’
Fran froze for a moment, perhaps wondering what I meant.
I am not sure he has ever fully grasped that I do not hide secret meanings inside my words, even if I was or am terrible at expressing myself.
His assumption, perhaps, was that I might be trying to seduce him away from his sweetheart, though even at my most delusional I knew that would have been a losing battle.
‘Yeah, of course. You lie back down,’ he eventually said.
I rolled onto the other side of the bed and slipped my legs under the sheets. Bed was heaven. Fran was on top of the covers, and lay on his side to face me.
‘Can you tell me “remember when” stories, please?’ I asked, my eyes closed.
‘Remember when?’
‘You know, like, remember when we found that baby bird, remember when we had that waterbomb fight. Stories, about us.’
So I drifted off to sleep with my mind full of sweet, real memories instead of the tangled mess it often kept me awake working to undo. It was more than I deserved.