Tuesday, February 2, 2010
THINGS WERE CHANGING FAST. I was changing with them.
The best part about seeing Dr. Rex was that I didn’t fit into her office hours. No uncomfortable waiting rooms. No Scholastic coffee table reads. It didn’t smell like a doctor’s office, which made sense because that wasn’t where we met.
Since I worked long hours, and my office was close to the school, when she had evening classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, she suggested we meet at her office on campus. That worked great for me, because I could park in my dad’s spot since the Psych and the English departments shared a lot.
It was new, but I liked her a lot already. I’d only met her once, and most of that was her telling me about herself. I’m not sure if that was a technique thing or if she could tell I was nervous, and was trying to warm me up.
It hadn’t been the best day to start seeing a shrink. Then again, the day you go to a lawyer’s office to get a divorce might be a pretty damn good day to go see someone who just lets you sit there, while she goes on and on about herself. I let myself believe she did that for my benefit and not hers.
Dr. Rex was a single mom to a son. He was away at school in Atlanta, a musical engineering student. She told me, with him away, she lived with just her cat. She let me know she only had a cat, because as a psychologist it was good practice—living in a constant state of paranoia. When her son was fifteen he got a cat and named him Dre. The feline hated her very existence. She joked living with such a creature, and fearing for her life on a nightly basis, was good for her professional perspective as a counselor.
She claimed her son, Nathan, loved that cat, but couldn’t take him to school. So she made concessions, because she loved him. And that people do that kind of thing all the time. Everything she talked about ended with things like that. Either she was very insightful, or the woman was just damn good at her job.
So walking up to the building’s entrance on my second date with the good doctor, I had the impulse to kind of spill my guts. Like, all of the sudden, I was going to burst if I didn’t have a chance to tell someone everything. Someone who didn’t have a single thing to win or lose in the situation. I felt liberated, and out of somewhere I’d never visited within myself, I felt braver than ever.
The divorce papers, which I’d filed for last week were ready to be picked up the next day and I was seeing Casey in ten days.
I’d had moments of panic—feelings of sheer what the fuck am I doing-ness?—but since the New Year, I’d felt like I had a goal. A focus. A purpose.
Walking down the marble hall, I passed the ladies’ room as she walked out, startling both of us.
“Oh shit, Blake. You scared me,” she gasped and leaned against the door frame. Her crazy half-gray, half-black hair ran wild on her head and down her shoulders. Like a pile of quilt stuffing, it was light and fluffy. She tried to compose herself and straightened her purple bifocals over her light blue eyes.
“I’m sorry. That scared me too,” I said, also feeling the startle in my chest, even though I saw her first.
“How’s it going?” I panted, bending a little in the hips to catch my breath.
“It’s going good. How about you?” she replied, as she stepped away from the lavatory. Together we began walking down the long hall to her office.
Ever want to have a nightmare? Take a walk down the hall in the psychology building in your nearest university, after everyone has left for the day. It made me shiver. I guess brains freak me out.
I spoke as I walked, “I think I’m doing okay.” But really, how in the hell was I supposed to know? That’s what I was there to see her about.
That’s another new thing, or change, that I’d observed about seeing a therapist. Knowing I had a therapist made my mind self-diagnose every decision I made all day. Oh, a bran muffin? What’s that say about you, Blake? Are you feeling like you need bran, some stability? Some normalcy—bowel or otherwise? Then, I threw it in the trash. I’d been bested by my breakfast on more than one occasion that week. I won’t even go into the theories I came up with concerning my egg choices.
“Well, that’s convincing,” she countered as we got closer to her office. “Tell you what, Blake. This will go a whole lot better if you just say what you feel, in any way you choose to. I’m not here to tell you what I think or tell you what my opinion on your life is. I’m here to help you realize how you feel about all of those things. To find the things you think you did well—things that make you proud to be you—and maybe, help you implement those behaviors to make you happier in other areas.
“It’s not about spilling your guts, then me rummaging through it to see what stuff you messed up. It’s more about why you made the choices you did, so you understand yourself. You don’t need my validation, you need yours.” She made a lot of sense.
