A Long Overdue Letter To My Counselor

By Durwin Hoades

My life is filled with tar. 

There’s no other way to classify the strange, hideous thing that plagues my life. It creeps up on me, silent as my exhaling air; it comes roaring towards me at high tide, then recedes at low tide; it lingers, never truly leaves, but as soon as I think I’m in the clear, it descends upon me with the force of a thousand angry immigrant mothers, leaving me weak in the knees. 

I don’t know how long the tar has actually been in my life. I could’ve been 2 or 12, or maybe it’s always been there. Maybe I was born with it, attached to my heart like some sick tumor that my parents just decided to turn a blind eye to because they didn’t believe it was real. Maybe it just popped up in my peripheral vision one day and stuck around like a snobby, passive-aggressive comment from some white suburban kid who was sick of “the Asian kid” always being more competent. Maybe it’s all in my head. Regardless, when or how it showed up I don’t remember. I mean, it’s hard to describe or recall something that you don’t fully understand. However, I do remember when I first saw it.

…

“Do you always want to be second?” my mother chastises.

I’m in the car on the way to school–I think. Again, no idea how old I am. The car ride started normally enough: sublime silence drowned out by my headphones blasting music. Then, my mother brought it up. 

“Do you know if anyone got a higher score than you on that math test?”

I cringe involuntarily, pausing my music. 

… 

For the longest time, my parents have made fun of me for coming in second place. It first manifested when I got second place in my school’s geography bee three separate times. “老二, 老二, ” they would sing (which, I learned after a quick Google search, is a euphemism for a very bad word to nickname your fifth grader. Thanks, Mom and Dad!) Eternal second place. At first, whenever the phrase was brought up I would burst into tears, the sting of failure still fresh in my mind. My parents would then say something along the lines of “Don’t cry; it's just a joke. We’re just telling the truth. Would you rather we lie to you?”

“Jokes are supposed to be funny, Mom,” I would reply, sobbing, my breaths coming in ugly hitches. 

“Well then maybe it’s your fault that you don’t have a sense of humor.” 

I sobbed harder. Maybe it’s your fault. It’s your fault. Your fault. 

Since that day, my parents have never missed an opportunity to make fun of me for coming in second. Earlier in the week, when I showed my parents my math test with a 99 on it, part of me even thought they’d be proud. I expected a “good job” at the least. Instead, I got a “Did anyone get a 100?” At the time, I’d fallen silent, clenching the papers so hard that the 9’s smushed into 0’s. If you’d gotten that 100, then they would be happy. 

Maybe it’s your fault.

… 

We’ve stopped now; the road’s blocked by construction. It’s at one of those construction zones where they halt traffic from one side completely to let the other side through, except they always seem to let your side pass for less time, and the other side seems to take forever. I know there's no getting out of the conversation this time. 

“I don’t know other people’s scores, Mom,” I reply, trying to keep my voice even. Even yet, I can feel the fib tumble clumsily from my lips, making my vowels shorter, my pitch breathy. Idiot. She’s going to notice.

“撒谎.” Liar.

I stare outside the window at the construction workers. Then, as it always does, the truth slips out.“My friend got a 100.”

My mother immediately explodes: “I knew it, you little liar. I could tell. What good did you think was going to come from your lie? I can tolerate if you’re stupid, but what I hate are liars. Liars are the scum of the earth.” 

She goes on, but her anger eventually fizzles away, occasionally dotted with outbursts, until we fall into an uneasy silence again. Then, she says it, that age-old comment:

“Do you always want to be second?” 

She continues her rant again on how I’m cursed forever to be second, how I need to work harder, etc. I try to tune her out, but my efforts are in vain. My eyes are starting to sting; I can’t tell if it's due to my mother’s remarks or dust from the construction outside. Outside, some workers are pouring a noxious black liquid onto the side of the road to smooth out its deep cracks. It looks like tar. 

A construction worker finally waves our car through. As we slowly navigate through the twisting maze of placed orange cones, the black tar follows us, pushed on by a worker operating one of those giant paint roller machines. The ones who “work harder than you ever will,” according to my mother, yet the ones who paradoxically serve as a reminder as to why “you should work harder so you don’t end up like them.” The paint roller machine is dripping black ink onto the road. Suddenly I’m struck with an innate fear of this toxic mess. Then, a voice pops up in my head. 

