“I’M SURPRISED YOU came back,” Dr. Erin said with a smile as she took a seat opposite me in her tufted leather chair.
My mind was full of assumptions and ideas. Preston’s words to me several days ago left me reeling. What shook me the most was Eric’s untold plans to deal with what Preston had done. I was afraid with Preston’s connections to the Feds, the issues would continue to appear and threaten Eric. Issues he wouldn’t be able to handle—at least not alone. With all that had occurred, I came to a full understanding of the reasons behind his withdraw from me.
While he made sure his promise to keep me protected remained—by posting scarily encompassing lackeys outside the door wherever I went if he wasn’t with me—Eric was so different with me. He was attentive and sweet, but there was something palpably missing. His eyes began to permanently hold a bottomless void. The moments when we were intimate were different. It wasn’t familiar to our time in Aspen. I felt like I was having sex with a completely different man. He was there physically; emotionally, Eric was playing the part of the man he thought I needed him to be—only this time I could see through the act.
I couldn’t get into the details with Dr. Erin when I barely had a handle on the truth. To keep up appearances with Dr. Erin, I tackled the most familiar topic and my most recent development from this morning.
I wanted to keep things simple and avoid blurting out the fact I was pregnant again; it was still fairly early. Nor was I sure if I wanted to open Pandora’s box and discuss Preston. “It’s about me. I relapsed several weeks ago. Right after our last visit. I’d lost all my senses. The desire to please Eric was so strong, it overwhelmed me. If that wasn’t enough, he pulled me back into his abyss with three little words. I don’t know if I can ever shake my addiction to him. I wish I knew how to make him a want instead of a need.”
She nodded, her demeanor unchanged by what I had just revealed to her. “You know why many think therapy doesn’t work? Because patients are lazy. They expect us to do the work for them when we are only the tools and they are the carpenters. When you ran away from the office, your fear and inability to work halted your progress. It was laziness.”
“Thanks, Dr. Erin,” I retorted sardonically. “As if I don’t feel really awful right now as it is. You don’t have to make it worse.”
“Nikki, I’m not here to make your progress easier. Things will get worse before they get better. On the advantage side, I think you’ve reached your bottom.” She glanced at the bandage on my palm, covering my self-inflicted wound. “Are you ready to climb out of it?”
I nodded. “Are you going to write a script?”
“No. On the contrary. I only prescribe medication as a final step if other methods fail to treat my patients. I believe in the power we have over our minds. We just need to find the right channel to take control of it.”
“You sound like someone I know.”
“Your husband?”
I nodded.
“What do you think drew you to him, Nikki?”
“I had my reasons before, but now…” I thought about the night he opened himself to me and the man he became in the moments I told him the truth about what had occurred between Preston and me. “I think because he reminded me a little of my father,” I said, lying to her. The man he reminded me of was false. He reminded me of the first man who protected me, who at the time I thought had nothing selfish to gain in doing so.
“You’re climbing, Nikki. Very good.”
As I gazed toward her window, I wondered what it would take to make Eric permanently become the man he showed me glimpses of. I hadn’t decided if I was ready for a fight that would leave me with permanent scars. “What if I want to fix him?” I questioned Dr. Erin. “What if I want to save our marriage? Can it be done?”
“You can’t fix him, Nikki. It’s up to him to do that. I can’t give you a definitive answer on your marriage. I would have to counsel the both of you—together and individually. Would you truly prefer I write a script? Or are you ready to take control of your life using the tools I’ve given you?”
I fiddled with the bandage on my hand and bobbed my head. “I’m ready to climb.”
“I always questioned the value of life,” I said, an hour into my session with Dr. Erin. “Maybe not always. My belief became apparent to me after the situation I blocked out with my father. My Uncle Patrick. My cousin. My father. My mother. Many other people in my life. Their lives were so easily taken from them.” I ran my hand over my flat stomach for a moment. “I don’t know if life means anything to me. You die, and the people who mourn you will eventually die, and no one will remember you. It’s worthless. Life. Death. Nothing means anything. There is no value in life.” Noticing she was studying the placement of my hand, I quickly folded my arms across my chest.
“There is importance in life because there is a significance in death,” she responded. “If there was a world where everyone was immortal, many things would be taken for granted.”
“You can’t know that,” I retorted. “Because in this world, death is a mainstay and most people take everything for granted.”
“Do you believe there is value in your life? Or the life of your unborn?”
I dropped my hands to settle on either side of my lap. “Am I obvious?”
She gave me a warm smile that reached her eyes, creating charming wrinkles at the corners. “Only a little.”
“I still don’t see the point of my life. But after my first miscarriage…” I gazed down at my stomach. “I believe he or she is the most important thing to come into my life. I believe there is value in his or hers.”
“Why is there value in the life of your unborn but not with you?”
Unable to hide my persistent sadness, my eyes darted to hers. “Because I’m too fucked up to exist in this world. Not without my mother. Not with the way I feel. I don’t think it will ever change. People lie when they say being happy is easy. It’s not. It’s harder than being miserable. It’s harder than realizing the horrible things in this world, and the horrible people in it will always exist. To be happy, you have to ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist.”
“The reason you feel this way is because you’ve devalued yourself,” she commented, “and allowed others to reiterate negative things about yourself. You matter to someone. Especially now.” Standing, she walked over to me and bent her spine. With a tempered grin, she placed her palm on my stomach. “Though you have a while before you meet your child, you will matter greatly to them. They will need a mother who sees as much importance in her life as she does in theirs.” She looked up at me, holding my eye contact. “Pregnant or not, you matter, Nikki.”
My breath caught in the back of my throat. I brought my hand to my face and sobbed.
She straightened her posture, looking down at me with concern. “Has no one ever said that to you?”
I shrugged off my tears. It wasn’t why I was crying. I was emotional because although I knew her words were true, I would never be able to believe it and internalize it.
She quickly grabbed the box of tissues from the coffee table and handed it to me.
“Eric has told me—or more or less made me feel like I mattered.” I clutched the box, staring at it in lieu of taking a tissue to blot my tears away. “He’s the only one who ever has. But what does it matter if he’s not genuine anymore? There is a disappearing line between the man I have feelings for and the monster others created. I feel like…I’m losing my grip on him. On the man he really is.”
“It’s time to focus on what you can change while learning to avoid obsessing about what you can’t. You can change the way you think of yourself, Nikki. If you won’t find an internal reason, focus on the tangible.” She glanced at my stomach. “If need be, you can do this without him.”
“That’s not the plan. I can’t do this without him.” I whispered, stating more to myself than to Dr. Erin, “But I know if he ever fully became the man I know he really is, he could live without me.”