Chapter 27

CHAPTER 27

M EB

2 PEOPLE

M

MOM

I’m sorry but I’m your mother and I just need to speak my mind on this. I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go to Nashville this weekend. You’ll be up too late and everyone will be partying and you’re not allowed to drink. It’s a recipe for disaster.

M

MADDY

I’ll be fine

M

MOM

I’m worried it’ll be too much for you.

Her diagnosis has changed the way her mother sees her, or rather doesn’t. Maddy has been healthy, functional, and thriving for a while now, like she was in high school, better even, but her mother can’t acknowledge it. It’s as if everything about who Maddy was before November—dependable and predictably ordinary—has been erased from her mother’s memory, and through the lens of her selective amnesia, she can now only view a Maddy who is unstable, fragile, and likely to melt down in any kind of bad weather. Maddy could stay home forever, and her mother would worry. It doesn’t matter where she is or what she does.

EB

EMILY BANKS

She’s good mom

I’ll look out for her

M

MOM

Maddy, I think you should come home to Connecticut instead. We’ll have a nice quiet girls weekend. We can get mani/pedis, go to the mall, watch movies.

M

MADDY

Thx but we can do that any time

It’s Emily’s bachelorette

I’m not missing it

EB

EMILY BANKS

:)

She’ll be safe mom I promise

M

MOM

If I can’t talk you out of going, promise me that you won’t drink or stay out all night.

M

MADDY

Promise

M

MOM

And don’t forget to take your meds

M

MADDY

Maddy stopped taking her meds three days ago. She’d been feeling steady for a while now, great in fact, like she was cruising on a freshly paved road, nothing but sunshine in blue skies, even in the wake of losing the comedy tour and Max, a compound loss that a year ago would’ve turned her into a soggy tissue and taken months to recover from. She’s not the girl she used to be. Emotional growth, baby!

And that got her thinking. If she’s not who she was a year ago, maybe she’s not who she was in November, either. Maybe what happened wasn’t due to a chronic, lifelong illness. Maybe it was just a one-time thing—call it a blip if people need to put a label on it—or something she outgrew, like an allergy or bangs.

And so maybe she’d been taking all these horrible daily medications, suffering through every hideous side effect, for no reason. She decided she owed it to herself to find out. Three days drug-free, and the socked-in fog inside her skull has already burned off. She can think in fourth gear again.

She feels phenomenal!

She figures she’ll go at least a month before she tells anyone, even Emily. Maybe she’ll let them all know at the wedding. Hey, guess what? I’ve been off meds for over a month and I’m totally fine . That should be enough time to prove they were wrong and she is normal. And maybe then her mother will stop worrying.