Dad thinks depression is a mental excuse, not a mental disorder.
I listened to him and Mom fight about it the entire drive to therapy today. She was playing John Cougar Mellencamp’s Uh-huh album way too fucking loud, and they yelled over it instead of turning it down. I told them I didn’t want them driving me anyway, I’m twenty-three, for fuck’s sake, but Mom insisted on dropping me off on their way to lunch and picking me up after. Bonding time, or whatever.
Dad and Mom never fight, not unless it’s about me.
Mom is worried about me, and I hate that I upset her, but I’m not sure how not to.
Honestly, I think my dad is right. I don’t have a reason to be depressed.
We have money, we always have. I went to a good school, a good college, all paid for. I have a job with my dad until the day I die — a good job, one I enjoy, one I excel at, one that will mean I’ll have a life of fortune just like he did. I’ve had plenty of friends throughout the years, even if I did drive them all away. Sex isn’t hard to find, neither is a girl to spend time with, if I want that sort of thing. I’m healthy. I’m not the most unfortunate looking dude, either.
All signs point to normalcy.
Most people would kill to have what I do. I think that’s why Dad grumbles under his breath when my therapy comes up, when Mom tries to make him recognize I have issues. I hate the word, too. Depression. It sounds so fucking stupid, and I feel stupid. I don’t want to go to therapy, or talk about my feelings, or question every fucking thread of my past looking for answers.
What if there is no answer? What if I am just not a happy person. Period. The end.
I think I could have gotten away with it, with just being a miserable prick, if I hadn’t pulled the stunt that I did. That woke everyone up, most of all Mom, and now I have to pay for it.
I didn’t even want to do it. Maybe the day I tried, I did. It was a bad day. Today, right now, I know it was stupid.
But today is a good day.
Even if I did have to listen to Dad tell me how ungrateful I am for a solid twenty minutes.
I think it’s because he grew up with Grams for a mom. She’s the only one who seems to get me, and it’s because she’s the same kind of crazy. People say I got my nose from her, and I guess I got this, too.
I still hate writing in this thing. And think all of this is pointless. And for the record, I fucking hate John Cougar Mellencamp.
My hand found my mouth, fingertips ice cold on the skin of my lips as I glanced up at Emery. He was still sleeping, his breaths even and steady, his mind at peace — at least I hoped. I didn’t know what he was dreaming, or if he even was at all.
I should have put it down, should have closed the journal and vowed never to pry into his private thoughts again. I should have had more respect for him, for the words meant only for him, but I was selfish. I wanted to know more. I wanted to know everything.
My fingers fell from my lips and flipped through the pages, all the way to the entry from last night.
Grams told me when I took this trip, I needed to keep my eyes open. She said part of the journey would be doing things I’d never done before, taking chances, exploring. She wanted me to invite adventure into my heart.
So, I picked up a hitchhiker.
I scoffed.
Okay, not really a hitchhiker, but a girl who needed a lift.
I don’t even think she realized it, not until the moment I asked her to come with me, maybe not even until we were two hours away from Mobile where I picked her up. But I knew the second I saw her.
She was a caged bird, and when I opened the door to let her out, she didn’t know whether to fly or molt.
Her name is Cooper and she has a dog. The dog came with us, which I thought would be annoying since I hate anything that is adorable, but surprisingly this dog doesn’t bother me. Her eyes are crossed a little bit and her fur is out of control, like she’s never been to a groomer. I like that about her. She’s the ugly kind of cute.
I don’t know if I like Cooper yet.
I chewed my lip, heat crawling its way up my neck.
She talks a lot. She’s naive. She’s young. Her glasses are too big for her face. She’s religious, but I don’t know that I can blame her since she grew up in the Bible Belt. Mostly, I’m just perturbed because under all that, she’s beautiful, and I find myself insanely curious about her.
I wonder how she’ll be on my bad days.
She was my waitress at the diner in Mobile and I asked her my question. She couldn’t answer. But unlike everyone else, she didn’t tell me a bunch of stupid shit. She could have said her dog made her happy or her boyfriend or something else surface-level.
Does she have a boyfriend? I didn’t even ask.
Actually, I really don’t care, so I won’t be asking.
But the point is she didn’t look at me like the question was absurd, or like there were plenty of things in the world that made her happy, or like I was weird for asking. She looked at me like she couldn’t answer because in order to list what made her happy, she had to know she was happy in the first place.
She also looked at me like I was serial killer when I asked her to come with me, not that I can blame her.
Still, she came. And now I’m on this trip with a girl and a dog.
Maybe this was what Grams was talking about, or maybe I’m just fucking stupid. Either way, I’ve got someone to talk to.
Poor girl.
I smiled a little at that, yawning as I closed the journal and gently placed it where I’d found it. I tucked my legs under the sheets, gently removing my prosthesis once I was covered and moving it off to the side. Stretching my arms over my head and pointing my toe, I let exhaustion wash over me, closing my eyes just as Kalo moved to curl up by my side. I rolled over, one hand petting her long, soft fur as the other propped the pillow up under my head.
“You really are the ugly kind of cute,” I whispered to her, and she licked my hand in agreement before laying it down on her paws.
I closed my eyes, thoughts still racing as his handwriting filled my mind. I shouldn’t have read his journal, and I swore to myself then and there that I wouldn’t read anymore. We were on a road trip together. If I wanted to know something about him, I should just ask.
That is, if it’s a day where he’s talking.
I wondered if he’d wake up after our nap in a better mood, with the smile I’d seen a few times the day before. I wondered if tomorrow would be another silent drive, if I would annoy him even more than I already do.
He’d called me a caged bird.
No one had ever pinpointed exactly how I’d felt my entire life until that moment, that sentence, that truth scribbled out in messy, honest, almost impossible to read letters.
I imagined Mobile as my cage, Emery’s hand on the door of his car, holding it open for me to escape. And just before I drifted off to sleep, my breaths even and steady in my chest, I found myself wondering if the nest from his dream really was me, after all.
A few hours later, Emery and I were both rested and cheerily stuffing our faces with the most delicious barbecue pulled pork sliders in the world.
Well, I was cheerily stuffing my face. Emery still wasn’t speaking, his brows furrowed over his bored eyes, but at least he was eating.