I Could Have Made It Extremely Clear That I Had Known In My Heart, Since Adolescence And Self-awareness

I could have made it extremely clear that I had known in my heart, since adolescence and self-awareness came bearing down upon me like a flood, that I didn’t want the same things he wanted, and that if I was certain of any part of myself, I could say right now that I never would want them.

But I wasn’t certain about myself back then, and I still believed there must be something wrong with me, and even if I had been confident or articulate enough to explain who I was, what I did and didn’t want from other people...I still don’t think I owed him that.

So I was silent.

Todd must have decided I was wavering, because the softness rose in him again as he leant over and gripped my wrist for a calculated second.

He said,

“You’re lonely. I know you’re lonely, I see you, in the dorms and in the corridors, by yourself. You can’t pretend you’re not.”

With friends like you, Todd, of course I was lonely.

I stayed silent.

I turned, and walked away. Left him there on the bridge without another backwards glance.

It didn’t take me long to learn how Todd made sense of the conversation between us; as I heard him tell it to people reliably later on, there was still ‘something wrong with me.’

Whatever the supervisors had been trying to teach us about the world and how it really worked, it had failed in my case.

As if faith had anything to do with who I was. With what I wanted, and didn’t want, my life to become.

— Chapter 4: Of Lovers, Gods and Beasts.