Before You Go

FOURTEEN

In the morning, I get ready for my appointment with Dr. Payne, my shrink. And yes, that is her real name. You can’t make this shit up. The timing is perfect after my little confrontation with Noah. I smile at the memory.

It felt so good!

Dr. Payne and I have had more than two dozen sessions in the past three months, so she pretty much knows everything that happened. Actually, she knew most of it from our first family session. Dad pulled no punches and pretty much laid it all out on the table.

Thankfully, I go to therapy by myself now and we’re down to one day a week.

Today, Dr. Payne waits for me on the steps of her old Victorian where she houses her psychiatric practice in Uptown. She slides her orange reading glasses down the tip of her nose and greets me with a smile and a hug. Sometimes we go into her office to talk, but most sessions are held in the multicolored rocking chairs on the porch.

“Have a seat Tabitha,” Dr. Payne says in her raspy voice, gesturing to the row of chairs. I hate this part. It seems like a test. I worry about the color of the chair I select. Does it mean something if I take a seat in the chair closest to the garden or closest to the door?

She studies me as I make my selection, I’m sure of it. That makes me even more nervous.

I realize it’s taking me too long to make a decision so I grab the chair closest to me and sit. It’s the red one. Dr. Payne takes a seat in my rocker’s blue neighbor.

“How are you, Tabitha?” she asks, sliding her glasses up her long face.

On. Off. On. Off. All session, she messes with her glasses. It drives me insane.

“I’m fine I guess,” I tell her with a yawn.

It’s early, too early for therapy.

We open our session the same way we always do. Dr. Payne fires off her usual lists of questions and I’m all, “It’ll be okay. I’m feeling better. Talking about it helps.”

Denial, denial, denial.

Productive to my therapy? No, but it usually gets me out of the session still intact. Resistance is futile, et cetera, et cetera.

“Things are better,” I begin. “I’m doing okay in school and I saw Michael last week.”

“How is your brother?”

“Good, I think.” I have to guess here, usually my conversations with Michael are solely focused on me. I feel the shame as I just now make this realization. I’ve been taking, taking, taking. Taking from everyone, and not giving a thing back.

I look down, too ashamed to look her in the eyes. I can’t even answer a simple question. That’s all it takes and suddenly I’m sinking, lower than low.

I. Hate. Myself.

Correction: I will pretend I’m okay. Fake it until I make it.

And so begins the battle.

The shrink notices something’s gone wrong. “What is it, Tabitha?”

“Nothing, everything is just fine.” Even I can hear the edge in my voice.

She dismisses it and moves on. She’s good at that.

“Okay then, today I’d like to talk about what lead to the events on Thomas’ birthday.”

“We’ve talked about this already,” I say. “At length.”

“Yes, we’ve talked about what happened that night and after, but never really before. I want to know why you decided to go to the party with Megan and dance for Thomas and his friends.”

“Well,” I begin. “It wasn’t really that thought out. Megan was always telling me I needed to loosen up. She thought it’d be fun. ‘It’s just an innocent little dance,’ she told me. She said Thomas would love it. I think he’s the one who put her up to it.”

“What kind of guy was he, Tabby?”

That was the thing. The thing I couldn’t really explain to myself or anyone else. In my head I knew I was nothing more than a hook-up to him. But sometimes I wasn’t so sure. Sometimes when I was with him, I felt like it was more, or at least had the possibility of being more. So I let it play out. Hoping.

That’s why it was so hard to believe he let that happen to me the night of his party. That he didn’t do anything to stop it. Or, even worse, that he planned it from the beginning.

Once his attorneys paid me off. That was it. Thomas didn’t answer my calls or texts and he pretended not to see me in school. I didn’t have the energy to fight him. He was out and I was on my own. I never even wanted to take the settlement, but the lawyers (and Mom) insisted. All I wanted was to forget—and for everyone else to do the same.

I don’t tell Dr. Payne all of this because I must convince her I’m better. I edit, make it less dramatic, tell her it was a difficult time but I’m getting over it.

Dr. Payne taps her pen on her notebook. I know she wants to pump me for more information, but our hour is almost up.

“Tabby, I know how difficult talking about this stuff can be,” she says moving into the wrap it up portion of our session. She rests her hand over the death grip I have on the red rocker.

“But you did great today,” she goes on. “We are making tremendous progress. The downside is all this talk might make it tempting to slip away from us again. But don’t go back there, Tabby.” Urgency now replaces her calm matter. The drastic change in her voice is jarring. It makes me listen. “Don’t go back to the time when all you did was react to others, instead of listen to yourself,” she says without giving me time to respond like she usually does. For the first time, she doesn’t want to hear from me. She’s in full-on lecture mode.

“It’s time to move forward, Tabby. Time for you to build the life you want to live and stop being a victim.”

My blood starts to boil. What did she know about it? Listening to me for a few hours a week gave her the right to tell me how to feel, how to live?

If she saw me that night with Noah, she wouldn’t call me a victim.

No, she had no idea what I was capable of.

I stopped being a victim a long time ago.