Her office was cozy, inviting. She had books stacked everywhere and instead of using the overhead fluorescent light, she had lamps in every corner. Two comfy chairs sat on the far side of the room by a window, and that’s where she led us. It was different from the first time I’d been there, when she sat behind her desk telling me about herself.
“Have you ever talked to a therapist before?” she asked, as she sat and waved a hand for me to do the same.
“No.”
“Good. Then I don’t have to undo any of their bullshit.” She chuckled at the poke she’d made at her profession and, in turn, my sanity.
I was sane. Right?
She continued, “So you know a little bit about me from last week, why don’t we get to know you a little. Please, tell me about you.”
Where were the numerous anecdotes I’d been dying to talk about on the way in there? On the spot, it felt mildly awkward.
She coaxed, “What do you do for a living? Blake, you’re not being graded here. No pass/fail. Just talk to me.” She leaned back into her chair and tucked a leg under her butt.
“I’m a trained chef and I work for a company that rejuvenates, or creates themes and menus for restaurants. We work mostly in the hospitality industry.”
“That’s cool,” she said and it didn’t sound like fodder. “Do you do only here in the Pacific North West or do you travel?”
“I travel a lot, but I kind of have free reign over that now. I like that part of the job. Most of the time.” My finger crept its way to my mouth. I had the urge to bite at the skin I’d been obsessing over for the past minute with my thumb.
“I hope you don’t mind me saying this but you look really uncomfortable. Let’s go for a walk?”
A walk?
She read the skepticism on my face and added, “Trust me, when you’re walking, or doing something trivial, your brain sort of goes onto autopilot. Those easy, routine-like tasks let our minds open up a little. Like singing in the shower.”
Just as fast as she walked us over to the chairs, she was up and pulling my hand to follow.
“Come on,” she instructed, “your work is fun, but I want to know the good stuff.”
She was right. As soon as we started walking, I started talking and it came out almost effortlessly. On and on, I went.
“And then she called me,” I recalled, telling her about the day Aly hijacked Casey’s phone and I got engaged.
“No. She didn’t. Did she?” she asked incredulously, while stopping to sit on a half wall that was home to a makeshift garden in the main entrance of the lecture hall. “What did you do?”
“I denied it. I didn’t know what to do. There I was, thinking I needed to find a way to break up with Grant, and then getting those messages from her and realizing that maybe Casey had been misleading me the whole time. I was confused and…and sad.”
“Not to mention vulnerable, I’m sure. Here you’d fallen in love with a man—through no fault of your own. Love happens sometimes, uninvited and inconvenient. Okay, so then what?”
“I didn’t say I was in love with Casey back then,” I corrected for accuracy’s sake. Had I said that? Surely, not. At that point I’d only met him a few times. I was curious. I liked him. I couldn’t stop thinking about him to the point of obsessing, but had I been in love with him then?
“You didn’t have to. You were in love with him. I can already tell. When you told me about meeting Grant, you seemed content and your pace was easy and slow. When you told me about meeting Casey, you sped up and became animated with your hands. Casey puts life in you. How could you not love that?”
I looked at my watch, I’d already been there for two hours. Weren’t therapy appointments supposed to be sixty minutes?
“I’m sorry. It’s almost eight o’clock,” I said.
“So? I’m an empty nester and I have to know what happens. We’ll break for the night in a while. Keep going.”
And so I did.
We stopped at a vending machine and she bought us a pack of Starbursts and some bottled water. We sat in the back of a lecture hall, and when I got to the part about Valentine’s Day and breaking things off, her eyes went misty and she kindly held my hand.
“Blake, why did you keep doing that? What was your thought process in making the decision to choose Grant over Casey, when you loved Casey so much?”
The black and white of it all was so simple to explain.
“It sounds so stupid now. Living it was different. I didn’t know where his head was. He never pushed back or demanded more from me until later. At that time, to me, it seemed like he thought we just had great chemistry. And we got along great…and it was fun. I didn’t know he wanted more. I didn’t let myself see that as a possibility. What I knew was, I was marrying a man my family loved, and who promised to give me things I was used to seeing in a family. Does that make sense?”
“You wanted stability. You wanted your family to be proud. That makes perfect sense, but how did you feel?”
Wretched. Torn apart. Lost. Bereft. Alone.
