Page 218 of Catch Me
I led him over to a bench and sat down. “I started thinking I was gay at twelve. It was hard for me to process it because there was a lot going on at the time and it wasn’t a priority.”
“Will you tell me?”
Memories of that time surfaced, ones that I didn’t think about often anymore. There was the scent of saline and the rhythmic sound of monitors while I stared at cream-colored walls.
“We were in Texas,” I said. “That was part of it. Not everyone is bad, but I was still freaked out about it. The thought of what could happen made me feel helpless. I didn’t want to be gay, but I knew that if I was, I couldn’t change it. That fear made me angry, like yours did.”
Roman took my hand and faced me. I turned, then offered him a rueful smile.
“Not long after I started thinking I might be into men, we found out my mom was sick. She had breast cancer and it was pretty advanced. That became my life. Things were up and down, she went through treatments that made her weak, and I spent a lot of time outside of school keeping her company and trying to take care of her, especially if my dad was at work. Again, I felt helpless and afraid. Every time she went to the doctor and things weren’t better, it set in that my mom was going to die. It felt selfish, but I wanted to talk to her about what I was going through. In the end, I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because if it had upset her, I’d never forgive myself for making the last part of her life worse than it already was.”
My eyes stung with tears, but I didn’t drop my gaze. Roman stroked the back of my hand with his thumb and kept his full attention on me.
“I was fourteen when she died,” I went on. “On top of all the obvious things I felt, I regretted not telling her. I thought about it all the time. My mom never got to know something important about me. I wondered if she’d spent time imagining my future, and if she had, it would’ve been wrong—some version that didn’t belong to me. As I started exploring who I was, I hated that I couldn’t know what she’d say. I’d been so afraid of her being upset that I hadn’t let myself discover if she would have been supportive.
“Anyway, I didn’t want the same thing to happen with my dad, so I told him.” I paused, remembering the shock on his face, the disbelief. “He thought it was the stress of everything I’d gone through. After he realized that I was actually gay, he sent me to Dumont. At the time, I didn’t really think about how fucked up he was by my mom’s death. He didn’t have anyone to talk to about it, and hewas irrationally afraid that he’d lose me. He was desperate for things to benormal, and he was hanging on to the idea of what our family was before, you know?
“Dumont...It made everything worse. Being there pissed me off, I felt abandoned and betrayed by my dad, and the people there were horrible. We were ridiculed, they made us throw up when we looked at pictures of men...It was just bad. Sen was the one thing that was good about it, and we clung to each other. Then, it went to shit. You know that story. I was angry that he was hurt and that I had to leave him there. I was mad at my dad and the whole world. More than anything, I was terrified that he’d change his mind and send me back. I didn’t trust him. It kept us from really healing until I was eighteen because I knew that he couldn’t force me to go once I was an adult. That’s when I started letting him back in.”
“I’m glad you guys found your way through it,” Roman said. “You easily could’ve left after high school and never talked to him again. I’m still shocked when I think about all the things you went through and that you ended up the way you are.”
“You know, I’m notthatnice. At a certain point, I just got really tired of feeling so negative inside. Anger doesn’t feel good, especially when you’re trying to control it all the time. It’s still there, like when Anthony pissed me off. I can’t get rid of it completely, but positive affirmations really do help. I look for good things everywhere I go. I do nice things for other people because that’s what I needed when I was in a bad place for so long. I’ve taught myself to be happy with what life gives me, and now I have less things to be angry about.”
“I understand that. There’s still a lot of anger inside of me and I blow up easily, but it’s been getting better since I changed things in my life.”
“Are you angry right now?”
He nodded. “He’s been texting me, and he tried to call a bunch of times. He diverted to my mom.”
“Damn. What happened?”
“I just...I don’t want to hear him say those things to me.”
The thought of it pissed me off. I couldn’t stand the idea of Roman hearing hateful things from his own dad. He was doing really well, but it’d been less than a year since he accepted that he was gay and even less than that since he came out. I didn’t know how much he could handle.
“I’m talking to him with you,” I decided.
“No, I don’t want—”
“Please, Roman. There’s no reason for you to do it alone. I know why you want to.”
“It’s just my thing to deal with.”
“You don’t want anyone to see what it does to you. Maybe you’ll break and cry. The vulnerability is terrifying. But you’re afraid of the anger, right? It started with him, didn’t it?”
He looked to the side, and I saw a tear roll down his cheek. I wanted to catch it, but I knew that he needed his space for a minute.
“Let’s go have a drink,” I suggested, getting to my feet.
When I held out my hand, he took it without hesitation.
We went back inside, and Mikey came up to us, clapping Roman on the shoulder. His anxiety melted away slowly with all the distractions, and I was glad for it, but I knew that there was so much still ahead of us.
All I could do was be there for him. I intended to do that every day.
