Page 22 of Night Fever
“That’s fine. Be angry. But don’t rattle off a list of what she isn’t supposed to be doing. I think she can make those decisions for herself. I don’t see her acting recklessly, I don’t see her acting like she needs her father telling her how tobehave.”
“You don’t know the first thing about her,” Deacon spits back at me. He turns around, fists still clenched. My heart is heaving inside my chest, so fucking hard that my rib cage couldshatter.
I watch him walk away from me, wondering what the hell he meant as I sink back down into thebooth.
And the bells over the door chime as heleaves.
Taylor
I triedto reason with my dad, but he just wouldn’t listen. I told him I’m an adult, but he didn’t want to hear it. I shouldn’t have to explain to my dad that I can make my own decisions, but that’s just the way heis.
He is controlling. He is a perfectionist. He wants everything to be justright.
And I’m a lot likehim.
In a way, he’s always treated me like a peer. He and I can talk over endless cups of coffee about art and books, and he even helped edit my senior thesis for my undergraduate degree - not a thesis paper at all, but instead, because I was studying creative writing as my major, a book of personal essays, a travelogue of sorts, about the New York City subway system and all of the far-flung destinations it can lead youto.
I wrote about Five Points in Queens, about a big building that artists from all of the city tagged and painted with years of graffiti art; I wrote about the community in Brighton Beach and the street dancers in Times Square. I explored communities that are hidden in plain sight and the ones who are out in the open but have untold stories behind them. I wrote about bodegas in the Bronx and the suburban homes in BayRidge.
And he was like a spirit guide through all ofit.
A few years ago, Dad went overseas to help people in places that don’t have access to good medical care, people who need aid and don’t have thoseresources.
And I admired him. I thought it was a cool idea for me to take the subway anywhere it would lead, but Dad went above and beyond anything I could ever imagine formyself.
He’s good at that. He’s good at taking some little kernel of an idea and turning it into something more. But I am my father’s daughter, and sometimes this trait can turn sour if not kept incheck.
I lie in bed in my small apartment near campus, wondering if maybe my dad is right - he told me I’m in no position to make big decisions right now, that I should work on getting myself better before I invite new people into my life. He said he wouldn’t address the fact that I barely knew Hendrick out ofrespect, and that he would forget it ever happened. I knew what he meant by that, and it made my heart hurt to know that he would never approve of me andHendrick.
My parents noticed something was a little bit off with me around my junior year of high school, right around when I quit dancing. They sent me to a psychiatrist. They thought I was depressed. They thought I was sick. And for the past three years or so, I’ve been seeing one of the best shrinks in the city and taking some medication heprescribed.
And it hasn’t really worked. Notcompletely.
Talking to someone has made me feel a little bit better. It’s nice to work through what I’m thinking and feeling on a weekly basis. But it hasn’t really moved the needle on mymood.
And I think it’s because I’mnotdepressed - I’m just searching formyself.
My parents never want me to feel an ounce of pain. They never want me to hurt. I’m their girl - and I know they want the best for me. But putting a label on me and making me talk to a psychiatrist hasn’t curedme.
And maybe it’s because there’s nothing to cure. Maybe there’s nothing to fix. Maybe I just have to seek out what will make mehappy.
Hendrick made me happy, and it wasn’t just for a few fleeting moments. He reignited something inside me, he sparked something in me that I haven’t felt in a fewyears.
It was novelty, excitement, a diversion from the everyday humdrum life that I’ve settled into. A distraction from seeing the long road out ahead of me and knowing exactly what turns I’d take, know exactly what kind of man I’d marry, know exactly what kind of house I’d livein.
He reminded me that there’s somethingmore.
He showed me what I was missing, even though I couldn’t put it into words before I methim.
Maybe I stillcan’t.
I toss and turn in the darkness, flipping my pillow over to the cool side about a hundred times. It’s now three days after my birthday, and I’m unable to sleep. My pillow is out of cool sides. Now it’s all warm anduncomfortable.
I feel like I could melt into thebed.
I’ve spoken to my psychiatrist, and we’re going to start on a new plan of action for me - taper me off the medication gradually, keep my therapy sessions going, and reassess how I feel in about amonth.
I feel optimistic. But there’s somethingmissing.
