Family and thoughts

I'm only just realizing that I am the dud of my family.

My father, PhD in mathematics, professional computer programmer who sometimes does Secret Things for the NSA.
My mother, board member of multiple NGOs before she started an art career.
My older brother, Parker, a Harvard undergrad taking graduate seminars, speeding towards a degree in Computer Science.
My younger sister, Janet, fluent in three languages and working on a forth, getting a 4.0 and speeding towards linguistics in the Ivies.
My younger brother, getting a 4.0 at a math and tech charter school, and has had his eyes on MIT since he was thirteen.

I was the first to take a college class, the first to come out, the first to flunk a course, the first to go to a therapist, the first to slash her wrists, the first to get diagnoses from the DSM, the first to go on psych drugs, the first to drink, the first to date, the first bring up uncomfortable subjects at the Thanksgiving table. I was the last to pick a college, the last to consider a career, the last to get an award, the last to join any organization, the last to get up in the morning, the last to find friends, the last to realize.

Janet and I have one thing in common: we're the odd ones out. She is genderqueer, and I'm the only one who knows, though I'm encouraging her to talk to Parker. She is also almost certainly some kind of autistic, too, but I'm not forcing that. My PDD has been the least of my problems. But none of my siblings know what to do with an artistic mess like me. Parker regards me with wary sympathy -- "What's the matter? Why?" Janet asks me to talk, then looks embarassed or at worst cries. Scott ignores me. It's probably for the best.

But I love them.

Today, a friend of my sister's called me out of the blue. She wanted to talk, asked about my girlfriend. "Do you think you're in love with her?" she asked.

I told her I don't know. I said, I didn't dream about being with someone like Emmy, and when I'm with her, I don't want to spend the rest of my life with her. I know that this relationship will end. But it has to be later. This is what I think all the time. Let the end come, but after I put my arms around her one more time. Let me see her wave at me across a crowded room again, let my lips rest on her neck one more time, let me kiss her again, give me one more night, give me another day, another week, because it cannot happen yet. Later.

So I said this. And her only response was, "So she's not 'the one', is she."

Am I supposed to find "the one" at nineteen? Spend the rest of my days with my first kiss? Is the success of my college career not my classes or the approval of my teachers or my sanity, but my finding of a woman? Should I only date "the one," leave no room for saying, "I will try," deny myself a few months' comfort?

I am up again tonight, watching the moon travel across the top of my window. At midnight, it will come in view. By six, it will be waning over the trees. By six-thirty, obscured by its sister the sun, coming up to cast pink on the land and orange on the sky, making the fields and the frozen lake glow. Then it will keep sinking, still visible to anyone who cares to cast their eyes west. We have this worked out, the moon and I.

It's been a series of beautiful days. The sun knifing, the wind insistent.