“I felt commandeered. Like what was expected of my life had taken over my real life. I had no idea someone like Casey was even out there when I’d started on that path with Grant. I didn’t know it could feel like this.”
“So how did you feel, after you told him it was over, and he left you there on Valentine’s Day?”
“Lonely. I felt like I’d found and lost these two new, amazing people—me when I was with him, and him. I’m different with him, even I’m aware of it. It feels so much more natural being that Blake. Being his Blake.”
“What’s she like?” she asked, leaning her head on the arm she’d draped over the back of the seat.
I looked at the ceiling and thought about what I was like with Casey. I’d never dissected the two halves of me for anyone before.
“With him, I’m calm and chatty. I say whatever pops into my mind. He’s never made me feel stupid or that I’m being ridiculous. He might be thinking it, but Dr. Rex, I think he likes it. We talk about everything. Things that do not matter.”
“So you’re freer in a sense?”
“Yeah, I don’t have to filter things with him. I don’t have to pretend.”
“Why do you pretend with others?”
“You know,” I answered, looking for the exact description or reason, “my mom and dad are like the perfect couple.”
“They are great together. Your dad has always been very proud of his marriage and family. And for good reasons.”
“Yeah, you know them. So, when I was growing up, I thought that was what being happy looked like. Parents home at five for dinner. My mother was home with us all summer, and most of the time my dad was, too. I had two older brothers that tormented me, but they’d murder someone for me in a heartbeat. Kisses goodnight. Board games. Family vacations. That’s what I knew. I’ve never seen divorce. I’ve never seen a breakup. I’ve never even really been broken up with. I had a few boyfriends in high school, but those all ended with me just wanting to be friends.
“So when I met Grant, I fell in love with the idea of having that life. I knew how happy that life could be. The one I was thought I was supposed to have.”
“So that kept you tied to him.”
“Yeah. Casey is from a divorced family, he knows what that’s like. He lives out of a suitcase and I would have only seen him every few weeks at the time—if we were lucky. He’s impulsive and reactive. I didn’t know if that was him or just him with me.”
“You’re obviously not a gambler,” she teased and bumped her leg against mine. I’d only met the woman twice and I already knew I needed her. It was so comfortable talking to her. I bet her patients loved her.
“You know, talking to you is a lot like talking to him.”
“Good. I want you to feel like you’re talking to a friend.”
“So am I crazy?”
“Yes.” Her smile was infectious.
“Then I finally have an excuse.”
On the way back to her office she stopped me and asked, “Do you have a picture of Casey. I can almost see him in my head.” I laughed, truly laughed.
And there it was. She didn’t ask for a picture of Grant and she was a doctor. I wasn’t crazy. Or I was crazy in love.
“Yeah, I have a few,” I said trying to play off the fact I had many. When I activated my phone, I noticed I had a message.
Casey: Do you know how to cut up an onion so that I don’t question my manhood every time I do it?
Casey: If your doctor hypnotizes you, please have her remind you how curious you are about anal.
I felt the smile reach my eyes and the warmth of his silliness light me from the inside out. He was my normal. He was my home. He was everywhere I wanted to be and the place I most wanted to go. I just had to accept that it was good. That we were good. And even though what I’d done was awful and hurtful, I was just learning how to love someone who loved me the way I’d craved. But most surprisingly, I think I was just learning to love myself a little better. The actual me that Casey had helped bring to life. The me I wanted to be.
I typed back a short message.
Me: I’ll call you in a little bit, pussy. I’m not curious about anal. I’m firmly pro-anal. I just never wanted to hurt your delicate ass.
Casey: You’re so thoughtful.
I scrolled through the saved pictures on my phone and found one of him I’d taken in Costa Rica. He lay on his belly on a beach towel looking up at me. He’d just told me that I had a huge wedgie and offered to rectify it for me. His face was all ornery and playful. His face was all Casey. And his hair looked rocking, too.
“Son of a bitch, girl. I see where you had your doubts. He looks like trouble.”
I looked at my phone with her and we gazed at the photo like two junior high girls gawking over the newest issue of Tiger Beat magazine.
“I like his trouble. I always have.”
I supposed, at that moment, trouble was a two-way street. If it took giving more to get more, I’d give him everything.