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ghost

noun. an eponymous note, with rhythmic value but no pitch.

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"JUST TO CLARIFY," I SAY, sitting down cross-legged on the floor. "One WISA USB, two mini chocolates, one Halston postcard and the Walmart voucher. Plus their card."

Renata nods as I read the list off, and adds, "Don't forget the reusable coffee cups."

Empty gift bags surround me on the carpet, all made from fancy lilac paper with black satin ribbons for straps. As WISA President, Renata is in the throes of preparing for another panel—Rainbow Science. The speakers of the panel are all accomplished researchers, lecturers, or activists in the queer academic space, and I have the great honor of writing their thank-you cards and packing their gift bags while Renata hastily pulls together the last slides of the PowerPoint.

As we work, I try to ignore the fact that Callum and I had sex in this very room two weeks ago, a fact that my brain keeps circling back to in boring lectures and at work and in the shower.

How can he possibly like me? After four years of hatred?

I tell myself that our feelings are borne of lust, ignited by repeated orgasms and stoked by some fairly stimulating pillow talk. My heart thumps lies, lies, lies and calls me a fraud. It wars with a vengeance against putting Callum in the same league as all of my previous flings. Callum is such a generous friend, such a good leader, such a kind brother, so quick-witted and forgiving and hard-working and thoughtful and he fucks like a sex god—how can you not love him? Oh, that's right, you fucking fraud, you do!

I always shove down the clamoring sensation in my chest; it's easy to do, because I'm used to it by now. Before we kissed in freshman year, and the seed of my resentment had been planted, Callum had put the stars in my eyes. I'd been lonely my whole life, looking for home, for belonging. And then I met someone with the same passion and the most uncanny ability to tell when I was being serious and when I was being sarcastic. The brightest smile, and the softest eyes. The dream guy.

I know what I feel: on the days I am utterly done with life's fuckery, he will pull me out of bed with kisses right underneath my eyelashes. And I know he's a night owl with no ability to regulate his own sleep schedule, so I'll have to tempt him back there at the end of the day. I'll learn his favorite alcoholic drinks and make them. He'll let me doodle my initials on the bottom of his skateboard. He'll show me around his hometown. We could share a drum kit. We could be in love.

But I know what I think: relationships are a power play. Power parity is so seldom achieved. People can love each other but one is starstruck and one is settling. One person gives up their ground so the other has a place to lay down. Someone inevitably begs to stay when everything is wrenched away from her again, and others do the wrenching.

My feelings have let me down before. Foster families, Marlon, who taught me how to grip a pair of drumsticks, even my birth mother—my problem has always been loving too much or loving no-one. Building daydreams around regular people and disappointing myself when reality comes knocking.

When I was younger, I poured everything into people even as my brain screamed no. It took several years to stifle that, to stop needing company and acceptance, to stop looking for home in other people. Emotional regulation and boundary-setting and building resilience remain foreign concepts to me, because I never had any role models, negative or positive.

Would I love Callum too much to try and withhold anything for myself? Because with every sunbeam that is his smile, I can also imagine my world after Callum. After he comes through and grows forests and flowers in my heart and then leaves. Letting Callum into my life would let a storm into my harbor, which I've kept safe and smooth and calm ever since I became an adult.

Not even glancing away from her computer, Renata abruptly asks, "Do you and Callum still hang out?"

"No," I answer. "We were hooking up while marching season was in, and now it's not, so we've stopped talking."

"Why did you leave the spring ensembles again?"

Renata has been concerned about me ever since I quit band. Whatever excuses I was prepared to tell Keller—prioritizing GPA or career development or mental health—and the truth that Callum knows—I can't think of a better way to kill my feelings for him—I told Renata none of it.

She would see through the excuses because she lives with me, and has never heard me open up about any of it, and the truth would just embarrass me.

"I'm trying to get better grades and earn a postgrad scholarship."

Renata glances over her shoulder. "Mm-hm." I think she's about to go back to assembling the Rainbow Science PowerPoint, but then she sighs. "You know, you're sometimes hard to be friends with. I say this with love."

I blink, an unfamiliar jab of hurt landing in my gut. "What do you mean?"

"It's nothing major. Well, it's— it's hard watching you push away things that could make you happy and then isolate yourself. Where I see opportunities, you see risks. Where I see adventures, you see threats."

I inhale shakily through my mouth. This is a valid thing to say in our friendship; we built our foundation on trauma-swapping in freshman year, and agreed nothing was off the table to say, so long as it came from a genuine place. But I don't understand. Is Renata going to stop being my friend?

