Chapter 7
The next morning, Maya got up first, as usual and went for a run. By the time she came back, Carina had gotten up and made coffee. Maya saw that Sam was still asleep in their bed, even after she had taken a shower in their bathroom.
Maya went into the living room joining her wife who handed her a cup of coffee.
Maya felt exhausted which had nothing to do with the run. Neither of them had slept well. They had been glad when Sam had fallen asleep almost immediately last night, but the couple was too worried, too many thoughts going through their heads.
They had started talking about how they were going to organise online school for Sam and inform the current school about everything that had been going on. Maya had spent more than two hours researching about the different types of online school and a LGBTQ+ sensitive therapist for Sam. They had already sent multiple emails to school providers and therapists. It was what kept their worries at bay, especially Maya felt like this was the only thing she could do to compensate her feelings of helplessness and do something productive.
Despite what Sam’s parents thought, they hadn’t actually been asleep all night. They had picked up parts of the discussions, the emotions had been running high.
This only added to Sam’s guilt. They mistook their moms’ worries for being a burden, being too much. Why couldn’t they have just kept their mouth shut two days ago?
Was this all really worth it? Their thoughts were consumed with all the things their classmates had said and texted.
Doubt started to kick in: Was there any truth to it that they just wanted attention and that they weren’t actually non-binary? What if this was just a phase after all? They knew that even if they didn’t have to go back to their school, their opinions and their hatred was far from rare. And would their moms still be supportive once they realised what issues their identity would come with? What issues they had? They knew that their mum had been mad yesterday once their mama had told her about the self-harm.
And if they were being honest, the only thing that had kept them from self-harming last night was that they couldn’t have done it without their moms noticing.
They had also already been awake when their mom got up to go for a run. They had just pretended to be asleep because they hadn’t felt up to facing all these things. Instead, they buried their face in the bedding, taking in the calming scents of their moms. All they wanted to do was stay in the safety of their moms’ bed forever and not face all of these shitty things.
When their mama had gotten up, they had just found it easier to keep pretending to be asleep.
They heard their moms talking about them in the living room again. They couldn’t make out each word, but they picked up words like “school” and “therapists”.
If they were being honest, they had no desire to go to a therapist. They were too scared to even open up all the way to their moms, so how were they supposed to talk to a stranger, and what if they thought that being transgender was a disorder?
They only realised that they had started crying again when they noticed the wet bedsheet beneath their face.
Meanwhile, Maya and Carina were staring to get worried. They both wanted Sam to sleep for as long as they could, but it was past 11 am, a time that was highly unusual for them.
When Sam heard footsteps approaching, they quickly wiped the tears out of their eyes and pretended to be asleep.
Carina sat down on the bed and gently and touched their shoulder:
“Hey, are you alright?”
Sam slowly sat up and pretended to rub the sleep out of their eyes.
“Hey, sleeping beauty. Sorry for waking you up but it’s already past 11 am, we thought you might not want to sleep all day.”, she chuckled.
Sam nodded, feigning being groggy.
“Will you join us for breakfast in a bit?”
After breakfast, which was mostly Sam eating a little - not because they were hungry but because they didn’t want to disappoint their moms further, the atmosphere was a little tense. Sam knew that their moms wanted to talk about a lot of things, but they just stayed quiet.
When Maya and Carina accepted that Sam wouldn’t eat more than they had, Maya tried broaching the topic of school first – presumably the easier of the two topics.
“So, we wanted to talk to you about school. Obviously, you won’t be going back to that school, so we thought about maybe doing an online school? There are multiple good providers who also make sure the pupils’ own interests are incorporated…”, Maya rattled everything off.
Sam looked up at their mom, overwhelmed and confused. Sure, they didn’t know how to deal with school, but it was still their school. They had been going there for years, they knew the teachers, the structure, the students… and some of them were really nice, even if Laura had turned out to be an asshole. Had their moms just decided that they were going to change schools without their input? Shouldn’t that be their decision?
