When the only thing anyone ever seems to say about people like you is how they should be locked up, shoved in cages, out of sight and out of mind — it’s sort of a difficult thing to be honest with those people. Is it worth trying to change the mind of someone who could just as easily get you thrown in a van and taken away?
But sometimes, you tamp something down for so long that it starts to burn your insides. Your only choice then is to let it out, or let it consume you entirely.
And I’d heard her saying just the most terrible things. Calling us “freaks” and suggesting that the government sterilize us so we can’t “create more problems.” But at least as often, I had seen her stand up and protect people — people who had no way to protect themselves. There was a fire in her, one that seemed desperate to act, to help.
I hoped, in vain, that maybe I could appeal to that part of her. I could show her how afraid I had become, how difficult it was to suppress something so innate, how desperate I was to just exist without scrutiny. Maybe then, her cognitive dissonance could resolve itself, and she could see that most of us just want to be.
It didn’t really go down like that.
When I told her, showed her… she didn’t speak for a while. I could see it in her face: she was reconciling the person she thought she knew with the person that was. And it was hurting her, deeply.
When I finally spoke up, it was like all of my thoughts were colliding at full speed. Everything I had wanted to say was coming out, half-formed, partially fused, utterly incomprehensible. And at the end, I asked if we could still be friends.
She didn’t say yes. She didn’t say no.
She said nothing.
The next time we saw each other, it was as though nothing had changed. She seemed totally content to forget that I had ever told her.
And I was nowhere at all.