Everything's Not Peachy

By Margaret V. Pfohl

Seventeen-year-old Georgia Peach thinks she has everything figured out. Well, everything except why her parents named her Georgia Peach while living in the state of Georgia. It's got to be a prank, right?

With her best friend Lily by her side, the pair navigate high school and the many obstacles of growing up. Lily is also the

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Apr 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781637303023

Book preview

margaret_everythings_not_peachy.jpg

Everything’s Not Peachy

Everything’s Not Peachy

Margaret V. Pfohl

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2021 Margaret V. Pfohl

All rights reserved.

Everything’s Not Peachy

ISBN

978-1-63676-858-8 Paperback

978-1-63730-184-5 Kindle Ebook

978-1-63730-302-3 Ebook

Contents

Author’s Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Acknowledgments

This book is dedicated to my grandma, Maryellen Pfohl. Ever since I wrote a short book about pelicans for my seventh-grade science project, she has always believed in me and my ability to write. If it wasn’t for her encouragement, this book wouldn’t be in your hands today.

Author’s Note

As I was driving back to Georgia from my sister’s house in Nashville on a sunny day, I passed the Welcome to Georgia sign twice. (I-75 takes you into Georgia, back into Tennessee, and then back to Georgia as you head south.) When I’m on this six-hour drive, I tend to let my mind wander. I was thinking about people I’ve seen in movies who have the name Georgia and how funny it would be if someone from Georgia was named Georgia. And how much funnier it would be if her last name was Peach. I was drawing up this character in my head on my drive. She was sarcastic and realistic with a pessimistic outlook on life. The irony between her upbeat, goofy name and her personality got me thinking. How often do we put on a peachy face even though we feel sad or negative on the inside? For me, it was often.

My mental health is something I ignored until college. Looking back, anxiety and depression plagued my life throughout high school. People saw me as the class clown, and while I was always cracking jokes and laughing, my mind was in a different place. During my junior year of college, all of the things that had been hurting me since high school burst out of the little box I placed them in in the back of my mind. Call it a coincidence or a miracle from God that it happened at the college ministry I was a part of in college, but all of the things I was hiding from for years came to the front of my mind in the blink of an eye. I say it’s a miracle because as painful as it was, it allowed me to start moving forward. The first step of that journey for me was counseling.

My counselor was a doctoral student getting clinical hours at the university. At first, I thought I needed someone experienced to handle the baggage I was dragging with me through the door, but those six sessions with her changed my life. She listened and gave me feedback. She validated my feelings. She brought high school Margaret back into my mind and helped me tell her that what she felt back then was okay. Her anxiety and depression weren’t figments of her imagination. She wasn’t just a dramatic, sad teenager. She was hurting, and she deserved more.

As I passed the welcome sign for the second time, I realized the potential of Georgia Peach. She could have an incredible story of hurting, coping, forgiving, healing, and moving forward. This was an opportunity to break stigmas, talk about hard things, and reach people like high school Margaret who so desperately needed someone to tell her she wasn’t alone in her struggle. The moment I drove past that second sign, Georgia Peach was a part of my life, and I desperately wanted to tell her story.

This isn’t a mental health book. It’s a story about a girl. It talks about hard things like anxiety, depression, triggers, coping, and self-advocacy. Georgia is a lot like myself and many other people I know. She copes with mental health challenges through humor and sarcasm, has tense relationships, and has experienced sexual assault like one in nine girls in the United States. These things aren’t uncommon, but they’re also not discussed like they should be. Stigmas still exist around anxiety, depression, and counseling, and through Georgia’s story, I want to break those barriers that discourage people from self-help, advocacy, and healing. There’s so much more to life than living chained to anxiety and depression. Mental health doesn’t define us; we have life stories outside of a diagnosis. Georgia has inspired me to chase after freedom, and I hope she inspires you too.

Chapter 1

"The first line of The Catcher in the Rye has always stuck with me.

‘If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.’

