Page 92 of My Cosplay Escape
“Do I look like I moved on? Am I sitting here with bags under my eyes and talking to a therapist because I moved on? My life at twenty-two was over before it even started.”
Brad stares at his notes. “Tell me about the cosplaying. You say it’s another version of you?”
“When I put on the cat costume, no one knows anything about me. No one knows how bad I’ve fudged up. No one knows they should look at me or my body and feel pity. No one knows I was once a mommy. No one knows I was once some idiot’s wife.”
Brad puts the point of his pen to his lips and sits in thought. “And you were content to just make believe, but then something happened?”
“I was going to keep it separated, all of it. But then the guy who hired me to cosplay…” I roll my eyes because Therapist Brad is scribbling notes again. “Not in a pervy way. I mean, staff his escape room in costume. I met him in real life as myself. He was my TA for a while.”
The therapist looks at me, nodding. Goldfish, I am crazy.
“Adam and I started not-dating. Before that, he had to stop being my TA because people thought we were actually dating, and that is a clear conflict of interest.”
“And you told him you were also cosplaying at his club?” Brad asks.
“No!”
“Why not?”
“Because that would have been like stripping in front of him.”
Brad takes a not-so-subtle deep breath and reexamines his notes.
“It would have been mortifying,” I clarify.
Brad pockets the pen and sets aside his notes. “I think you didn’t tell him because you were trying to play it safe. You were trying to see if Adam would have the same connection to your authentic self—how you present in the real world—as he did to your cosplay. Did he?”
Holy fudge brownies. He did. “Yeah.”
“How do you know?” Brad asks.
I twist my dad’s ring around my thumb. “He saw me at my worst, and he didn’t run away.”
“So what’s wrong with that?”
I pick up a stray fidget spinner on the arm of the sofa and flick it. “I didn’t want him to find out about the other part.”
“What other part? The cosplay part?”
It’s my turn to take a not-so-subtle deep breath. “That I have to pretend I’m someone else and wear a costume to feel strong and sexy.”
“Why?”
“Because it is still humiliating.”
“Why is it humiliating to be strong and sexy?”
“Because I am not strong and sexy. It’s all fake. It’s an act. It’s part of my costume. And I lied to him. Right? I didn’t tell him the truth.”
The therapist shrugs.
“Don’t shrug! You’re supposed to have the answers. You’re supposed to tell me that what I did was cowardly and wrong and that I have to quit lying to this poor man—”
Brad folds his hands in his lap. “Have you ever tried to tell him the truth?”
“I tried. After we stopped not-dating, I sent him a text and said we should meet for coffee in real life. And when I showed up… he didn’t see it.”
“How did that make you feel?” Brad asks.