Liar, liar, liar, liar. 

With a start, I realize it’s emanating from the tar. As we reach the construction zone’s end, I attempt to calm myself. Habitually, I rub the middle of my arm right above my elbow. Back and forth and back and forth. Across my smooth and tensed biceps. Back and forth and back and forth.

Calm down. This isn’t real. You’ll be far away. It’s all in your head. But as our car pushes past the construction zone, the voice still lingers. Go away go away go away. But it doesn’t. 

Liar. Liar. Liar. Liar.  

Why won’t you go away? 

Liar. Liar. Liar. Liar.  

Then I realize; there’s a bit of tar stuck on the window. There’s no escaping now. 

Liar, liar, liar, liar, it jeers, all the way to school. 

… 

The tar doesn’t ever truly leave after that. It’s become one of those things that I’m acutely aware is always there, always watching. Sometimes I’ll see it in the corner of my eye, slithering into the shadows. Sometimes it’ll appear in my dreams, chasing me until it pulls me under. Sometimes it drips from the ceiling like rain from a leaky roof. Sometimes, it overwhelms me like a tsunami of hateful words. 

Maybe it’s your fault.  Liar. Liar. Liar. Liar. 

After it first appeared, I would run crying to my parents every time, and each time I was met with “you’re lying” or “you’re exaggerating.” Liar. Liar. Liar. Liar.  But I’m not lying. At least, I don’t think I am. Am I?

… 

On this particular day, the tar was more silent than usual. Maybe this will be a good day, I thought as I marched on toward lunch.

I met my friends at our usual perch. “The art hallway,” as it’s colloquially referred to, is the elevator landing opposite the history office, right in front of the upstairs hallway leading to the art wing. I don’t know when the term was first coined, but it’s ours. Here, we can eat in peace and bicker with each other as loudly as we want without getting confused glances from others in the cafeteria, save for the occasional concerned students and teachers walking by. 

Today, all is normal; a conversation begins about the upcoming semi-formal. In this place, I can allow my mind to drift from my day, my shoulders to slump, and my laugh to bubble out unfiltered. 

“Hey, did you ever send that email to the counselor asking to talk?”

I cringe involuntarily. There goes my good day. I pause, weighing if I should tell the truth while chewing on the last bites of my sandwich. 

“I have a draft written,” the words muffled by my food-filled mouth. Liar.

“Did you send it yet?” my friend prods further. I wonder distantly if I can throw either them or myself off of the balcony.

I swallow. “No.” 

“Why don’t you just go to the counselor directly? Just try to talk to someone about how you’re feeling. I promise you, nothing bad will come of it.”

I massage my arm vigorously, back and forth and back and forth, then relent. 

“Fine. I’ll do it eventually, just not now.” Or ever.

My friend lets out an exasperated breath and mercifully drops the subject.

A feeling of triumph courses through me, sharply followed by the sting of guilt.

Liar, liar, liar, liar. 

The sudden realization lodges in my throat, thick as crude oil. Or tar. I can feel the words trying to stream out of my clogged throat, and all I can do is clench my jaw and close my lips so my friends won’t hear them. But I do. 

Liar, liar, liar, liar, it repeats like a litany, an incantation. I force myself towards the ground. I can’t tell anyone I can’t tell anyone I can’t IcantIcantIcantIcantIcant. What would I even say? “Hi, Ms.Counselor. Here’s everything wrong with me, except I’m lying and underplaying all my issues the entire time, partially because I don’t want to be sent to an asylum, but mostly because I’m a liar and it's all secretly my fault.” I cough violently, and the lump in my throat dislodges. Three pairs of concerned eyes swivel toward me.

“Choked on some onion,” I say weakly, vaguely gesturing to my plate.

…

And the tar still lingers: in class, in the car. On the way to swim, I cleared my throat so often that my mother was paranoid that I’d gotten COVID. I couldn’t help it; it still felt like something was stuck in my throat. But it’d all be okay soon because I was going to swim practice. 

Swim was the only thing that could fully keep the tar at bay. Even on a day as bad as today, as soon as I dove into the pool, the lump in my throat floated away to the surface. Here, my body wasn’t weighed down and my mind wasn’t clouded. 

Yet as I examined the set plastered to a bright blue kickboard, my stomach sank. 4x400 IM, 2x200 stroke, all the numbers and letters tumbled together. Suddenly, I felt as if the water that once supported my body had let go and pushed me into free fall. 

