Chapter 23
After a huge, dramatic exit, I do the only thing a mature, independent twenty-three-year-old would do: I lock myself in my disgusting motel bathroom, curl up in the grimy tub as I blubber like a baby, and call my mums.
“Cubby? Are you all right?” Mum asks, picking up on the second ring. Her voice is thick from sleep, and I feel a curl of guilt at having woken her. She probably thinks it’s an emergency. But, if my cheeks keep ballooning up at this rate, it might be.
“I … I’m safe,” I press out, voice cracking. “But I’m not sure I’m all right, no.”
“Oh, sweetheart … Hold on, M?e is here too. I’m going to put you on speakerphone.”
I hear rustling on the other end, Mum saying something along the lines of Cubby is crying before M?e’s warm, familiar voice fills the line.
“Talk to us, my love. What’s wrong?”
I cry even harder. Where do I begin? “I got in a fight with the band.”
“What about, darling?”
I grit my aching teeth as I play it back in my head, then get to the long and short of it.
“Connor. He’s an asshole. He set me up.” I give them a brief overview of meeting up with him and the trap he set with the paps.
“I hate him,” I force out through choked sobs.
“I hate him so much. And I hate all of them for believing him. I hate everyone for believing him.”
My mums make a few comforting sounds, allowing me the time to cry. When my breathing starts to settle, M?e speaks. “I am so sorry he has hurt you, Cubby. I would do anything—anything—to take your pain away.”
“I know,” I whisper, scrubbing my nose.
“But you cannot hang on to all this hate, my girl. Your heart is too beautiful to let the anger and hatred fester.”
“He’s not worth your pain or your heartbreak,” Mum adds.
“What if you’re wrong?” I sit up in the tub, more tears falling.
“Wrong about what?”
“My heart. You called it beautiful. What if you’re wrong? What if it’s not?”
There’s a pause. “I don’t understand, Cubby. How could it not be?”
My breathing turns jagged again. “My heart isn’t beautiful. No part of me is. All I have in me is this massive, aching sadness. It’s bleak and sticky and leaves me too numb to do anything beautiful with my stupid heart.”
The silence stretches, and I close my eyes, rocking myself back and forth.
“Cubby, we had no idea you felt this low. How long has this been going on?”
I shrug, even though I know they can’t see it.
I don’t have an answer. Even as a little kid, I’ve grappled with a heavy sort of …
bleakness. Something in me that has the power to drain the vividness from life if I give it too much space in my brain.
But I’ve always been good at tucking it away, plastering on a smile so other people wouldn’t see that I’m a hollowed-out shell.
“I’ve been having a really hard time since Connor broke up with me last year,” I admit, voice small.
“And before that too, I guess. When we were still dating. It always felt so … hard. So draining.” My mums are quiet again, but now that I’ve eased the cork off the powder keg, I can’t keep words back.
“And I feel selfish for feeling so sad. So numb. I don’t have a right to it. ”
“What do you mean?” Mum asks.
“Look at my life. It’s not perfect but it’s objectively good. You two have always given me so much. I’ve never once questioned if you love me. I’ve never had to worry about not having enough to get by. How can I claim this sadness when I’ve never earned it?”
Mum lets out a deep breath. “Everyone has a right to feel sad even if they haven’t experienced some big traumatic hardship, darling.
You aren’t put on Earth to overcome very natural human conditions, you’re here to experience them.
Sadness, numbness, bleakness, they’re all a part of life.
But it sounds like you’re existing in those feelings for longer stretches than is healthy. ”
“When did you realize you liked girls?” I blurt out. My heart stops. Oh fuck. I did not mean to ask that.
“W-what?” Mum asks, wrestling with the whiplash.
“Cubby, are you…” M?e clears her throat. “Are you exploring your sexuality? Is that contributing to these feelings?”
I groan, smacking a hand over my eyes. It jostles my swollen cheeks, and I groan again.