Maya continued:
“We already sent emails to some schools, so they can tell us if they have any free spots available. We obviously won’t be able to enrol you by Monday, but I’m sure your current school will agree that it’s best not to return.”
This caught Sam’s attention again: “Wait what? How does the school even know about everything?”, Sam asked, half angry, half confused.
“I sent them an email yesterday, explaining to them everything that happened in school and what the people in your class texted you. They may want to talk to us next week, we should bring screenshots of the text messages…”, Maya said, planning the next steps in her head already.
“You did what?”, Sam exclaimed.
“Why would you do that? I don’t want all of this to be public. This will make it so much bigger than it needs to be! I don’t want my other friends to find out about me this way! This will only make them feel so much more powerful. And why do I need to leave my school? They are the ones doing something wrong! And… and you only made it worse with this. Why didn’t you at least ask me? This should be my decision! This… this is so unfair!”, Sam had gotten louder and louder, screaming at the end. They had gotten up from the table mid-way through, turning to go to their room.
Maya looked confused and perplexed.
“Your school needs to know about this!”, Maya shouted back, getting angry herself now. She had spent the better half of last night worrying about them and doing everything in her power to help her child.
Meanwhile, Sam had stomped off to their room, slamming the door closed in anger.
Still consumed by her anger, Maya added shouting:
“And we don’t slam doors in this house, Lucy!”
As soon as the name had left her mouth, Maya looked at Carina, horrified by the mistake she’d made at the worst possible moment:
“Shit, I… I didn’t mean to…”, Maya stuttered, running after Sam.
She knocked at their door and tried to turn the doorknob, but it was locked:
“Sam? Sam I’m so sorry. I… I really didn’t mean to say the wrong name… it just… slipped out…”
Maya didn’t get a reply. She felt so horrible about it.
Carina had followed her and now pulled her back to the living room.
“Come on, let them be for a little while. They know that you didn’t mean to deadname them.”, Carina tried to reassure her wife and herself to an extent.
When they sat down on the sofa, Carina hoped that Maya could look at this with a little distance.
“Look, I know we and especially you only tried to do what’s in their best interest, but I think they’ve got a point that we should have asked them before telling the school about it.”
Maya took a deep breath:
“But Laura and Josh and the others shouldn’t get out of this without consequences.”, she argued, her sense of justice kicking in, not quite ready to change her mind yet.
She felt hurt in a sense, that what she thought was supporting her child was now not only not being acknowledged but even worse, was now supposedly something that was hurting Sam in some way.
“I know, and I agree, but it should be their decision. They already robbed Sam of the choice to come out on their own terms, and we should have thought about the consequences for Sam as well. Taking them out of their known environment and telling their story is obviously not what they want.”, Carina explained, also a bit mad at herself that she hadn’t thought of that last night.
Maya sighed, realising that her wife was - as almost always – right.
“How do we make this right? I didn’t mean to take their choice away. And I really didn’t mean to say the wrong name.”
“I know. Why don’t I try to talk to them? And you could, I don’t know, do something for yourself, and try not to beat yourself up any further, maybe go for a run?”, Carina suggested.
Meanwhile, Sam had run to their room, crying. All of this was so unfair. They felt like decisions were being made over their head. Why did they have to move schools? Was being non-binary so abominable that they couldn’t be at a normal school? All they wanted at this moment was to be normal, for everything to go back to the way things were.
If they hadn’t come out, or better yet if they weren’t non-binary, they could have just been a normal teenager; they had heard the pain in their mom’s voice when she had apologized for deadnaming them. They knew that it was normal for people to slip up in the beginning and they weren’t mad at their mom, but it hurt, nonetheless. They blamed themselves for everything in this moment: They felt responsible for everything at school, for their mom’s pain and for all of the worries they were causing.
