Steadfast

There are stories that can’t be true even if they happen.

I know that doesn’t make sense. Sometimes nothing does. Normally I try and make these diary entries cryptic, since I know mom reads them sometimes. A couple of times I’ve used fictional languages when writing about a normal day. Just because. Diaries are secret and not secret both. Like authors who write and publish theirs: how much of that is in the background, informing what they write, what they admit to?

I don’t know. But I feel like diaries are lies like biographies are lies. The moment you try and pretend it’s not fiction, you start telling lies fiction wouldn’t even attempt.

This isn’t like that.

It wasn’t a bad day, yesterday. Nor even a good one, not a horrible one. Just a day and I was thinking those intrusive thoughts. The ones that sort of think you or make you have a WTF moment at what passes through your head. Only mine were about me. Sometimes I’m so tired I don’t understand why I bother with anything. Thoughts like that. Ways to end it. It helps me not kill myself. I think maybe people who never talk about it are more likely to do it. Like letting pressure out. Releasing valves.

I never would, I think. Because of the pain I’d leave behind. Because I’ve seen the holes it leaves in people’s lives. Imagination is important. Sometimes I think it’s all that saves us.

But some things you can’t imagine. He was like that. Eleven.

Jay is eleven. This is important somehow. I was thinking, taking the slow route home from school and he was beside me.

“Hi!”

And he said hi like no one has ever said it to me before. Like, there are intrusive thoughts. This was a protrusive thought. We were friends. The word told me that. Jay told me that, without having to. We’re friends and he said hello and that was that.

“Hi?”

“My name is Jay and! I thought maybe I’d do bindings that aren’t bindings since bindings would be rude but sometimes people have really rude thoughts and they shouldn’t so I’m maybe doing a helping if that’s okay and I bet I can give you jaysome thoughts!”

It didn’t make sense, but it didn’t have to. Like politicians: it’s the tone more than what is said.

I told him my name. My real one, even if Dad still won’t call me it. He grinned, said I have a very good name and just talked. I did to, but mostly it was him. About how the island of Skye wasn’t really in the sky – which was importantable (his word) – and how everyone was a lot more steadfast than they thought they were. He said jaysome a lot, in that. And steadfast almost as often. I asked why, to the latter, in the end.

“Oh!” He stopped. “You noticed?! Wow! Uhm! I’m also maybe doing a prompting so I’m kinda doing two things at once even if one of them isn’t really a thing?”

“You’re killing two birds with one stone?”

“No! That would be really mean to do to birds,” he said, and I started laughing because he was nothing except sincere in that.

“It’s a saying. About doing two things in a single action?”

“Oh! I didn’t know about that binding, but that’s a really rude-face way to say it,” he said firmly.

I almost asked about people in glass houses and throwing stones, but some instinct said not to. Like maybe Jay could make a glass house. It’s silly, but I couldn’t shake the idea from my head. “Sometimes you need to kill birds. Not real ones, but some stones have to be thrown.”

And I pulled out my wallet, and showed my old name to him. The one that’s still legal.

“But that’s not you,” Jay said. “I bet you’re a spy in disguise!”

“No. Would it help if I said the word steadfast? That it used to be me, but I’m steadfast that it’s not now?”

“That would help a lot!” And then he hugged me, tight and light all at once. Like the kind of bindings I use, but not at all. “And,” he added, “people get confusled a lot. Bindings change all the time. People change all the time, and it’s the ones who aren’t – it’s the ones who don’t realize they’re changed or are changing that really bad stuff happens to. Your bad stuff will happen, but it’s a different kind of happen cuz of being honest!”

I cried a bit then. “What about you?” I asked, after. We were close to home then. “I mean, you’re eleven but you’re not. You speak – younger? If that makes sense?”

“Uhm. I do,” Jay said softly. “And Honcho has called me out on it, but it’s – being jaysome. Being cute and nice and kind and that’s Important for a Jay. Making sure people know I’m not a monster is hugey – a lot of work, but it’s important work. Sometimes I even forget I will be one for days and days, because I’m really good at being me. The more you are you, the more you forget not being you. And the more other people will too, even if they don’t want to.”

And he said it like a secret and promise both. And then went down the street into old Mr. Gull’s house. Right in, as if the front door wasn’t locked. I didn’t follow. I came home. Thought a lot. Wrote this down today. You know people are lying if you only ever see them at their best, if they never do or say anything that reflects badly on them. So Jay let me see behind his best, and I think it hurt him to do so. To say that.

But he did it. And if he can do that, I can do a lot of things. Like remove this page from my diary. Put it on the living room table for you to read. So we can talk, mom. About a lot of things.

I love you.