I Am Angry

I AM ANGRY

Loyalsock High School

Williamsport, PA

1982

As a high school guidance counselor, I am surprised at how much kids tell me.  Most of them don’t seem to want to keep any secrets from me.  I know about their sex lives, their drug habits, their parents’ infidelities, their drunken fathers and their mentally ill mothers. And while they frequently tell me these stories without shame or unabashed, they worked very hard to camouflage the pain as much as possible.

“My mother lives in a fantasy world,” she flippantly tells me as she bits at her fingernail. She is fifteen and meeting me for the first time. I have called Kate to my office to begin our discussion about her post high school plans.  As a 10 grader, she, like most of her other classmates, don’t have any plans beyond lunch to day.  But I want to check in with her so I can get to know her a little bit better.

“What do you mean by that statement?” I ask her.

“She thinks our family is fine, that everyone lives like us”. She lets out a dramatic sigh and then continues, “My father left when I was three so I never went through that period whine I thought I was responsible for the divorce. But really, my parents aren’t divorced. They plan on going through with it this summer. But I’ll believe it when I see it. They always claim they are going to go through with it but as usual, they never do.”

“I don’t understand, is your father living with you”?

“No. We see him all the time but he doesn’t live with us. He lives near us and comes over occasionally with tons of gifts and acts like the big, generous father. He never had time for us but he always had lots or gifts to make up for it.” Her tone is abrasive.

“You sound angry.”

“I am angry, very angry, at both of them”. She pauses for a few seconds and slips into her own thoughts and then quickly changes the topic.