They couldn’t bear all of these feelings any longer and they got their supplies out of the drawer and started making cuts on their forearm, not just scratches as they had done two nights ago, but actual cuts. They hardly registered the pain and all of the swirling thoughts slowed and were buried by a white, thick fog, making everything numb. A few minutes later though, the started to regret it. They were bleeding quite a bit and it was now starting to hurt. And how were they going to hide it from their moms? They got some thick, folded-up tissues and presses them on the cuts. They heard some commotion coming from their moms’ bedroom and they started to panic. They quickly took some scotch tape, taped the tissues to their arm and quickly disposed of all evidence and hid the tools in their drawer again. Finally, they pulled the sleeve of their hoodie over it, glad that it wasn’t noticeable due to the oversized, dark hoddie.
Only a few seconds later, they heard knocking on their door again:
“Sam, are you ok?”, Carina asked.
“Y…yeah, I’m fine.”, they replied, a weird feeling of calmness and a certain high had spread throughout their body.
“Can you let me in?”, Carina asked, sort of surprised to hear Sam seemingly rather composed.
Sam unlocked the door; Carina stepped in and closed the door behind herself.
“Can we talk about it?”, she asked, not wanting to force Sam to do something they were not ready for, again.
Sam nodded. They also still were on an adrenaline rush, both from the cutting itself and almost being caught.
“I hope that you know that your mom is really sorry about misgendering you earlier.”, she said.
Sam nodded again: “Yeah, I know that she didn’t do it on purpose.”
Carina told them what she and Maya had talked about in the meantime; that she and Maya had had only good intentions when they had done all the research last night anything over their head and that they were sorry about not having thought about it.
Carina asked them, what they would have wanted and what they need right now.
Sam sighed:
“I mean, one the one hand I really don’t want to go back to my school but it’s all I’ve known. I think I could get used to having school online, maybe I could do it from the fire station as well whenever you and mom both work. But I would like to think about that before deciding anything.”
“I understand that. It sounds very reasonable.”, Carina agreed, “what about telling your school what happened?”
“Well, I guess that ship has sailed, hasn’t it? I mean the email is sent. But I guess I don’t want to make a bigger deal out of it. I really don’t want to talk to the principal or anything like that.”, they said.
“Can you tell me why? I completely respect your decision, but I would like to understand it a little better.”, she explained.
“I… I mean even if I don’t go back to that school, I’ll probably still see some of the people around and I know that it’s the kind of thing that everyone in school will know about. And I just don’t want everyone to know about it. And what about other queer people at school? What about Robin? They will likely be bullied even more now.”
“Yeah, ok. I understand that. I hadn’t thought about it that way…”, she admitted, “but about Robin, they only changed schools recently, so maybe they could go to the same school as you. Maybe you could do online school together. That way you’d have a friend who is in the same year and in the same classes as you. That could be fun.”, she suggested.
“Oh, yeah, that’s a good idea. I could ask them.”
Carina thought about bringing up the last topic, therapy. She didn’t know what they thought about it. Both Maya and Carina were very concerned. They hadn’t really talked about what had led them to self-harming and if it had been going on for longer and if there were other, underlying issues.
“So… last night your mom and I also thought about maybe finding you a therapist…”, she tried to phrase it carefully.
Sam didn’t look their mama in the eyes. They knew that this was something that was bound to come up. Were they too much of a burden for their parents already? Did they question Sam’s identity?
“What… what do you think about that?”, she probed carefully.
“Um… I don’t know.”, they didn’t want to voice their concerns and they also felt very guilty about the fresh cuts. They remembered that their mom said that they should tell her if they self-harmed again, but they didn’t want their parents to feel like they self-harmed because of the fight.
“You know that mom used to be in therapy, and she still talks to Diane every now and then. And it can be really helpful to talk to someone who is impartial. Mum and I will always be here if you want to talk, but there might be some things that you don’t want to talk to us about, which is totally fine.”, Carina tried to explain. She didn’t feel like this was the right moment to bring up the self-harm.
Sam stayed silent, thinking that the way their mama described it sounded good but also very scary, trusting a stranger with something that they wouldn’t tell anyone else. Also, they were sure that a therapist would not want them to self-harm, and they didn’t feel like giving that up any time soon.
