Price of Admission
By Wilhelmina van Royen
A girl shrieked as a tall boy chased her down the hall. Some kids stepped out of the way, others told her to shut up and stop being so annoying. It being lunchtime, there wasn’t any particular order about the halls, which were jammed with students having retreated from the bitter rain. And, consequently, were crowded and loud.
A boy pushed through a large group of girls clumped en masse, giggling over someone’s camera, to reach the stairs. He had to throw a hand out for the railing when two kids barreled past, the bigger one bumping into him with considerable force. He yelled a brash obscenity — not undeserved — and continued down the stairs towards the front office at the end of the first-floor hall.
His heart pounded. He wished it would stop. It made his hands shake, made him so nervous he considered turning around and saying eff it, like he had so many times prior. He felt like he was going to vomit, crap himself, and cry all at the same time and he wanted to run. He wanted so badly to run. Then he thought of the dead bird he had found that morning. He took a deep breath and walked faster.
The office had heating, unlike most of the school. A few seniors were taking advantage of this in the hall connecting the offices with the admit desk, leaning against a wall and laughing rakishly. But as soon as the principal stepped out of her office, they silenced and dispersed. When she passed the boy she gave him a cursory smile.
His counselor’s door was open, and he wasn’t meeting with anyone. Just sitting at his desk and pouring what looked like vegetable soup from a thermos into a Tupperware container. The boy knocked on the doorframe.
“Are you busy right now?”
The man flashed a quick smile. There was a restrained humor in his eyes, like he wanted to make a joke. “No.”
“Then can we talk?”
The smile hardened, but the sincerity stayed. “Of course. Close the door behind you?”
The boy did so, wincing when it nearly slammed. He sat in the chair on the farthest side of the desk. The counselor put down his thermos and moved the soup to a shelf behind him. All ears. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I’m feeling worse and worse, but the person that’s . . . responsible, kinda, I guess, is someone I’m really close to.”
“Is this person hurting you?”
The boy shook his head. “Well, not in the physical way you’re implying. I’m not being abused.”
The rest came out in a rush.
“I’m just really torn, because he’s my best friend, and I love him like a brother— I love being around him, I love talking to him, I love hanging out and wrestling with him. Like a brother. He’s such an awesome person. But,” he sighed shakily, “being around him is so frustrating! He can get really opinionated about some things, and, well . . . it gets a little uncomfortable, and I’m sick of lying to him. I’m sick of lying to everyone, really. Pretending you’re okay is just easier than admitting something’s wrong, y’know? Being around him makes me start comparing the two of us, and that makes me realize I’m just a wee bit more messed up than’s normal. And I’d get his back-and-forth in my head that made me feel basically worthless.” He didn’t sound finished. His eye darted to the door, then back to the floor.
“Well, here. Look.”
He pulled back his sleeve so the counselor could see the scars going up his arms. Some were white, old, others pink and still healing. At the crook of one elbow there was a cigarette burn. On the other arm there were three ragged Xs that looked like they had been gone over dozens of times.
“I cut. It’s just my way of coping. See these?” He turned his arm around, showed the bright red lines running vertical from wrist to elbow, “these are fresh. I’ve been doing it since eighth grade. I had to use the razors from pencil sharpeners! That is embarrassing, almost. I don’t know why, but it just is. Like I can’t even use a real razor.” He scoffed in a self-disgusted way.
“But I’m not trying to kill myself. See?” He held up his arms again. “I avoid the veins.”
The counselor did a good job not frowning.
“There are months, stretches of three or four in a row, when I’m fine and don’t do anything to myself. But then something comes up, and I start beating myself up for it — like, oh, I don’t get this-and-that about something in math because I’m not as smart, and I can’t figure anything out on my own, and all my friends are smarter than me. It’s all my fault and I have no one to blame but myself, and if I worked just a little harder I’d do miles better, and if I were just that much more. And I just go on and on and on! God damn it!” He slammed a fist on the arm of the chair. This time he whimpered and his lips trembled worse. The counselor handed him a tissue box, but he wouldn’t take it.
