These friendships changed Willow. Her grades rose. She became interested in subjects she’d hated. Before, she’d thought of herself as lazy and illiterate. Now, after just a month, she had constructed a brand-new narrative: She was a good writer who had the strength to push herself to new heights. And she was patient. On another day, when she felt like her whole class was ignoring her jokes and antics, she went to the beanbag chair in the corner of the room to be alone for a minute. “I was like, Willow! It’s just kids. I don’t know why you’re getting mad right now. It’s okay.” She was able to self-soothe, not explicitly because her teachers and therapists taught her to. She had picked this up intuitively. The brain’s fear reflex is very real. But it has an opposite force, too, as ancient and as powerful. Our bodies and brains melt into kindness in the presence of one key ingredient.
“This school made me feel like I was somewhere where people actually loved me.”
I had to blink back tears when I saw Jeremy and Nico make up. I thought they were so cute…but also, I was in awe of their skills. I wanted to be as adept as they were. I wanted an adult Mott Haven. How else would I learn these skills? Who would teach me?
* * *
—
“What do you want to talk about today?” Dr. Ham asked when I plopped down on his couch.
My voice was flat and tired. “I had a bad day this weekend because we had another stupid fight.”
Joey and I were on a train headed home after a night out. We were talking, filling each other in on our days, when Joey winced as he shifted his weight on the orange seat. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he said, dismissively.
“But are you in pain? How much did you sleep?” I pressed. “Oh no. I told you to go to bed earlier last night!”
Joey flashed me an angry look—one of exhaustion and fury.
I matched his expression and multiplied it. “What?” I asked. “Why do you need to give me that look?”
His face shut down and he turned away from me, ending the conversation.
When Joey had promised me years ago that he could “handle” my trauma and its corresponding issues, at the time I thought that meant he’d take them in stride. I gave him too much credit. He is a good egg, but he’s no saint or savior; nor should it be his responsibility to be one. The years passed and our foibles became less quirky and more irritating. He begrudgingly tolerated many of my failings, but he certainly had his limits. He has a temper, too, one that can snap unexpectedly and send me into a spiral. Like it did on this day, on the train.
“What did that look do to you?” Dr. Ham asked.
“I hate those looks. I’ve been getting more and more angry whenever he gets angry at me, because I’m just like, oh, I can’t open my mouth without accidentally fucking up all of my relationships.”
“Oh geez,” Dr. Ham winced.
When we got to our stop, I stormed ahead angrily. Joey caught up to me ready to snip. “I just feel like giving you that look was an appropriately rude response to what you said, which I felt was kind of rude.”
“You interpreted it as rude. I didn’t mean it in a rude way.”
“It was rude. What, I have to walk on eggshells so I don’t trigger you with my anger, but you can’t be responsible for your own mistakes?”
“Oh Jesus Christ,” I mumbled, but I decided to drop it.
The next day, Joey and I were walking past a small park in our neighborhood. He wanted to grab a coffee at the corner, but I told him I didn’t think that was such a good idea. He flashed me that exact same look, that snarl of, You’re doing the thing. The rude thing.
“What the fuck?” I asked. “Yesterday you got all mad at me over nothing, and now today it’s the same thing. What the fuck? What’s your problem?”
“Well, what if I was constantly checking up on you? Asking you, ‘How’s your vagina?’ How would you like that?”
“I’d like it just fine! I’d just fucking tell you about my vagina! I’d tell you about my poop, too! What do you want to know? The consistency? The color?”
He rolled his eyes and walked away.
My mind reeled. What do I feel right now? How do I communicate it? “You’re being mean to me. You’re not caring about my feelings,” I called out at him.
He smirked and barked out, “HA!”
Asshole. “What did I ever do to you?” I yelled. “Tell me what exactly I did that makes me deserve this? WHAT THE FUCK DID I DO?” I dropped down to the curb with both hands on my face, and the tornado began. Oh, great, now I’m crying in public. I can’t fucking talk because otherwise everyone will hate me. I’d better just be a mute statue of a woman from now on.
“Come on,” he said eventually. “Hey, what is going on here?” But statues don’t respond, so I said nothing.
He stood and watched me for several minutes before he asked, “What are you thinking right now?”
“I don’t want to tell you. It’s too fucked-up,” I eked out.
“That you hate me?”
“No.”
“That you don’t want to get married after all?”
“No.”
“That you think I’m evil?”
“No! No!” I wailed. “No, I just hate myself and I wish I was dead!”
When I told Dr. Ham this part of the story, he burst out laughing. “Oh my God!” he said, not even trying to stifle his laughter. “Sorry. I can’t help it.”
It was disconcerting, but I’m chastised for my inappropriate gallows laughter all the time, so I got it. “It’s okay. I laugh about dark stuff all the time.”
“No, it’s just…it’s outrageous that you making a silly comment ends with ‘I want to die.’ You just have to laugh at how silly your trauma reactions are.”
“I guess.” My smile sagged. “It doesn’t feel silly to me.”
“No, of course not.” He fell serious. “No, it’s devastatingly painful. For you to want to die means that you went to the threshold of what you could bear. But for you to convert it into another example of how you’re the fuckup, that you’re the most antisocial, toxic thing in the universe, that’s ridiculous.”
“Yeah.”
We sat there in silence for a minute. Finally, Dr. Ham asked, “What drives it? What drives that need for you to ask him about his body?”
“The need for control,” I said, sighing. “Clearly it’s parental stuff.”
Most therapists would jump at the opportunity to dissect this, to go back into my familial history and have a field day of analysis. But Dr. Ham wanted to stay tied to the moment. “Okay,” he insisted, “but why did you feel like you needed to control that?”
“Because…ever since he started teaching, he stopped eating right and he stopped sleeping. He only sleeps like four hours a night because he’s up grading papers and making lesson plans. He works these seventeen-hour days, and if he works any less, his boss tells him he doesn’t care about his students. And he has an autoimmune disease that flares up every time he’s really stressed out and doesn’t sleep, and then he gets really sick. And it’s been flaring up recently, and I just constantly have to be the one telling him to put his work down, eat right, and take care of himself.”
“You’re worried about his safety,” Dr. Ham realized, and his eyes got big again. “And losing him.”
“Yeah,” I whispered.
Dr. Ham thought for a moment, then to my surprise, he exploded. “I would be livid! You have a right to nag him if he’s not going to take care of his health, as someone who loves him. How dare he do that.”
“Oh. So. I’m…right?”
He shook his head. “No. I’m not saying you should keep nagging him. I’m saying your nagging comes from a good place, and you shouldn’t say, ‘I’m an idiot for nagging.’?”
“Well…if the nagging and my fear are justified, how else can I do it? Without him getting mad?”