I'm Sorry
A short story I entered into #330 Reedsy Prompts contest. The prompt was to write about the beginning or end of a relationship. TW/CW: Brief mention of suicide.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I know everyone says that when something bad happens to them—the kind of bad that changes you, destroys you, rips up everything you’ve built, throws it into a trash can and burns it. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. But it is.
“You can’t be fucking serious,” Dad said calmly.
It was the calm that always got me.
The calm right before the storm.
Right before shit hit the proverbial fan.
Right before his fists would ball up, probably aching to punch that look right off my face.
The look of a kid who just told his dad that maybe the doctors were wrong when they assigned him female at birth.
Maybe he wasn’t Sarah, like his parents had named him.
Maybe he was a James or a Shawn or a Riley.
Who knows? But he definitely wasn’t a Sarah.
“I—” I had started to say, but stopped. Because how do you answer an implied question that had no real answer? You can’t be fucking serious dot dot dot.
I was serious—am serious. That was all I could think at the time. Why in the hell would I risk everything if I wasn’t so completely sure that the innie between my legs and mounds of useless flesh hanging from my chest didn’t feel wrong my entire life?
Why would I tell my very conservative father on Father’s Day of all days that I was his son and not his daughter?
“So what? You’re a dyke now or something?” He scoffed. Actually scoffed. My heart ached. It is aching.
I could feel myself dying inside. I was dying inside. I am dying inside.
Dad and I never had what you’d call a good relationship. When I was little and he treated me like a son, everything was great. We were close then. He loved me then. I wanted to be just like him.
But when Thomas was born, it was like Dad realized his son had a vagina and couldn’t be called his son anymore. I don’t think he stopped loving me, but he never saw me the same way. And now here I was telling him that he never saw me at all.
“Dad, I—” I started to say again. “I’m not a dyke. I don’t even like girls.” I ran my fingers through my freshly buzzed hair. I had cried watching the hair fall to the floor, because I knew this conversation was coming, and I was scared.
“You don’t like girls,” he repeated, taking a long drag from his cigarette before sipping on the beer that I knew would only make him angrier. And he was angry. I knew that like I knew anything in life.
“No,” I said. “I’ve always had boyfriends, haven’t I? I like guys.” I shifted in my seat at the kitchen table. The smoke from my own cigarette blossomed around me and I thought about quitting, just to have an excuse to put out this impending fire and escape with my dignity and sanity intact. It wasn’t going well. Of course it wasn’t. I knew that before I even went over there.
“So you’re telling me that my daughter,” he emphasized, “is a fucking faggot and a freak?”
I cringed at the slur. I wanted to disappear. Every moment of the conversation. I just wanted it to end. I want it all to be over.
“Dad—” My voice was a whisper. I didn’t recognize myself. My throat and eyes burned. From the smoke, I told myself. Only from the smoke.
Because if there was one thing Dad taught me, it was that boys never cry. Maybe he would never see me as the man I was trying to be, but I couldn’t cry and prove him right. Little girls cried. Never boys. Right?
“Get the fuck out, Sarah,” he said. “You’re either my daughter,” he snarled, putting out his cigarette by dropping it in the beer can, “or you’re fucking nothing.”
I wanted to say more to him.
Scream.
Tell him he was wrong.
Say, “You’re an asshole,” and never think of him again.
I deserved more, and I knew that.
He had taught me to never let a guy speak to me the way he was then. He had taught me to love and respect myself. But I guess that didn’t apply when actually being myself meant being someone he hated.
Someone he was disgusted by.
So I left.
And now I’m alone in my dorm room.
Writing this.
I’m sorry.
“Fuck,” I say.
Boys don’t cry.
That’s what my old always told me, growing up in Mississippi. We lived on a farm. I worked every day of my life. I never cried, even when my dad broke my fucking arm for talking back to him.
And I know his old man said the same thing and did the same things to him.
And that’s what I taught my kids. Boys don’t cry. But I swore I’d never hurt them like he hurt me, so I didn’t.
I thought I didn’t.
“Fuck!”
These fucking tears, flooding my eyes.
Why did I ask her to leave?
Why didn’t I beg her to stay?
Why didn’t I tell her I loved her before she...
I should have told her she’d always be my little girl and we could work anything out, even if it was...that.
I light another cigarette, my vision blurring, eyes burning, and I read that crumpled piece of paper for the tenth time.
Thomas read it before I did.
He was the one who found her.
When Sarah didn’t answer her phone for two days, he drove over to her dorm—that damn liberal college that probably—
I guess her roommate had been out visiting family, so she didn’t know anything about it.
Thomas and Sarah—they were always close. I didn’t know she thought I loved her less after he was born.
I love my kids the same! They’re my kids. And I’m proud of them. I always have been. So fucking proud!
After the funeral, he showed me the letter.
Yelled at me.
Punched me in the fucking eye!
I guess I deserved it, right?
“She killed herself because of you, you fucking prick!”
That’s what he said.
I would have never talked to my old man like that. He would have fucking killed me the second those words left my lips.
“God damn it.”
My eye is killing me.
I grab ice to numb the pain, but nothing helps.
It hurts like hell.
Her bedroom is exactly the way it was the day she left to go to college.
Blue plaid bedspread with space themed wall paper. She wanted to be an astronaut when she was ten. She loved space. Her mom papered the room.
Boy band posters.
Magazine cut outs of athletes and movie stars.
I always thought she just really liked blue. Not that girls can’t love anything except pink. She always hated pink.
But she loved the guys. Always had guy friends and boyfriends.
I showed a few my shotgun when they got too many ideas or hurt her.
But that was normal teen girl shit. And I was a normal dad protecting his baby girl.
I look around the room now, though. And I don’t see that a teen girl ever lived in it.
All I can see now is how similar her room is to Thomas’.
He’s still in high school. His room is right down the hall but he’s not in it.
Moved in with his mother.
Told me that if he had to look at me another day, he’d probably kill me.
I don’t blame him. I know this is my fault.
If I could do it over, I’d—
“It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” I say to the empty room.
Photo by Stormseeker on Unsplash