“I trust Jared with my life, so why can’t I just fess up to him? Macho bullshit? I don’t know. I guess I’m afraid of what he’ll think, and I don’t want to burden him with my troubles. It’s not his fault I bottle everything up and withhold information, from everyone. My parents don’t even know I cut. Or that I’m bisexual, or that I hate living here, or that sometimes I do think of ways to kill myself. No one knows this is hell.”
The counselor did not interrupt. He did not fold his hands in the manner of movie-screen psychiatrists. He sat there, and he listened. The boy continued, his voice going a little higher and wavering a little more. But his voice never died, never stopped working, never failed to be understood. That voice needed to be heard, and it needed to shed its matted and tangled coats of disparity.
“I wasn’t keeping it a huge secret. I’d hinted at it a few times before, and one of my other friends is bi, and I’m pretty sure he knew. That I was. Not that I was struggling to tell people. But I’m pretty sure he knew that anyways.” The boy’s eyebrows drew together briefly.
“But Jared . . . I’m so close to him, I’m afraid he’d be creeped out and wouldn’t want to be around me anymore. I don’t think I could handle that kind of rejection. Like being kicked out of your house by the person you love the most and forced to live somewhere foreign.
“Jared can be . . . intense. Prop 8, remember? Whenever he saw something about it, he’d get all up and huffy about how people were making a big deal out of something that wasn’t really a big deal, and people needed to pick already whether or not to allow gay marriage. He doesn’t hate gay people, I think. From my understanding at least. He hasn’t said anything like ‘they all need to be penned up somewhere far away from everyone else’ or anything like that. I dunno. Best friend, person I’m closest to — closer to than my dad, and I can’t say three words. Isn’t something wrong there?”
The boy sighed and dropped his head into his hands. He made a noise as if he was about to speak, but then shook his head and fell silent. He did not, however, surrender to the tears lurking at the corners of his eyes, as much as he wanted to. He almost couldn’t believe himself. Here. In the office of the counselor, where, he’d told himself a million times, it didn’t matter if he cried. Some part of him still said “suck it up. You’re not being bombed every day.”
But he wanted to feel validated, and he didn’t want to feel like a jerk for wanting so. Yeah, people were dying in other countries. But that wasn’t here, it wasn’t him. He thought it was selfish, but then he thought that he had a right to feel this way, because humans aren’t emotionless robots, and no matter how hard you try to ignore what hurts, you have to put the disinfectant on it eventually.
The counselor waited patiently, not smiling when the boy looked up, but not looking unfriendly. He gave a nod to show he was listening, and that the boy could start again when he was ready. There was a knock on the door, but the counselor told the person away. His stern voice made sure that the door was not opened.
Finally, the boy spoke.
“I kept rehearsing what I was going to say to you, how I was going to start the conversation. I kept telling myself okay, just do it today. But I chickened out every time.”
“That’s fine, and it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you did come.”
The boy gave a shaky laugh. “The first step to fixing it is admitting that you have a problem.”
The counselor nodded. He let the boy continue, but did not offer anything else. Many matters of the heart should never be stopped, even if that wasn’t quite what the psych books said.
“Now, I guessed it’s reached a middle and it’s just going on an uphill battle now. I can’t say that I really want to go to those protest marches. I can’t tell anyone because I’m too proud.” He waved his hands about and scrunched his lips in a very unattractive manner. “I can’t open up and try to fix it. The hole’s always there, getting a little deeper every time I have a bad day and getting wider every time I’m around Jared and I realize how unequal and unfair my life has been. I want to cry and scream and shout and punch things, but I don’t want people to see me, but I want them to know what’s wrong and I want help and I want everything to go away.” The boy sighed again, momentarily scrunched his eyes shut, and leaned back in the chair. “And if I told my parents all this I think it would hurt them.” He sat up straight again. “You won’t tell them any of it, please? It wouldn’t be good for them, my dad especially. He’s got his own issues to deal with without trying to deal with mine too.”