“Well, maybe you can just think about it.”, Carina proposed, really hoping to get them into therapy soon, but not wanting to force them in any way.
They just nodded, not wanting to talk about this any further.
Carina tried to change the subject:
“So what do you wanna do with the weekend? We can go outside and have a picknick or you could meet with Robin? Maybe you could do a movie night?”
If they were being honest, they just wanted to be left alone, all they wanted was stay in bed and try not to think about everything. But they knew that their moms would worry and try to talk to them even more, so they agreed:
“Yeah, that sounds good. I’ll text them. So, it would be ok if they come over?”, they asked, just to be sure.
“Yeah, of course.”, Carina said, getting up and placing a kiss on their head before turning to leave their room.
“Do you want the door open or closed?”, she asked, realising that they had insisted on closing their door more often recently.
“Closed, please.”, Sam said while already texting Robin.
The door closed with a quiet thud. They breathed out a sigh of relief. They hated that they felt like they were hiding something from their mama, but then again, they had also hidden their identity for a while now, so it was more like a replacement of one secret for the other. They knew that what they were doing was wrong, but they felt like that if their parents found out, they would be even more disappointed and would try to make them stop. But if they were honest, they really didn’t want to stop. It wasn’t like they were hurting anyone else.
They leaned back into their pillows and tried to take deep breaths. They had no motivation to do anything right now, but they felt like the more time they would spend with their mama especially, the closer she would get to finding out their new secret.
Sometime later, Robin texted them back. They would enjoy coming over, and they liked the idea of a movie night.
Sam spent the few hours until Robin would come over in their bedroom. About half past four, Maya knocked on the door. She had hoped that they would have come out on their own, so that she could apologise, but she didn’t want to wait for too long.
Maya profusely apologised for the deadnaming again as well as for the overambitious research without consulting them.
Sam wasn’t mad and told her that they forgave her.
When they were done talking, the doorbell rang, which was Robin, just as expected.
Robin introduced themself to Carina, they had already met Maya the day before. They all saw that Robin was very shy and felt overwhelmed, so Sam showed them the flat and their room first. They sat on Sam’s bed, when Carina knocked, asking them about what they wanted for dinner.
“What would you say to ordering pizza?”, Carina proposed.
Sam locked to Robin, who nodded excitedly.
“Yeah, that would be great.”, Sam agreed, even though they didn’t really mean it. By now, eating had become a bit of an issue for them as well. They didn’t want to gain weight because they thought that it made them look more female than they already did. But they didn’t want anyone to know about that, even though they were pretty sure that their parents were onto them with how much they had been paying attention to their eating lately .
“I was also thinking about baking something, maybe muffins. If you two want, you could help me.”
They agreed and found themselves in the kitchen a little later.
They had fun making the chocolate muffins, the kitchen looking more and more like a mess.
When the muffins had somehow made their way into the oven, Carina went to the toilet, laughing about how silly they were being. She was glad that Sam was laughing, and that Robin seemed to be a good person.
Meanwhile in the kitchen, Sam and Robin were starting to clean the kitchen.
Sam was currently washing the bowl in the sink. Robin noticed that Sam’s sleeves were getting wet, so they started rolling them up for Sam whose hands were wet and full of foam. During the baking Sam had forgotten about their cuts and didn’t react quickly enough to stop Robin.
Robin stopped dead in their tracks when they saw the thick layers of tissues, partially soaked with blood, the scotch tape stopping it from bleeding through. Sam quickly pulled down their sleeve, but it was too late. Robin had already seen it.
Robin knew that it was most likely self-harm and due to Sam’s reaction and the haphazardly used tissues, they could only assume that their parents didn’t know about it.
Robin was about to say something, but in that moment, Carina came back in. She noticed that the mood had changed drastically:
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah… yeah were fine.”, Sam said, giving Robin a pleading look not to say anything, which they didn’t.
“Is it ok if we go to my room?”, Sam asked.
“Yeah, sure. I’ll do the cleaning up, you already did some of it.”, Carina agreed.