“On the top,” barks my coach. 

I take a deep breath, attempt to steady myself, and push off into the unknown.

Half a horrendous hour later, we were done. I haul myself out of the pool and collapse on the concrete. I want to curl up into a ball and never get up again.

I’d missed half of the intervals of the set. I’d gotten stopped three separate times because my stroke was off. And I’d slowly gotten passed by each of my teammates. I felt as if I’d been scrubbed raw. In my delirious state, I almost missed the sweet, sticky reprieve of the tar.

… 

I feel strangely empty when I arrive home despite the tar’s absence. My entire body hurts. Often that’s a good sign, a physical signal that I did enough, that I pushed hard enough. Yet this aching is different. It screams at me, you did not do enough. You did not do enough. You are not enough. The post-swim clarity hits me like an undertow, sweeping me into every mistake I made. If only you had gone a bit faster, if you paced better, if you did this, if you did that, if, if, if.

Maybe it's your fault.

I rub my arms even harder. Back and forth and back and forth, until—ow. 

I look down at my arm; it’s a scarlet red from being rubbed raw. There are also now angry red lines running vertically down my arms; apparently, I’ve been inadvertently scratching myself. With a groan, I haul myself onto my bed, sprawling out like a starfish. The bedding only exacerbates the irritation in my arms. I toss and turn but to no avail. It's as if my sheets replaced their cotton fibers with barbed wire.

Defeated, I stand up. The sudden movement sends constellations everywhere. 

Still scratching and rubbing at my arms, I finally head to the bathroom. As I enter, I glimpse at my reflection in the mirror. I look dreadful. My arms are strawberry blood red from the extra irritation. I think I’m bleeding from one of the lines on my arm. I try to wipe away the blood, only for my fingers to come away pitch black and sticky. My gaze shoots back up to my reflection. To my horror, all the lines on my arm are now oozing black. The tar.

My knees give out under me and I collapse onto the floor. The cold tiles cut into my legs. Pixelated constellations plaster my peripheral vision. My hands are stained jet black. The tar seeps out of my wounds at an incessant pace. I force myself to look away from my arms, to look anywhere else but at the tar. But I can’t help it. The tar draws me in like quicksand. I glance back at my arms. They’re covered in long scratch marks, almost like claw marks. They keep bleeding tar. I keep bleeding tar. I’m made of tar. 

This realization spirals into a black hole in the pit of my stomach. It's all too much to handle. Part of me wants to just give up, to bleed out tar until I’m but an exoskeleton of the person I was, until there’s nothing left. It was so tantalizing. So easy. Give in, give in, give in, give in.

I feel like I’m dying. Yet this is paradoxically the time when I’ve never wanted more to be alive. Blindly, I reach out in sheer desperation. My hand slams into the bottom of the stone cabinet. The shock of pain gives me just enough leeway to grasp onto the cabinet. With herculean strength, I pull myself up. As I stare blankly into the mirror, I don’t see any black. I blink hard. Everything is normal. All the tar is gone. I squint, scrutinizing my image more. I was red all over, in my cheeks and arms, and my eyes were wild, but there was not a trace of black. 

…

Somehow I drag myself back to my room. I end up sitting cross-legged on my sheets, staring upwards into the stucco ceiling. The sheets are still itchy. The tar might have dissipated, but my wounds haven’t.

I don't know how I’m alive. Or why. All I knew was that whatever just happened to me was a warning, an ominous suggestion.

I’m not incredibly superstitious, but the lingering memory of the tar oozing out of my body was reason enough for me. 

I whip out my phone and start a new email to my school counselor. My friend is wrong, there certainly is harm in confiding in another, yet in the grand scheme of things it’s worth the risk. I type out a brief pleasantry for emailing her at such a late hour. Afterward, I’m unsure of how to proceed. I consider just saying that I was stressed and wanted to talk. As I prepare to press send, suddenly a voice chimes in.

Liar.

Months ago that comment would’ve broken me. But after all I had just gone through, that comment paled in comparison. In fact, this comment only hardens my consciousness. I delete the previous message, determined to prove the voice wrong. Pausing for a moment, I stare at the blinking cursor before typing out the truth.

My life is filled with tar.

By Durwin Hoades