Guilty Conscious
My pen flew across the page as I wrote about my morning swim in paradise with Becca from the day before. We had so much fun, laughing and swimming, and I even conquered two of my fears in less than an hour. I jumped off of the top of the waterfall naked. The fall had been exhilarating. I couldn’t believe how much I had missed out on the first day at the waterfall with Becca, Jess, and Willow. It proved that I needed to start doing things for me. I couldn’t let my fears hold me back from living and experiencing all that life has to offer.
It was as if whoever had written the camp brochure had typed all of my thoughts because I finally was beginning to understand its promises of relaxation and well being. Their words seemed to have brainwashed me because there’s no way I was thinking so many happy thoughts on my own. I finished the sentence I was writing and then put the cap on my pen and sighed. Dr. Gower was right. It felt good getting stuff off of my chest and writing everything down.
On the page before I had colored the whole page red and marked the date, July 4th, in the top corner to remind me of what happened—not that I’d ever forget. I just wanted to remember how horrible I felt when Becca saw me. Even worse was how I felt later that night when I realized that all of my progress had been flushed down the toilet—no pun intended.
Today I was going to have to tell Dr. Gower about what happened, and boy was I dreading it. I didn’t want her to be disappointed in me, because honestly I was already disappointed enough. I was in recovery and I had been proud of myself, and then I went and ruined it all. That was something I did often, and I didn’t know why. It’s what happened with India too.
I chewed on my bottom lip as I thumbed through my journal, waiting for Dr. Gower to come out and call me in. I had written a lot in my journal since I’d last seen her. The entries started out short, with me just forcing myself to write, but in the week that had passed since my last appointment, I’d added at least twenty pages. My last three entries took up the most space. I flipped to page one, where I had listed all of the things I would change about myself if I could. The list was so long it filled the page in three rows. On the page across from it, I started a new list; things I like about myself.
I had barely finished writing, “Nice smile” when Dr. Gower opened her door and her patient came strutting out. It was the same rich lady from last time. The rock on her ring finger was so big and sparkly I felt like I needed sunglasses. She wasn’t smiling, but this time she wasn’t crying either. As she walked past, her cat-like green eyes raked over me, making me feel slightly uncomfortable for the few moments before she glanced away and slid on a pair of Prada shades. I shifted in my chair, watching her as she click-clacked out of the waiting room in her fancy heels.
“Abby?”
My head snapped to the right and I closed my journal. “Hey,” I said as I clutched my journal to my chest and slipped the pen into the little tote bag I had brought with me. I stood and walked into the office, taking a deep breath as I sat down. I almost expected my legs to be shaking visibly from the nervous electricity that seemed to be pulsing through my body.
Dr. Gower shut her office door and walked around to take a seat at her desk. She gave me a warm smile as she opened her desk drawer and pulled out my file. After she opened it and laid it on the desk, her gaze returned to me. “How have you been, Abby? Did you have a good Fourth of July?” she asked, her stare not leaving my face for even a moment. If I didn’t know any better, I would think she knew.
I nodded my head in response. For some reason, I was afraid to answer. What if my voice cracked and gave me away? After taking a breath, I said, “It-was-great-until-I-binged-and-then-I-was-so-ashamed-and-I-had-to-get-rid-of-it.” My words came out in one long string like I had vomited them up onto the rug. Irony intended.
Dr. Gower’s expression didn’t change. She remained cool and collected. This chick deserved an Oscar nominee. There was no way she wasn’t blindsided by that confession.
Tears prickled in my eyes as I waited for her to speak. When she did, all she said was, “Abby, you have to learn how to forgive yourself. If you don’t ever come to terms with your disorder and realize that you’re human, and that humans make mistakes, then you won’t ever recover. You are bound to have slip ups, but it’s how you deal with them and go about changing your behavior that makes you heal. Punishing yourself won’t help.”
I sucked in a lungful of air as I leaned forward to grab the box of tissues sitting on the edge of her desk for her patients to use. When I first started therapy I was adamant that I’d never use one of those tissues. Crying in front of people was not my thing, but now here I was—crying like a little baby. That seems to be a recurring thing lately...
“I know. It’s just a lot harder than I thought it would be,” I admitted.
She nodded. “If recovery was easy than everyone would be able to do it. It’s not, but you’re tough. Definitely one of the toughest patients I’ve ever had. I believe in you, but that’s not what matters. I could believe in you until kingdom come, but that won’t change anything if you don’t believe in yourself.”
Dabbing a tissue at my eye, I resisted the urge to laugh. That’s the hard part; believing in myself. I wanted to say it, but I didn’t. The room was silent for a moment as I took in her words, and then she poised her pen over her paper and scribbled something down.
