Notes of Amy Tanner （Confidential）
Patient: Logan Gray
Age: 25
Diagnosis: CPTSD
Logan has increasingly made positive breakthroughs. Without prompting, he speaks about how his history with sexual abuse, assault, verbal abuse, and neglect has affected his ability to create secure attachments. He speaks with awareness on his various trauma styles, ranging from fight, freeze, and fawn. He has displayed a range of emotions, expressing more anger for his father and mother in particular, who he says “should have done more to protect” him.
Today, Logan spoke about his regrets with former partner Matthew Cole, and the way that their relationship ended. He stated, “I wish I had worked harder to heal before now, to make our relationship work.”
Logan expressed a desire for more closure with Cole. When I suggested he reach out, Logan said, “I doubt he would want to hear from me.” I did not push him to see that this was said in fear. I trust he will come to this realization on his own with time.
Mattie
When I fly into Atlanta, it takes my brain a second to get used to the slower pace. I get into a car and begin the drive back to Decatur, the sleepy neighborhoods with front yards, sunlight shining through the large trees. I’d invited Logan home with me for the holidays—I didn’t want him to be alone—but he promised he’d be all right in LA for the rest of the month. I texted Logan to let him know I landed safely and that I miss him, but I still haven’t gotten an I miss you, too. We’ve been texting, calling, or meeting up every day for the past couple of weeks since the cabin, but I noticed when his messages slowed down and got shorter, when we only kept in touch because I reached out first. It’s hard not to give in to insecurity. We got so close so quickly because of this movie, but now that filming for Write Anything is over…What if he starts to realize the feelings he’d had for me were because of his character? With some space, he could realize he doesn’t care about me after all.
I pull up and swing into the driveway behind my dad’s car. The house has pale blue siding. My mom’s garden and hedges are doing well. I step out and slam the door shut just as the front door opens and Emma runs out, tears in her eyes as she leaps into my arms and hugs me so tightly I can’t breathe. I laugh, eyes also welling up.
“Did you get taller?” I ask, pulling away.
“No,” she says, wiping her cheeks and grinning. “Just gained weight.”
“You look really great, Em.”
“I know, right?”
My mom’s come out, too, waiting in the doorway. She’s radiant as I walk up to her and give her a hug, the sort of hug that could last a full minute and I still wouldn’t want to pull away. “Welcome home, Mattie.”
*
I settle in so quickly that it feels like I never left. I return to my old childhood bedroom. The closet’s been taken over as storage for some of my mom’s old clothes, but that’s okay. I have more than enough space for my t-shirts and jean cut-offs. I go back to playing video games on my old Switch and watching TV in the living room and messing with Em, like I did when I was in high school, flicking Cheerios at her when our mom isn’t looking.
“Stop being so immature!” she yells, but she’s laughing, too.
Something else hasn’t changed. My dad barely leaves his office now that I’m back. He’s a warm brown and has those freckles that grow around the cheeks and eyes with old age and a mouth that’s set into a scowl. I don’t remember him ever laughing. I used to wonder why my mom would marry my father, but there were smaller moments peppered throughout my childhood, too: them sitting together silently in the living room, holding hands for hours without any need to speak.
When I first got back, my dad and I had a quick hello—serious, stern. We avoid each other when we can. We were never the type of family to sit down and eat meals together, which is probably for the best. He stays in his office while I eat on the living room floor with Emma. If we run into each other in the hall, we grumble an “excuse me” and pass by without meeting each other’s eyes.
I want to say something to him, but I’m not even sure what. I want to ask him, maybe, why I wasn’t enough for him to love me. I want to ask why me being gay changed his view of who I am, and the fact that I’m his son. It hurts. It still hurts, after all this time, but maybe I’ve gotten so used to the pain that I’ve learned to push it to the side.
I remember holding Logan as he screamed, releasing all the pain that’d built up inside of him, everything that he’d been hiding from himself. He’d scared me, the way he screamed, though I didn’t want him to know. He screamed like he was dying. Maybe he was. Maybe holding in that pain was ripping him apart. I wonder if I’m doing the same.
*
This change of pace is what I needed. I can pretend, for a few days at least, that I’m not the actor Matthew Cole, star of one of the most anticipated films. I’m just Mattie, sitting at a table with my mom and my sister, talking and laughing and loving their company. It’s good to hear how Emma is doing in school. She’s a lot better now. As I suspected, she just needed a couple of weeks to get to know her classmates, and now she’s friends with a group that she always hangs out with.
“We eat at the cafeteria together and we have movie nights and we study together in the library.”
“That’s great, Em.”
“Oh, and I’m gay,” she says.
I almost choke on my water.
My mom laughs. “Blessed with two gay children, huh?”
“When did you find out?” I ask her.
“Well, I don’t know if I’m gay,” Em says, “because sometimes I still like guys, too. Like, it’s constantly going back and forth. But one of the girls in our group, Ayana, is really beautiful and so smart and funny and I have the hugest crush on her.” Emma says all of this like she doesn’t care what we think, but she isn’t really looking at us, either.
“Thanks for telling us, Em,” I say.
No one ever has to tell another person about their identity if they don’t want to. It’s a gift that she invited us in, a sign that we’re trustworthy and safe enough for her to tell us. I hesitate. I wonder if she plans on telling our dad, too.
Maybe my hesitation makes my thoughts obvious. “I don’t know if I’m going to tell him,” Emma says. Her voice lowers. My mom smooths down her curly hair. “The way he treats you, because you’re gay…I don’t think I want him to know, just for him to treat me badly, too.”
“You don’t have to tell him anything. Not if you don’t want to.”
Emma shrugs with a twinge of sadness. It hurts, knowing she’ll have to deal with the same thing that I did. A part of me hopes that if our dad ever found out, he would realize that he can’t lose Em, too, and he would finally start to change. But maybe that’s too optimistic.
I slide off the counter’s stool and walk over to Emma and hug her. I pull away and she rolls her eyes at me with a grin, but I don’t mind. “I love you, Em. Okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she says. “I love you, too.”
*
It’s only been a couple of weeks, but I’m getting comfortable in Decatur. On Christmas morning we exchange gifts, and Em and I help our mom cook the traditional dinner. Cousins and my mom’s friends come over, pinching my cheeks and ruffling my hair and saying how proud they are of me, the movie star. Dad even comes out of his office and sits on the couch the whole day, though he barely speaks.