#ofgraveycrds

The message popped up on his phone, causing a buzzing both against his palm and the inside of his ribcage. It was thrilling, meeting someone who understood him like this, whim he could share the thoughts and fears with that usually got written into a song and then tucked away under his bed, hidden beneath stacks of old school books and action figures. Even in a house as loud as his, he’d always felt lonely in a way he hadn’t been able to put his finger on. But now, suddenly, the world had opened up a little.

He raised his head, looked out over the street – the glow of neon signs below, quiet chatter at the corner, a bolero playing from an open window somewhere. He’d spent his entire life on this street and he knew, if he didn’t allow himself to change, if he kept trying to fit into the box laid out for him, he’d spent the rest of it here too.

So he breathes in the cool fall air, shifts slightly on the pillow he’s thrown out onto the fire escape to not freeze his ass off and presses his thumb against the screen of his phone.

“I wish people didn’t have such static views of others. We all change all the time, why does it have to be such a huge deal? It’s like there are twenty different versions of me out there in the world and I forget who knows which one.” A pause, Lincoln shivering from the cold. “I just want to be me.”

Eleanor Kim Markel never knew her birth parents. The only thing she’d ever known was light brown hair and twinkling green eyes that were larger than hers ever were in the mirror. On some level, Ellie always knew that she was different. She didn’t need the cruel words or jeers from children in her class to tell her that. She knew from the way that the color of her skin differed when she held her Daddy’s hand, or how she watched her Mama brush through silky mahogany curls that contrasted with straight black hair.

A trans-national adoptee, Eleanor was brought to Chicago, Illinois by a professor and her husband, who didn’t have the ability to have children of their own. While Ellie loves her parents dearly and still visits every other week, she has also spent her entire adult life unlearning some of the harmful xenophobic beliefs she had internalized over the years. She followed in her Mama’s footsteps, becoming a professor in psychology for some time before deciding to go back to school so she could open her own practice. Specializing in counseling adoptees and their families, she uses her own pain and experience in order to help others, so they might not have to go through the same painful introspective journey that she’d done not so long ago.

It was only towards the end of Bobbi’s suggestion that Neal tore his eyes away from the blueprint he’d spread out on the table in front of him. Was this really the time and place to be discussing – whatever Bobbi was getting at? Eyes lingered on her for a second before they returned to the task at hand, trying to find where he’d left of figuring out their best escape plan. 

“As much as I’m enjoying your detour into armchair psychology, perhaps you could postpone it until we’ve figured this plan out? Unless you’ve changed your mind.”