After the two teenagers had walked out of the kitchen, she wondered what had happened in the few minutes she was gone, but she felt like it was none of her business to pry.
Sam closed their bedroom door behind them and started pacing.
Robin was unsure what to do, but they knew from experience that they didn’t want to be part of keeping something like this a secret. They knew that it could only end badly. They wanted to give Sam a chance to tell their parents themself, but if they absolutely refused, they would do it for them. They were still incredibly nervous though; they didn’t really know Sam very well yet and they didn’t want to lose them as a friend.
Meanwhile, Sam was panicking. They didn’t know how Robin was going to react. Would they think of them as a freak? Would they find it disgusting? Would they tell their parents? And why hadn’t they told their mama right there and then? They kept pacing and felt their breathing picking up pace.
Robin noticed Sam’s laboured breathing:
“Hey, Sam? Hey, it’s ok. Let’s sit down and try to take some deep breaths.”, they led them towards the bed.
“Deep breaths. It’s ok”, Robin tried rubbing their back to ground them.
After a few minutes, Sam’s breathing had calmed down considerably.
“I’m sorry”, they mumbled so quietly, that Robin was not completely sure that they hadn’t imagined it.
“There’s nothing for you to be sorry about.”
Sam was surprised not to hear any anger or disgust in Robin’s voice.
The next sentence made them freeze up though.
“Do your parents know about it?”, they asked carefully, not sure how to start.
There was silence for a few seconds:
“Um… they… know that I have… but they don’t know about this one…”, guilt was evident in their voice. Why did they have to be so stupid? All of this could have been avoided if they just hadn’t let Robin pull up their sleeves. How could they have let their guard down so much while baking?
“Ok…”, this got Robin thinking. It was good that their parents were aware of the general problem, but they still needed to know about this incident. It had also looked like quite a lot of blood, and they were pretty certain that they needed medical attention, even just to properly clean and dress the wounds.
“So, do you have some kind of routine of how to tell them?”, Robin asked, knowing that some families used some sign or method to inform the parents.
Sam shook their head:
“No… I… my mama only found out about it yesterday and she told me that I… I should just tell her or any other adult…”
“Ok, so do you think there is someone you ‘d be most comfortable with telling? I mean… I know it’s not easy but keeping it a secret is definitely worse in the end…”, they tried to explain without pressuring Sam too much.
“I… I really don’t want them to be mad, or worry even more or…”, Sam hesitated with their other reason; they really wanted to just keep this a secret, but they felt like Robin wasn’t going to let them get away without telling their parents.
“Well, I don’t know your parents well yet, but I’m sure even if they seem mad at first, they won’t be mad at you, they will just be sad that you’re not doing well right now…”, Robin attempted to reassure them, but they could see, that there was something else Sam wasn’t saying.
“I there something else?”, they asked, scared that their impression of Sam’s parents had been wrong.
“I…”, Sam couldn’t hold the tears back any longer, “I don’t want them to tell me to stop.”, they started to sob.
Robin’s heart broke a little at that, they wrapped Sam into a hug. They knew what Sam meant. They knew what Sam was feeling. It was the dilemma of wanting to get better but not stopping at the same time, because the coping mechanism being robbed caused the problems to be even more visible, even more unbearable.
“I know, I know this sucks, but it will be ok. I know what this feels like. But I promise you, it is possible to get past this.”, Robin whispered, trying to reassure both Sam and themself.
When Sam had calmed down a little, thoughts of what Robin had somehow revealed about themself swirled in their head. They hated that Robin seemed to struggle or have struggled with similar things, but this had been the first time, they had felt understood, and less alone.
“I… I think I can try to tell my mama, but… I’m scared…”, they admitted.
“I can stay with you, if you want…”, they suggested, unsure if it was too much, considering that they had really only known each other for a few days, but with everything they had experienced together, they could already feel a strong bond between them.
“I think I would like that… thank you… for being nice and for understanding”, Sam said, feeling like they couldn’t find the right words for telling them how much this meant to them.