The End Diary - completed

Day 614

We sat at the dinner table two days later—our third family dinner in a row. My dad felt like it was important to give me some stability during this time, especially since my therapist hadn't been doing much to help me, besides convincing me to stop taking my anti-depressants. My parents were blissfully ignorant of the fact that I was off them completely. They thought I was being the dutiful daughter and lowering my dosage. They thought I was doing exactly as the good doctor had said.

Truthfully, I was sick of the pills, sick of the lies, and sick of forcing myself into being something I wasn't. My family was broken and blistered, but why were we placing so much emphasis on fixing it now? After all this time, we were kidding ourselves if we thought more time together would mend the hundreds cracks and canyons running between us.

"Megan," my dad said, piling a few more peas onto his plate. He put the bowl down and looked at the array of dishes in front of him. "I want to talk to you about something. It's very important for your mom and I to talk with you, and you need to give us the chance by listening."

"Great," I said, mushing a few peas into my plate. Canned, not fresh, and downright disgusting. Just because we were sitting around having family dinner didn't mean it was going to come from the fresh market down the street. I actually liked peas, when cooked correctly. Frozen would even be better than this aluminum tasting mush.

"That's not a great way to start this conversation," my mom said.

"Yeah, we want to make this work. We're trying to listen to your doctor and give you space, but we're feeling a lot of hostility."

"Okay," I said.

"Will you listen?" my dad asked, exasperated.

"Sure." I shrugged. What else was I going to do, stick my fingers in my ears and babble incoherently every time he tried to speak? I wasn't seven. But I knew what he meant. He wanted me to hear what he was saying. Even if they were forcing me to listen, they couldn't force me to hear.

"Now, we need to talk to you about Carly, and why we reacted the way we did." My dad chewed a few peas thoughtfully, washing it down with his water. "We want to reiterate: it has nothing to do with beliefs."

"Or race," my mom chimed in.

My dad sighed. "Or race. You can love whomever you want, Megan. Girls, boys, anyone. It's never been about that."

"Though I don't think we're particularly charmed by the idea—"

My dad cut my mom a glance, but seceded, "Fine. We're trying for honesty, right? We weren't charmed by the idea of you dating a girl."

"But ultimately, we want to see you happy. Which is why we invited her over, to figure out how this was going to work. We wanted to make it work on our end." My mom shuffled a few things around on her plate.

"When she came over, the whole conversation felt off from the get go. She was aloof when it came to questions about the two of you, you got defensive right from the start. When we tried to figure out who Carly Jacobs really was, we felt like we got a blank slate."

"What we're saying, sweetheart, is we never saw what you saw. You saw this beautiful, amazing person. Yes, Carly was pretty, but your father and I had concerns about what she was like on the inside. Nothing she said came off as genuine. It felt put on."

"It felt like she had decided how she wanted the world to perceive her, and anything outside of that idea, she would manipulate it into being true," my father added.

I swear my eye started twitching.

"We saw how you were looking at her, as if the rest of the world paled in comparison. We were concerned. We didn't like the power she had over you, and what she was doing to you," my mom finished.

There was a long pause at the table. The only noise was my fork clattering against my plate, and it felt like the earthquake in my brain had split the table down the middle, separating my parents and me by a thousand-mile ocean.

"Making me happy is a crime?"

"No, we didn't say that." My mom let out a breath.

"Megan, please listen to us, okay? We felt like Carly was manipulating you, and because you saw her as a savior of sorts, it was easy for her to do."

I shoved my seat back from the table. "Manipulating?! She was the only person to look the other way at the rumors. She was the only person who saw me for who I was. She saw the world in me, and that's why we were together. We cared about each other so much, and now... now you're trying to taint that memory?" I shook my head, not wanting to hear any more, wishing I could knock all their nasty words out of my brain.

"We know you were in a rough patch, which is why it was easy for her—"

"To become my friend," I finished for them, glaring at my father and my mother in turn. "It was easy for her to befriend me because I had none. Because I'm a liar, a loser, and a lesbian. Right? So no one would ever love me on my own merit. Someone had to manipulate me instead. There's no way our feelings could have possibly been genuine." I turned and stormed out of the room, pausing on my way up the stairs as my parents' voices trailed after me.

"I told you we should let Doctor Suskin handle this," my dad said.

"I feel like she's only making things worse. Whatever this is, it isn't getting better. Should she really stop taking her medication?"

"We can't send her to anyone else; the insurance won't cover it." My dad let out a long breath. "She goes to see her tomorrow, right? I'll call Suskin in the morning and let her know we might have done more harm than good."

"Megan needs to stop seeing us as the bad guys." My mom's voice choked on the words. "I never thought I'd see my daughter hate me so much."

Truth is, Mom, I don't hate you. Was I angry? Sure. Was I more pissed off at you than anyone else in my entire life? Deirdre beats you by a little bit on this one. But you're still my mom. You still guided me back inside during the rainstorm. You still hugged me even when you were angry with me.

But I'm not sure I can forgive you for trying to take away my last memories with Carly, for trying to mess with my head and make me forget about all our good moments. Your words complicated an already strange situation.

For that reason, I feel like I can't trust either of you. Sorry, but that's the way everything has evolved between us. It's a shame, since family is supposed to be forever, but Carly has replaced you in my life. We'll extend into the forever realm, just as soon as I figure everything out.