"And you're so smart, Bay, and I'm not accusing you of doing anything wrong," she reassures me, upon seeing my stricken expression. "I just think there's a difference between being open, like communicating well and sharing personal experiences with complete objectivity, and being vulnerable. Vulnerability is something entirely different."

"Do I need to be vulnerable?"

Renata gives me a kind of pained smile. "Kind of, yes. Otherwise it feels like I could literally vanish and Bay would keep being fine—like she always is. Like you're only friends with me because it's convenient."

Am I fine, always?

Sometimes I think I'm barely holding on.

"Okay," I click my pen and put it on my desk, rising from the ground. "I'm— I'm going to go for a walk. To think about that some more."

Renata's expression crumples. Clearly I am not reacting how she wanted me to. "Wait," she says, pulling her coat from the back of her chair. "I can come with you."

"No, it's okay." To prove that things are good, I walk over and squeeze her hand. "I'm fine—I'm not mad. I just. Yeah. I think."

Ten steps outside the dorm, I realize I forgot to grab a coat. I'm only wearing my sweater, and the cold wind breaks through the knitwear as if I was just wearing a fishing net. Instead of going back up, I walk to the strip of eateries down the corner and hunker down inside a café. I order a BLT sandwich and a coffee and try to think about Renata's admission without letting it touch me emotionally, otherwise I think I might cry.

But I suppose that was exactly her point.

I don't my inertia is my fault. At some point in high school, I was so cuttingly sad that it took some major changes to bring myself to be a functional human being again. Instead of being sad, I think I chose to be numb instead. Instead of having high and low periods, I've just cruised through the last four years on a rock-steady medium baseline. Sure, I'm not super happy. But I'm not in danger from myself anymore, either.

Isn't numbness enough? Isn't numbness fine?

You want to turn your emotions into concepts and your life into abstractions. Callum was right. Exactly that. I want to transcend my body. I want to become a concept, an abstract collection of thoughts, memories that Callum and Renata could love or even hate. But it wouldn't matter to me, because thoughts can't have thoughts.

The BLT arrives before the coffee, and when I find myself startled that the waitress can see me—that I'm not invisible, a nexus of consciousness sitting on a backless chair—wish that I'd become invisible so that I never have to talk to another human being again and deal with all the world's bullshit, I accept that I should probably get some help.

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Two weeks after Renata's mini-intervention, I find myself back at the student health center.

I might have been admitted sooner, but the call center woman asked if I wanted an appointment with my usual counselor Florence, and of course I did, because any amount of history I don't have to re-explain to a fresh face is worth it. I check in at the receptionist's desk, wait for six minutes, and then walk down the narrow butter-yellow hallway when she says, "Florence is ready now. Room Three."

The door is open when I arrive at Room Three. Florence, her softly-wrinkled face rosy and bright, waves me in when she sees me. "Good morning. How have you been, Bay?"

She doesn't seem surprised or worried to see me so soon. My mandated counseling session, to qualify for the financial assistance from the foster care transition program, isn't scheduled for ages.

"Hi," I say, "I've been good," and want to kick myself.

I've not been good. Who made the stupid social script that makes people so hesitant to answer honestly? How are you? Fine. It feels like there is no correct answer.

After I take a seat, Florence scoots her chair to face me and asks, "Why don't you tell me how I can help today?"

The hard thing about getting help is that I never feel like I need it. I get up in the morning, make all my classes, feed and bathe and groom myself. I'm a functional human being with some minor issues, nothing compared to people who have it worse. This subsection of the population has become like a mental scapegoat to me, People Who Have It Worse, a convenient way to decline professional support services and feel altruistic while doing it.

As always, Renata called me on my bullshit. "If you don't ask for support because 'you can handle it' then that means you'd only ask for help when you couldn't handle it on your own anymore—when it's dire, when you're on the verge of breaking down, and the problem would require more resources to fix. I'd bet professionals want to be used proactively rather than as an emergency service. I'd bet good fucking money."

When I returned from my under-dressed walk around campus, Renata hugged me and apologized and told me not to hate her for saying what she said. I didn't hate her. I don't hate her. I love her, despite all my bitching about loving people.

So now I'm here. Nowhere near a breakdown, proactive and ready to get better. I stare at the poster beside Florence's bookshelf that says IT'S OKAY NOT TO BE OKAY in cartoon bubble font. In the bottom right hand corner is the logo of a youth mental health advocacy organization that worked closely with the state foster care agency, one that was always underfunded and short-staffed in all the public high schools I attended. I remember thinking that every idea to change the world or make a positive impact starts out a good idea and then dies, starved of money.

"I think I'm depressed," I tell Florence. Opening up feels viscerally wrong, like taking a shovel to my chest and digging through skin and blood to unearth things that shouldn't be unearthed.

