Eating Your Mistakes

Jesse Peterman

I’m eleven, it’s Tuesday, and I’m begging my mom to take me to the library. The three books from my last visit lay on the table next to me, finished. I live in books at this time. Consuming stories as fast as I can encounter them, the escape from reality is the only thing I’m living for. Library day isn’t until Thursday, and I’m convinced I won’t make it that long in the real world.

***

I’ve been reading lately, about how there's mold growing on the elephant’s foot, the name given to the pseudo-molten reactor core still in the process of total meltdown and the most radioactive thing humanity’s ever made. In one of the most dangerous places in the world, so violently radioactive we have to take pictures with a mirror and the camera around the corner, and it’s still not enough to get more than one shot. In this, humanity's possibly greatest mistake, is a mold growing. Literally living on the elephant’s foot, eating it and the truly inconceivable amount of gamma radiation coming off the thing. There's a goddamn mushroom eating the closest thing we’ve come to solidified death. ***

The real reason the library matters so much, and I’m hiding in books the way I do, is that I’ve just figured out I’m gay. I, the good Christian kid, the one who’s read the Bible front to back at least twice, who goes to church every Sunday, pays attention in Sunday school, and doesn’t even swear, that one, is gay. As a kid I’ve got no way to reconcile these things, or the wisdom to question the nature of doctrine or even why an all-loving god can supposedly hate anyone, so I avoid it, and life in general. ***

When school or the grief that comes with knowing how little teachers are compensated or cared for gets too much, I redesign my dream home. It’s lovely. Right now I’m thinking I want dark stained oak shingles for the siding, that way it ages into a self-petrifying kind of low-maintenance mosaic. Three wings, a living/guest wing, with a glorious master bedroom on half of that second floor, enormous glass ceiling and end wall, for watching northern lights. Furnished with a few artsy chairs that are actually comfortable, and one of those Alaskan king size beds. ***

I’m fifteen, alone in my front yard on an early June Saturday, and I’m holding in my hands my greatest accomplishment. After the move, uprooted from friends, resigned to be homeschooled again, I’m making fireworks to pass the time. I figure that’s an interesting enough hobby to sound cool. I set down my creation, an emptied soda bottle filled with a bizarre combination of cleaning supplies, metal shavings, and other household items. I feel like an alchemist when I add the last ingredient, shake, and drop the concoction. Stepping back a good ways, my ears covered, the bottle begins to fog with newly-created gas. Several seconds pass. The bottle deforms from the pressure, creaking. Boom. ***

There’s a practice, I read, called microembolization, or the art and science of using fungus to absorb and dispose of dangerous or toxic materials. I think of the mold in Chernobyl, how humanity’s mistakes can be eaten. How just recently a fungus has begun eating microplastics. The earth becomes a fucked-up pizza, a little burnt around the edges, the sauce separated in the oven, making the whole thing a little soggy and somehow too dry. How I’ll eat it anyways, my mistakes nourishing the possibility of doing better next time. How maybe, just maybe, there’s a little mushroom that can eat trauma. ***

I joke to myself that I’ll have seven husbands to cover the costs of my dream home, marrying rich for most of them and once for a green card to some small European country. This, of course, alongside my own enormous wealth from unseating that miserable little English transphobe from the “most successful author” spot. Every time I sit down to write, I tell myself “I’m coming for her” before I start. I want the house to have two more wings, a three-story library with wallmounted reading nooks, and a chandelier I design myself. The third is just for entertaining and leisure, an enormous banquet hall, with fold away table and chairs for dancing room, an in-home theater, complete with that enormous bed-couch-thing I saw on the internet once, to accommodate my hopefully large family structure. ***

Twenty-one is an odd year for me. I’ve just finished my second therapy appointment alone, and I'm driving back home on a motorcycle I’m splitting the cost of with my dad. I’m still wrestling with what the therapist, who insisted I call her Marnie, told me. All the anxiety, the breakdowns, the random and sudden panic. All of it. Trauma. My family stories aren’t weird, or funny, they’re traumatic events. It’s not only not normal, but very damaging to be hit by a hatchet thrown at you, I guess. Same with the getting run over, or being left at the store for hours as a child. The increasing severity of some of my experiences are just now becoming apparent. ***

I stand there, in the wake of my attempted firework, looking at a flattened ring of poorly groomed grass. Groomed poorly by yours truly, after all, only a dollar an hour of busywork, not quality. There’s a smoldering lump of plastic and recently fizzing miscellaneous onefuel in the center. No lights, no pretty colors or sparkle. Just a single resounding boom and some leftover junk that I probably shouldn’t clean up without gloves. I pick up baking instead. I decide if I make a mistake, I’d like it to be one I can fix with frosting, or at least eat. ***

I want the entertainment wing to connect to the library with a three story arboretum, an indoor garden with ceilings high enough to house an adult tree or two. Guests could enjoy dancing and drinks, mingling between the dance floor and the library through my carefully curated greenery. I’ve planned and re-planned this part the most. The centerpiece of this garden will be an artfully grafted citrus tree, with each branch a different variety. Opposite this will be a nutmeg tree, to bring a homey scent to the library end. I’ve thought about how I’ll keep everything in my garden alive and the soil rich, but the thought of using manure or other fertilizer makes my nose wrinkle. A garden’s supposed to smell nice, not like decay. That’s it; I’ll just include a few kinds of mycelium, like that kind found keeping temperate forests alive, acting like a nutrient bank for the plants. Even in my daydreams, mushrooms somehow save the day. ***

I get home from my ride, putting away my gear, still stuck on Marnie’s revelation. All this time, the pain, everything else, I thought I had to go through something horrible to feel like I’d earned help, like I was too functional to be traumatized. I’m making cookies tonight, and I think I’ve perfected my version of the family chocolate chip cookie recipe. I use too much salt and the flavor’s just off. The whole batch will be eaten by the next day. After all, I can just eat my mistakes.

Twenty-five means my last summer before graduating (if I can manage it) and a long-awaited visit to a clinical psychologist. I’ve been waiting for this appointment for almost four months. Early June, and I’m finally getting the news back. Not ADHD like I’d guessed, but no less difficult. Post-traumatic stress disorder. I guess all of those not-so-funny stories caught up to me in a more concrete way. Mom’s never going to believe it, but she doesn’t really have to, does she? I sit alone in my apartment, holding onto the printed copy of my diagnosis, unsure of what to do next. At the bottom of the page: “. . . psychotherapy with a practitioner who specializes in trauma . . .” “. . . clinical medication assessment . . .” and the final nail in the coffin “. . . all of the above services are deemed medically necessary . . .” what a way to say it. My phone buzzes, an article from a friend about the USDA finally beginning its trials for medical use of psilocybin, the active chemical in magic mushrooms, in treating depression and trauma. We’re both big nerds on weird biology, and I can’t help but hope there really is a mushroom to eat my mistakes.