“Please forget I said anything. My question was awkward enough without that follow-up.” There’s a beat of silence, then I hear my mums suck in a series of breaths.
They’re giggling. “It’s not funny!” I say, my own voice cracking on an indignant laugh. They giggle even harder.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” M?e says, pulling herself together. “I wish you could have seen the look your mum gave me when I asked that. You’d think I’d told the Pope to go to hell she looked so horrified.”
“You can’t dive in headfirst with your emotionally distraught child like that! Have some finesse, woman,” Mum argues, still laughing.
“I imagine Mum’s expression was pretty similar to mine.” I trace the shower tiles with my nails, silently praying they’ll answer my question.
“I’ve known for as long as I can remember noticing other people,” M?e says. “Even as a child, those innocent little crushes were always girls. It actually was very shocking to me to find out that some women are attracted to men. Your mum’s experience was quite different, though.”
Mum hums in agreement. “I realized a lot later. It wasn’t until I was probably twenty-seven, twenty-eight …
right before I met M?e, actually. I only dated men as a teenager and in my early twenties.
That was the status quo and I never thought to question it.
I didn’t have queer friends, no one was openly out in my school …
It’s hard to put a label on a feeling when you aren’t given the words to describe it. ”
I gulp down the emotions starting to spill out of me, but Mum clocks the sound. “Why are you crying, love?”
“I thought this would be easier,” I choke out.
“That what would be easier?” M?e gently probes.
“My … my sexuality. I grew up with two mums, how do I not know what I am?”
“Oh my darling, why are you beating yourself up for having questions? For poking around your own brain to understand the wiring?”
All I manage is a frustrated hiccup.
“Growing up with two mums, in theory, and probably in practice, certainly makes you more aware of LGBTQ identities,” M?e says, slowly, like she’s weighing each word before she gives it to me.
“But that doesn’t mean it makes figuring out your identity any easier.
Your mum and I are in a happy, joyful, queer marriage, but that doesn’t mean that everything else you’re exposed to doesn’t portray heterosexual relationships as the default. ”
Mum makes a noise of agreement. “TV, movies, books, music videos … most of those show a man and a woman. Of course that becomes ingrained as the default. You can’t beat yourself up for not rising above society’s setup while your brain is still developing.”
“I want to have things figured out,” I cry. “I’m so sick of being confused about everything. Who I am. What I like. Who I like. It’s exhausting.”
Mum and M?e both let out small, kind laughs. “Cubby, my love, I am so sorry to be the one to tell you this, but life is nothing but confusion. Learning to embrace the joy in the awful mess of it all is what makes it worth living.”
While that’s a beautiful sentiment, it’s a bit too sugary and optimistic for me to absorb right now.
I want to believe them. I want to trust that all of this is as simple as asking myself a few questions.
And, maybe, on a night when I’m not in a fight with the people I care most about (plus Kale) and being ripped apart on social media and sitting in a moldy bathroom crying, it can be that easy. But tonight is not that night.
“I have another problem,” I say, needing to change the subject. I’m wrung out, too many feelings and teardrops filling this bathtub I’m curled in.
“What’s that, love?”
“I think there’s something wrong with my mouth. My jaw hurts so badly.”
A confused silence follows, and I snap a quick picture of my puffy, red cheeks and another of the inside of my mouth, which is too dark to really make anything out, but text it to them anyway. They both suck in a breath.
“You need to go to the doctor, Cubby. Something’s wrong with you,” Mum says in horror.
I snort. “Title of my memoir.”
“Cubby, I’m serious.”
“I’ll handle it,” I say, before her panic escalates further. “I’ve got it under control. I better go.”
“Don’t ignore this, Cubby.”
“I won’t,” I say as the pain intensifies.
“Thank you for talking to us about this,” M?e says gently. “We love you so much.”
And I feel it. Through miles and wires and time zones, I feel their love. I swallow it whole, let it fill me and hold me and carry my voice as I whisper, “I love you too.”