PHANTOM SCARS

By the time I was 16, I was wired differently. I kept my passions hidden from my family and followed all the rules a good Italian Catholic girl raised in the suburbs should. I had a boyfriend, but I was secretly having an affair with this girl named Lynn. She was sexy, confident and outgoing, all the qualities I didn’t possess.  I admit now, after all these years, I wanted to get caught. I was tired of hiding in the shadows, wanting to break free from my parents’ idea of normalcy.

I loved kissing her so much. I was oblivious to the clock on the wall in the downstairs TV room in my parents’ home about to strike 11 p.m., my curfew. My mom caught us literally with our shirts off, and Lynn, well she was cool as a cucumber. She simply put her shirt back on and said hello to my mom. But that was Lynn, following her own path and making the rules up as she went along. She would say, “Being wrong is when you choose to lie about who you are.” I admired that spirit in her, but I wasn’t strong enough to follow through.

My parents, of course, did not agree with Lynn's line of thinking. Things got pretty bad after that experience. Although my father felt this was just a stage, my mom began drawing correlations between my love for sports and boys clothing with being gay. The next two years in high school they forbade me to stay on the basketball team or play softball. As if forcing me into some feminine-straight role or ideal was going to “fix” me.  My mom picked out my clothing, dressing me up like her favorite Barbie Doll. I felt absolutely helpless.

I was a creation borne out of ignorance and fear of what other people would think or say. I was no longer an individual but a character I had to play for the masses. My home became a battleground of accusations, emotional abandonment, and identity loss.  I didn’t know who I was anymore. Writing became a catharsis for the scars that would never disappear, only fade.

At 19 I left home. My parents would say I always had a choice. But what is choice when the options are: temper your individuality or choose to live proudly. At least, that’s how I saw it. Soon as I moved out, I went to the nearest barber shop and cut my hair short. Honestly, because I didn’t know how to manage the longer locks that my mom had always handled. I threw myself into playing softball with reckless abandon and every scrape, bruise or bloodied knee was strangely comforting. I watched the newly-formed scars physically fade overtime, unlike the emotional ones. The emotional scars were like phantoms brushing up against you at night, then disappearing in the light of day only to come back when you dream. 

Years later, I continue to write with the madness of a possessed spirit that swallows my pain and releases the hurt on my diary’s pages. The phantom scars are a reminder that there is still work to be done. I am an educator, a voice for all those kids whose only choice is to lie about who they are.    

Update on Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 08:26AM by Lisa Lacriola aka T.Langdon Squire

First Published in Mosaic Anthology Issue XIII, 2018