Forbidden

by Tabitha Suzuma

You can close your eyes to the things you do not want to see, but you cannot close your heart to the things you do not want to feel.

It’s horrible, being ashamed of someone you care about; it eats away at you. And if you let it get to you, if you give up the fight and surrender, eventually that shame turns to hate.

Pathetic. A socially inept weirdo. A teenage son who can’t get a friend, let alone a girlfriend.

I feel like the prey in some claustrophobic nightmare. Their words are like hammers, pounding my skull. I give in to the tide and feel myself beginning to drown.

facedown in a gutter when I suddenly realize I’m wasting my breath. With Dave she can pretend she is young again, free of the restrictions and responsibilities of motherhood. She never wanted to grow up—I

wrong crowd because they provide him with the company and admiration his family does not.

He was always so much more than just a brother. He is my soul mate, my fresh air, the reason I look

Lochan is ferociously bright, emotionally intelligent, the kindest, most selfless person I know. Lochan has a soul.

It’s always nice being fancied. It’s always nice being wanted. Even if it’s by the wrong person.

Kit, bored, is in one of his most dangerous moods, trying to wind everyone up so that he can sit in the eye of the storm and laugh at the chaos he has created all around him.

father. She is only five, yet already she has learned that there is no point in asking her mother for a bedtime story, that inviting friends over is something only other children can do, that new toys are a rare luxury, that at home Kit and Tiffin are the only ones who get their own way. At the age of five she has already come to terms with one of life’s harshest lessons: that the world isn’t fair. . . .

How can love like this be called terrible when we’re not hurting anyone?” He gazes down at me, his eyes glistening in the weak light. “I don’t know,” he whispers. “How can something so wrong feel so right?”

But the fear remains—the fear that in the cold light of day we will be forced to come to terms with what was, quite simply, an awful mistake; the fear that we will have no choice but to bury this night as if it never took place, a shameful secret to be filed away for the rest of our lives until, brittle with age, it crumbles to dust—a faint, distant memory, like the powder of a moth’s wings on a windowpane, the specter of something that perhaps never occurred, existing solely in our imagination.

The feeling had been there for years, rising closer and closer to the surface with every passing day. It was only a matter of time before it broke through our fragile web of denial, forcing us to confront the truth and acknowledge who we are: two people in love—a love that nobody else could possibly understand.

Out of the millions and millions of people that inhabit this planet, he is one of the tiny few I can never have. And this is something I must accept—even if, like acid on metal, it is slowly corroding me inside.

What have we done? What have we done? Even though we never took our clothes off, even though what we did isn’t technically against the law, I know we have started on a dangerous slippery slope. Where it could eventually land us is both too terrifying and too fantastic to even think about.

At the end of the day, it’s all about how much you can bear, how much you can endure. Being together, we harm nobody; being apart, we extinguish ourselves.

If I keep breathing, then I have to keep living, and if I keep living, then I have to keep hurting, and I can’t—

. according to Freud, the personal crisis undergone by Hamlet awakens in him repressed incestuous desires.”

“We can love each other.” I swallow hard to ease the constriction in my throat. “There are no laws, no boundaries, on feelings. We can love each other as much and as deeply as we want. No one, Maya, no one can ever take that away from us.”

With constant course work and the day-to-day hassle of living to contend with, added to the fact that we can never, ever show any display of affection in public or even within our own family, the familiar suffocating shackles are tightening still further. Will we ever be free to exist like a normal couple? I wonder.

the one kind of love that will never be allowed hasn’t even crossed her mind. The one love so disgusting and taboo, it isn’t even included in a conversation about illicit relationships.

But then why is it so terrible for me to be with the girl I love? Everyone else is permitted to have what they want, express their love as they please, without fear of harassment, ostracism, persecution, or even the law. Even emotionally abusive, adulterous relationships are often tolerated, despite the harm they cause others. In our progressive, permissive society, all these harmful, unhealthy types of “love” are allowed—but not ours. I can think of no other kind of love that is so totally rejected, even though ours is so deep, passionate, caring, and strong that forcing us apart would cause us unimaginable pain. We are being punished by the world for just one simple reason: for having been produced by the same woman.