“You really are a fucking asshole, you know that?”
I give a shrug and take a drink, straight from the bottle. “I am, but at least I’m secure in who I am. That can’t be said for both of us. But hey, we are who we are right?” I take another swig and it barely goes down, a clear sign that my breaking point was near—which is par for the course at this point. “Now that she’s gone, tell me why you had to fuck up the only thing I had going for me.”
She takes the bottle from hand and matches my swig with even bigger one. “I already told you, I didn’t—” a grin etches its way across her face, “—I did it because you eventually would’ve fucked her life up. So I decided to save everyone some time since, you know, it’s not something we can get back.” She moves closer, enough so that I could see the wine stains on her teeth. “So yeah, I told her your sob story, about your little panic attacks every morning, and how you cry like a little bitch in the mirror just to get your day started.”
“Our deal is off,” I’m too angry to think straight.
“So, you’re just gonna throw me out, huh Miles?” She takes another drink. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“I’m sure you’ll land on your pussy just fine,” I retort. In my drunken stupor, I was impressed that I was able to come up with that line. “It’s time for you to leave.”
She goes to her room and I can hear her cursing me from the living room, but I don’t take the bait. Instead I start cleaning, an oddly therapeutic exercise for me, except this time I’m not waiting for the pills to kick in. Minutes later she returns, the backpack I bought her from Walmart slung over her arm, and I instantly regret everything I said. She’s eerily calm, which gives me hope that I could talk her into staying. Lily was my Dr. Felt before Dr. Felt, helping me filter my raw emotions into cohesive arguments, acting as a sounding board and buffer between me and the world.
And I managed to fuck that up. Again.
She hands me the room key and turns to leave, reminding me of the night Sara left, but she stops at the door and faces me. “Let me leave you with a piece of advice, Miles,” she says. “The next time you feel like checking out because life gets too hard, do us all a favor…” her face is still blank, but a twisted smile slowly creeps up, “…make sure you take the whole bottle next time, the world will be better off for it.” She lingers for a second soaking in my reaction, and then she’s gone, slamming the door and leaving me to be swallowed by the loneliness.
I used to think I hated arguments because I was scared of confrontation, but that’s only half right. It wasn’t the confrontation that scared me. What I feared was saying hurtful things in anger. Even after you apologize, and both parties agree that all is forgiven, it doesn’t take back the words. I’ve never understood how people could say such horrible things to the people they care about, knowing they’d have to see them again. To my Mother, I’ll be the son that kept her at a distance, harboring a resentment that kept its foot on the neck of our relationship—cold, watching the life drain from it. For Lily, I’m the brother that abandoned her—whether that’s true or not is open to interpretation—then weaseled back into her life to open a fresh wound. And Melody, that’s too painful to think about right now, but it’s fucked up too. I held up my end of the bargain with Dr. Felt, and now its time to find shelter in the only coping method I know.
It’s time to run away.
Eighteen
Session 4: Checkmate
The day of my last session with Dr. Felt was easily the scariest day of my life, and for once it wasn’t because of the subject matter. Not that diving into my marriage didn’t scare me, because it definitely did. It was reality sinking in that I wouldn’t be seeing her anymore. Over three sessions, this woman held my hand as we walked through hell together, though the beginning was more me being dragged hesitantly. But she held firm, keeping her word to be there every step of the way, encouraging me to embrace the process, and in turn molding, me into a better person than I was the day I showed up on her doorstep.
And now she was leaving me.
My mind could only process the end of our sessions as abandonment, even though I knew this was part of the game going in. But there was comfort in knowing that there was gonna be another session. That no matter how bad my week would go, there was someone committed to making sure I was gonna be alright. It’s moments like this, when the mind can sense the end of something, that I become hyper-sensitive to my surroundings—my senses trying to inventory every scent and visual one more time.
Dr. Felt greeted me like usual, leading me to the office with the shag carpet, giving no indication that she was struggling with the same emotions that I was, or that anything was amiss. I assumed this was normal for her, walking in and out of the lives others making her numb to the goodbye. But I wondered, maybe even hoped, that I was different. As people, we want to believe that there’s something different about us, like the john that visits the same prostitute over and over, hoping that he’s proven himself to be different enough to make her forget about the job.
I take my customary spot on the love seat, the dust mites floating softly through the air, shining in the glare of the sunlight creeping through the drapes. She takes her spot and waits patiently, getting a sense of my mood before she begins.
“So, we made it to the end,” she starts. “How are you feeling right now?”
I’d come to love the start of our sessions. The simple questions she’d throw out, knowing damn well the hard stuff was coming in hot behind it—like a boxer setting an opponent up with a jab while masking the hook.
“It’s kinda scary, to be honest.”
“That’s actually a pretty common emotion. What scares you?”
“You’ve been a major factor in my life,” I tell her. “I know you have other clients, but you make me feel like my recovery is the pinnacle of your life’s work. Sometimes I feel like my effort to live is more about not wanting to let you down than actually moving forward. It’s just scary knowing that I’m losing that.”
She smiles at me. “A lot of my clients thank me, but few admit the fear they have at the end of our time together. Most play brave and act like they never should’ve been here in the first place.”
I shake my head and grin, remembering our first session and how quickly she snuffed out my bullshit.
“So, with that being said Miles,” she begins, “are you ready to dive into who you were as a husband?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll start with a question. Do you know why I chose Sara to be the last session?”
That’s a loaded question. But with Dr. Felt, she always put the candy in the medicine. Her question’s so brilliant that while you’re wondering why she asked it, your guard drops around the answer itself. She operates on the the fringes of your psyche, leaving precise cracks in the right places, so that you can be put back together without any outward scars.
“I really don’t know,” I offer up.
“Take a guess and, at the end of the session, I’ll tell you why.”