don't get your hopes up. don't let them by the window to find it's a sunny day, and that today is the day they go hot air ballooning. don't let them brush their teeth and comb their hair and tie their shoes and fill up the tank and drive all the way to where a little basket will take them higher than backyard grown weed's ever taken you. do not. get. your hopes. up.
i think i finally learned that lesson at 15 when i cried on the phone with my mom, whose end of the line was in the poconos at a very fancy shmancy rehab. it was christmas.
when i was younger than 10 but older than 8 i'd climb into the backseat of my dad's car and keep him company as we drove around town looking for my mom. the two of them had a fight that night, as they would every night like that, and she'd stormed out of the house. i never knew where she'd gone on those nights, but i know now. he knew then too, so i'm not quite sure why we went "looking for her".
"where's my mom? is she okay? what if she's dead? why are we driving through the cemetery? i want my mom. can i call her again?"
i'd call her 26 or more times in a row, hoping, praying she'd answer.
now at 23, i go through phases where i call her once every few days. maybe.
but now it's not just her. if i call anyone and don't get an answer the first time around my limbs get heavy. there's a handmaid tightening my bodice, making my lungs feel snug against my ribcage. my brain start's racing like goons on the summer streets, and i think the worst has happened. i begin to grieve.
i try really hard now to pull away first. i really do. to play aloof, to ignore my gender dysphoria and be the "cool girl". the one that doesn't care if i don't hear from you, and doesn't care that it's been a while, and doesn't care that i love you with my whole heart and would be absolutely destroyed if something awful happened. i try. really hard. the kid in me can't take it. ssri's can only tame but so much of our anxiety, and their arms are smaller than mine, more frail, less equipped to withstand the weight of a human body, and while i'm stronger it's not by much.