The counselor shook his head. “I won’t tell them anything that you don’t want me to.”
The boy sighed again, stood. But when he looked at the door he sat back down. “It’s not that I don’t trust them. I just don’t trust anyone, really. I don’t tell Jared most of what I’m thinking. He’s seen the cuts, because I’m around him so much and he’s not a dumb person, but I just shrug it off, tell him it was a one-time thing, lie about how I really got them. I don’t tell anyone what’s really wrong. I lie. I lie so easily.” His head went to his hands again, but the hands continued through his hair, the left one stopping on his shoulder. He knew it what he was doing was good, but it hurt. God, how it hurt. He also knew it would hurt a lot worse before it got better, and that even once it was better there would still be pain. Life wasn’t easy by principle. It was even harder when it took a malicious joy from your suffering and decided to prolong it by making you stubborn as a mule. He didn’t look up when he spoke again.
“I haven’t shared anything with anyone in a while. Y’know how in elementary school, you’d always try to get out of your friend who he had a crush on? Nothing like that since we moved. I’m just not comfortable telling people stuff anymore. And when you feel belittled by your best friend. . . .” He looked away. “What’s the best way to tell them something like that?”
“When the moment is right. It sounds cheesy, but it works. Want a little example from my life?”
“Sure.”
“My wife and I would have conversations, and there would come a point where it petered out. It happens in every conversation. It starts going from ‘what do you think about the newest scandal?’ to ‘so, yeah’ and there’s that moment when both of you are silent. This kept happening whenever we would talk over dinner, but I got the feeling that she wanted to tell me something. But I always started a new conversation to fill the silence. At one point, she just talked before I could and told me she was pregnant.”
The boy chuckled a bit, awkwardly, the only reaction he thought appropriate to an intimate detail in the life of a man he didn’t know. “I keep having moments like that. And I’m bi, I’m bi is right there at the front of my mind, just tell him, and I don’t. Then I tried telling my dad instead when we were alone in the car, but that didn’t work.”
“Then the moment wasn’t right. Do you believe in instinct?”
“Yes.”
“Then instinct will tell you when’s the right time. If it goes badly, there’s always people you can call.” The counselor opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a card. He took a pen from the penholder next to a framed picture of himself and a dark woman holding a baby. He clicked a few keys at his computer, looked at the screen, and wrote a few numbers on the back of the card. He handed it to the boy. “The first is my cell number, and the other numbers are of some free 24/7 hotlines. If you’re in really bad trouble, don’t hesitate to call the police.”
The boy smiled. “Spare me the lecture.” He said it good-naturedly. Then the smile fell. “I don’t know how to stop.”
“If you feel like cutting, you can call any of those numbers.” The counselor tapped the card. “You can call my cell number. You can go to a hospital. Leave the house. One grounding isn’t going to change your life. There was a girl at this school, a few years ago, who cut too deep by accident and had to be hospitalized. You need to know there are always people who can help. It’s okay to feel shy about it.
“But you’ve come to me on your own, which is good.” He smiled. The boy smiled back. This time he stood.
“Should I come back again?”
“I’d like you to.”
The boy’s smile fell a little. I have a long way to go. A very long way. And it’s not going to be easy. Nothing ever is. If it’s easy, it isn’t real. That was why the impoverished and the deprived made greater artists. They knew suffering. They weren’t tricked into thinking life was a sugar-coated gold brick or a sweet, downy lamb. Life was a weathered old dog with mange and leathery skin that knew how to dodge the sugar-coated gold bricks thrown at it by the rich people in pretty houses.
He could bite back once he got over the fear, the pride, the need to look nice and pretend nothing was wrong.
“I’ll take a tissue, though.”
(also available here: http://wilhelmina-vanroyen.deviantart.com/art/The-Price-of-Admission-187150044 )
If only high school counselors were actually like that :/
-Doc Badass
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