"Truth is, I don’t feel like going into it. My life story, that is. I’m tired and trying to eat some cereal before school and spilling milk all over the pages of my journal. But I have my next counseling appointment after school, and I told her I’d try journaling to get my mind off of life. Somehow that promise has turned into something I have to add to my to-do list to get done. Isn’t journaling supposed to be therapeutic? When does that kick in?

If writing in this journal can’t fix all the jumbled-up words and feelings in my mind, then it can’t be done.

Good enough for one day. I placed the journal into the front pocket of my bland, beige book bag and headed through the kitchen toward the front door. It’s 7:47 a.m. and I always meet Lily outside precisely at 7:45 a.m. Damn journal.

As we’re walking down our joint driveway from our cookie-cutter houses with blue siding, Lily’s talking about some new boy she met on the way to the bathroom after third period yesterday. Apparently, they bumped into each other turning a corner and it was fate.

I mean I’ve just never met anyone like him, ya know? It’s like everything is just falling into place, she said. The way our eyes locked; it was magical.

This is the third time this week that I’ve heard Lily talk about a boy, and yes, they were three different boys. Gawking over boys day in and day out is silly and a massive waste of time, but I entertain it with Lily anyway. We’ve been friends since birth—literally. Our moms were sorority sisters in college at Texas Christian University and have stuck by each other ever since, from living together in the dorms to moving to Athens together after college. They’re inseparable, and Lily and I are essentially family at this point.

So, what’s his name, I asked giddily, playing along.

Lily paused for a moment as if having a psychic vision. I take a few more steps before I stop and turn around to look at her.

Steve—no…Skylar? I can’t remember, but I’ll let you know on Monday when we inevitably bump into each other again, she said. She skipped a few steps to catch up with me.

We don’t live that far from school. Once you leave our neighborhood, you take a left until the light, take another left, walk a bit, and boom—school. That’s how it is in Athens. You can walk pretty much everywhere, and if you can’t, there are buses: both city buses and UGA buses. Athens is a college town. The University of Georgia brings thousands of college kids to Athens each year. My mom teaches religion courses to first-year students. Lily’s mom is an academic counselor. When the freshman students freak out after they get their first C, they run panicking to Lily’s mom. My mom just gets to pick their brains about, What is a god? Can football be a god based on the definition of god? It sounds like a dumb question, but it’s harder to answer than you might think.

As we walked up the steps to school, students sat all along the stairs talking, laughing, and copying homework they didn’t do the night before. As I got to my first-period classroom, Lily kept walking, headed to Ms. Higgins’s math class.

See you next period, Ms. Georgia Peach! yelled Lily.

I could feel my cheeks turn red. It’s not fair that ostriches can just slam their head into the ground whenever things get cringey. That’s exactly what I want to do right now.

Okay, pause. Let’s just get this over with. Yes, my last name is Peach, and yes, my parents thought it would be a good idea to make my first name Georgia. I swear it’s a prank they’ve been pulling on me for seventeen years. I mean, who even does that? And why didn’t the nurse or doctor try to stop them? You know they had something handy that could have knocked my mom out for a few hours and let her mind reset. Not that it was fine to have this name in Texas, but it was better than having it here in Georgia, where I constantly have to tell people no, it’s not a joke; yes, that’s my legal name; and yes, it can get worse. How, you might ask? My middle name is Yvonne, and no, it’s not a family name. Melanie and Ned Peach literally took a book of baby names, opened to a random page which happened to be in the vintage names section, and just happened to point blindly at Yvonne. Like I said—prank.

I have a love-hate relationship with my parents; partly because they care about me so much and I don’t know how to accept it, and partly because of the incident that took place when I was fourteen at summer camp. We haven’t really talked about it since. Not that it’s something that I even want to talk about, much less think about for that matter.

As I turned the corner and walked into the small classroom with dull, gray walls and one small window in the back right corner, I felt a sense of relief.

The classroom is where I feel like myself. I know what’s going to happen, what we’re going to talk about, and where everyone will sit. It’s predictable, and I like that.