The Love I Deserve

Trisha Khattar

There’s a reason people are drawn to the breakneck speed cities like New York City thrive on. It’s an addiction to the feeling of being swept away, a part of something bigger. You watch everyone around you strive and struggle and cry, begin to understand that you’ll never be alone in a city like this.

I know that from the flip side — losing yourself within the blinding lights and panicked bustle, unable to remember the last time you allowed yourself to sit and breathe — there’s aching relief in the stillness this pandemic has brought crashing down with it. 

I can’t find it in me to feel it, though. It’s hidden, locked behind a wall in the back of my mind with the memories of her, long hair in my mouth as I open my eyes sluggishly to her body half on top of me, legs tangled in the scratchy dorm blanket, soft laugh and smiling cheeks, squinted eyes and gentle hands and lovelovelove in her every breath. 

Every morsel of relief I should have felt, a reprieve from the rush of too fast, too much, bid its goodbye when I stepped back into the house that left me bruised and broken and bleeding with unseen wounds and cold indifference. 

—

The worst part of it isn’t being away from her. It’s not the isolation or the loneliness or the excessive amount of free time. It’s not even having to live in this house, listening to my mother, who means well but falls just short of the kind of acceptance I’ve come to realize I deserve. It’s not the instinct I fight constantly, desperately, warning me to not look my father in the eyes, keep your head bowed, Tali. 

It’s the fact that I can’t sleep.

And maybe it’s because of the isolation. I can feel myself start to spiral into thoughts I would rather not plague my dreams again because I know they’d be memories of this house: polished wood, gleaming glass, clinically clean and ordered while the air festered with the sting of fear and resentment.

Instead of sleeping then, I lie in bed every night, scroll through the news on my phone. It’s funny, I know I should be more concerned about the implications of a disease killing thousands of people, sequestering millions at home, exhausting doctors and nurses and god knows who else. I should feel something, more empathy than a slight pang in my heart, but everything good in me I’ve shoved out of reach behind that wall.                                                 

All I allow in the forefront now is fear, a yearning for the apathy I had let take over me years ago before I cut my losses and fled across the country. I can’t breathe; it feels like high school again, too scared to talk back and too naive to understand that this wasn’t normal.

I roll over on my bed, curl up in a ball the way I haven’t done in years, staring at the heart on the screen.

Received two days ago. 

My finger hovers over the screen; a crack grows in the wall in my mind. I sigh, turn off my phone, and resign myself to another night of sleeplessness.   

—

“How’s James, Tali? Did he go back home too?” Mom asks quietly at the dinner table. 

“Yeah, he went home too,” I say, eyes on my plate, stomach queasy. 

“That’s good, New York is a mess right now, baby, be glad you’re home,” she continues, either unaware of the tense atmosphere or uncaring of it.

“Yeah.” 

“Are any of your friends still stuck in the city? You could have asked them to stay with us, you know we wouldn’t mind.” 

I can’t help the rush of anger that floods through me. “Damn, mom thanks for telling me. If I’d known, I would have asked Rhea — you know, my girlfriend — to come with me. It’s a shame, guess I just didn’t think of that.” 

“Tali.” My dad cuts me off.  

I turn back to the salad without a word, stabbing into the lettuce forcefully.

Hearing the quiet clink as Dad puts down his fork, I look back up at him. He clenches his jaw. I raise my eyebrows. 

“Apologize to your mom.”

I scoff, clenching my teeth together to stop myself from yelling. It’s quiet for a beat, and then suddenly, instantly, I’m sick of it all. I’m sick of feeling afraid, sick of pretending I don’t want to throw up every time I look at my father’s face, sick of the fact that I’ve never fought back. “Turns out, I don’t care enough to apologize for nothing anymore, Dad, and I certainly don’t care enough to play into your ego-fueled hypocritical case of homophobia.” 

I push back the chair, stand up, look him straight in the eyes. It’s exhilarating and terrifying all at once and I want to run away so badly I can practically feel my body turn away from him.

It’s this moment. This moment that’ll define the rest of your life. It’s a crossroads, Tali, which road are you going to take?

I make my decision in the split second before my father opens his mouth to speak, think God, I’m more than ready for this.

“Before you say anything, Dad, before you succeed at, once again, proving just how much you are not capable of being a father, I’d like you to know this: if this virus hadn’t forced me to leave my home in New York, with my girlfriend and friends and people who love me no matter who I love, I would never have stepped foot into this house again. Are you going to make me apologize for that too?”  

He’s silent. The surprise in his eyes is more satisfying than it should be, I think.

And the wall breaks. Now glass, fragile and breakable, more reachable than it has been since I stepped foot in this house, it shatters in my mind. Relief washes over me like a tidal wave and my knees almost buckle under the onslaught of emotions, but my heart is beating to the rhythm of her soft kisses on my forehead, and I breathe easier than I have in a very long time.

I turn and walk away, legs trembling, shaky smile growing on my lips. It feels like a victory. 

Maybe this pandemic had brought more good with it than I had realized.

—

Rhea never understood how much I hated my father. She traced her finger down my cheek, ran her hazel eyes over my face, said you must have loved him at some point. 

I smiled, leaned closer to brush my lips against hers, moving to tuck my head into the crook of her neck. I remembered the way he’d sat down with a thump when I’d told him, insisted with a shake of his head, “This isn’t you, Tali.” 

I didn’t know how to express to her what a complete dismissal of everything you are, your identity, strips from you. That sometimes I wondered if I was wrong, if I’d fooled myself into thinking I liked her touch, her kiss, her love, that in the end, my father was right. 

So I laughed, told her it didn’t matter if I loved him then, or even if some part of me loved him now. All that mattered was that I knew the kind of love I deserved. 

I stare at her contact that night, blinking back tears. Take a deep breath.

Press call.