When she tilted her head back up, her gaze burned into mine. “Why do you think you did it? What made you binge in the first place?”
I knew what she wanted me to do. She wanted me to tie my behavior to my emotions. It was a task we had been doing in each of our sessions thus far, but this time I didn’t know what had pushed me to binge. I couldn’t think of a reason why, I had just done it. Was there something that happened before? Some shift in my emotions? If there was, I couldn’t remember what.
I shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
Dr. Gower pursed her full lips. “Think about it. What were you doing right before?”
“I was talking to my friend, Becca. Then she went to talk to this guy she likes, and—” I paused, suddenly remembering what happened after. I had thought about what happened with India.
“And?”
“I started feeling guilty.”
“About what?”
Over the course of our sessions so far I had grown to feel comfortable telling Dr. Gower almost anything. She wasn’t judgmental and usually had good advice to give me, but for the first time in a while I hesitated on telling her something. Knowing what I did to my best friend was eating me alive, and even I thought I was a horrible person for it. I didn’t want Dr. Gower to think the same thing.
Sensing my hesitation, Dr. Gower spoke up. “Abby, this is a safe place. You can talk to me.”
“I know.” I took a deep breath to compose myself, and then I told her. I told her about how I was the world’s worst best friend. I told her about how I had hooked up with Matty O’Donnell, India’s crush since we were in elementary school. There was nothing to excuse what I’d done. I knew she liked him, and I was pretty sure he liked her too, and yet I still did it. I had snuck out of my house in the middle of the night and knocked on his window, ignoring the nagging feeling in my gut telling me not to. Not only had I hurt my best friend, but I had also given my virginity to a guy I didn’t even care about. By the time I finished confessing everything to Dr. Gower, I was crying again. Tears streaked down my face, dripping from my chin.
I waited for Dr. Gower’s response as I soaked up my tears with handfuls of her tissues. I watched through blurred vision as she folded her hands on her desk and tilted her head slightly—something she always did when she was thinking about what I’d said and was about to ask a question in response.
“Why did you do it? I mean, what made you go to this boy’s house if you didn’t like him? Did you want to hurt India?”
My first instinct was to shake my head no, but then I really thought about it. Maybe I had wanted to hurt her. When Matty started returning her affection, India had begun blowing me off. She had been my only friend, but when Matty was around it was like I didn’t exist anymore. As he started pursuing her, all of our conversations became about him. India couldn’t go five minutes without saying his name and I started to feel like I was being put on the back burner. Maybe I had been unintentionally trying to get her back, as horrible as that sounds. Maybe I was jealous of her spending all of her attention on Matty, or maybe I was jealous that she was even getting attention from a guy in the first place—considering my only sexual experience before then consisted of Bobby Garrison honking my boob in his car. Before Matty I had never even had a real kiss.
My gaze dropped to the journal lying on my lap and I instantly thought about the list I had written of negative things about myself. The first thing I had written was “insecure” and not far after that was “attention-whore” and “needy”. Those were my reasons for my behavior. I was insecure and I wanted attention. Since I wasn’t getting it from India anymore, I went to get it from Matty. Instead of thinking about all of my negative aspects and hating myself for them, I needed to fix them. I needed to work on myself before I could fix the problems I’d caused and mend the relationships I’d ruined; not just between me and India, but also between me and my parents.
“Maybe I did,” I confessed. “I didn’t even realize it until now, but maybe I did.”
“Well, it seems to me like you need to talk to India. Everyone makes mistakes, and I’m not saying that you’ll be forgiven or things with India will return to how they used to be, but maybe talking to her and apologizing would help. You have to find a way to forgive yourself in order to recover, and who knows, maybe she’ll forgive you too.”
“That’s unlikely, but I hope so.” I sighed and wiped the last of the tears from my eyes. Our time was almost up, but there was something I wanted to work on with her before I left. “Can you help me make a list?”
Dr. Gower furrowed her eyebrows, but nodded nonetheless. “Sure, what kind of list?”
I stood up and came over to her desk. I didn’t miss the way she closed my file before I got close enough to see its contents. Placing my journal down on her desk, I opened it and ripped out the page I had written all of my bad qualities on. Then I ripped it up, tossing the pieces in the trash. It was cathartic to get rid of the negativity.
“I want to make a list of all of my good qualities so that I can read over them whenever I’m feeling unhappy with myself.”
There was a hint of a smile on her lips as she said, “That sounds like a very good idea.”
We spent the rest of our session making a list, and surprisingly it was longer than the negative one had been.