Still, I push through, communicating that I really only feel human when I drink or smoke or take some kind of drugs, that I have weird out-of-body moments at parties and at work and in cafés. I haven't cried in six years (except when Callum gave me my birthday card, but I'm not admitting that), and I think loving others is the most harmful thing a person can do to themselves. I've been numb for as long as I've been an adult, and before that, I've been sad for as long as I can remember. Florence listens with sympathetic but not overdone eye contact and tented fingers, nodding along. When I finish my spiel and ask for medication to make myself better, she sighs.

"Even with clinical diagnoses, medicine is not the first resort," she informs me. Florence writes a quick note on a paper pad and slides it away from me, to the other side of her computer keyboard. "Every person is different, and each person requires a different support plan. Before we go any further, you should know that no-one—not friends or partners or counselors or therapists or doctors—can 'fix' a person, mental health-wise. We provide tools, whether that's medicinal or psychological or structural, and you need to take those tools and use them yourself. It's hard work, but it's rewarding work. Does that make sense?"

I nod stiffly. "That makes sense."

"Okay," Florence says. "before we even jump to any conclusions, why don't you tell me about your weekly routine. How many hours you sleep, your diet, and your commitments."

I recite my class timetable for spring semester, detail the sorts of meals the residence hall cafeteria serves up, and mention how my schedule has blown wide open since I quit all the bands. Now I just study, work and sleep, study, work and sleep. I thought maybe I'd feel lighter, less stressed and anxious with more time to complete assignments, but I feel the opposite. Despite having more time on my hands, I sleep restlessly and submit the same or poorer caliber of work to my professors.

"Why did you quit the spring ensembles?"

I dream of Callum a lot, not sex dreams this time. Just tranquil little scenes, almost memory-like. Callum relaxed and reclining on his bed, his hand running through my hair. Tucking up my feet on a couch, curling into his body, pushing play on a movie. Opening the glove compartment in his car, expecting the lip balm that I left in there from last time. I wake up from these dreams like they're nightmares, heart racing and tears clamoring.

I push away the urge to lie, to say, "I wanted to focus on schoolwork this semester," because if I'm going to sabotage myself this early, I might as well have never come today. "It's really pathetic," I admit.

"Safe space," Florence chirps.

"It was because of a guy. Basically we were involved, it ended badly, and I dropped out so I didn't have to see him anymore."

"Do you feel safe around this guy?"

Looking at Florence's suddenly alert expression, I startle. "Oh, yes—I'm safe around him. It wasn't like that. The only thing I'm avoiding is uncomfortable feelings."

"Is there something we can call 'this guy'? A nickname or?"

"We don't actually have to call him anything. I don't want to usurp your time and energy to just talk about messy relationship drama, so—"

"Hey, people are distressed by whatever they are distressed by," Florence tells me gently.

I think about another conversation I had with Renata: "You know, you don't need to be alone just to prove that you can tolerate it. And even if you couldn't tolerate it, there's nothing wrong with needing people. Everyone needs someone."

"C," I offer in a small voice, already hating this experience but determined to stay honest, stay vulnerable. "We can call him C."

Florence nods, explaining, "The only reason I'm focusing on this area is that extracurricular involvement—especially one like music, which hits a bunch of mental and social elements—is great for mental health, if you can stick with it. You've always been so passionate about music."

My fingers pick at a loose thread on the chair cushion. "Maybe I found someone I hate more than I love music."

"Why do you hate C?"

I don't.

Being humbled is painful. I have to admit to myself that I'm not stronger than other people, not more resilient.

In the same breath I was rejecting relationships, I was seeking intimacy from Callum, friendship and sisterhood from Renata and Lien and Shane, camaraderie from the band and the drumline, mentorship from Keller and Dina (the Foxhole manager) and Mr. Scott (the percussion director). If my love of marching band was only for the music, why didn't I just shack up in the basement of my dorm and practice my drumming alone?

Because I need people. I want people around me.

"I don't hate C. I fear him." Florence's brow furrows when I seem to contravene my previous statement about safety, and I elaborate, "He makes me feel things I have no control over, and I need to feel in control of myself, my life. I had no agency as a kid. I traveled and ate and studied and slept and woke up according to the commands of other people and institutions."

"That's a completely natural response. You were a child with no say over your circumstances," Florence assures me, her therapist voice perfected. "But you're an adult now. Things don't have to stay the same forever."

I know. I know this. Even if this whole process is going to hurt. There are worse feelings than pain.

"I should keep coming to counseling," I state, not a question, though I still wait for Florence to nod, smile comfortingly, and reassure me.

"I think it would be helpful, yes."