Light in the Shadows
Page 8

Sure, my new meds were huge in helping me regulate my swings. Therapy had been instrumental in allowing me to work through the millions of ways I was sabotaging my life on a daily basis. I was learning other coping skills, ones that didn’t involve a blade to my skin. I hadn't cut myself in over a month. These were all reasons to feel successful. I was a far cry from being the man I wanted to be. But I was getting there.
Then stuff like this happened. It was reality's way of smacking me in the face and telling me to wake the f**k up. Have I mentioned how much I hated reality sometimes? If it were a guy I’d beat the shit out of him. Because if I couldn't even write in a damn journal about how messing up things with Maggie had destroyed my entire world, I wasn't ready to see the outside of these walls yet. And I wanted to be ready so freaking badly.
Dr. Todd said Maggie had become my trigger. Can you believe that? The girl who had easily been the best thing in my life was now my greatest nightmare. According to the good doctor, I was pinpointing all of my anxiety, all of my shame and guilt onto her shoulders. How messed up was that? After doing the “right” thing and letting her go, I couldn’t even have the memories of her. Because now when I thought about Maggie, I wigged out. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. It was way too reminiscent of how bad things became before I came to Grayson.
Dr. Todd was trying to help me work through it. I was seeing him three times a week and at least one of those sessions revolved around how I needed to learn to forgive myself. He said it like it was the easiest thing in the world. But you try to forgive yourself after you hurt everyone you have ever loved. It doesn’t make you the most enjoyable guy to have around, that’s for sure. Life of the party I wasn’t.
This process was painful. Actually it sucked balls. It was like forcing yourself to look in the mirror after you had been doused in battery acid. I felt ugly and raw. And I wasn’t a fan of the guy inside me that I was getting to know. But Dr. Todd was trying to make me see that I wasn’t the horrible person that I seemed to think I was. He was making me recognize that I was taking control of my life. That person that had hurt Maggie so badly was only a part of the person I was and he didn't define me. He liked to tell me that I had to learn to accept all sides of who I was if I hoped to be healthy and whole.
Once upon a time I would have laughed off the psychobabble. But now, in this reality, I couldn’t afford to do that. So I bit my tongue and drank the Grayson Center Kool-Aid.
Some days it worked. Some days I was able to talk about my relationship with Maggie without sobbing like a little bitch. There were times I left my sessions feeling like I was a step closer to being the person I wanted to be. The guy who would be able to show up on Maggie May Young's doorstep and tell her that his life would always begin and end with her.
Today was NOT one of those days.
Dr. Todd held out his hand for my notebook. I gave it to him, wishing he'd let me burn the stupid thing. Journaling had never been one of my favorite therapeutic activities. But the counselors here loved it. I had been told over and over again that sometimes it's easier to write down your feelings than talk about them. That when you feel overwhelmed, just jot it down. What-the-fuck-ever.
I thought it was nothing more than an exercise in reminding me of my colossal screw ups. Hey Clay, sit down and write about how much of a jack ass you are! Sounds like a fun day, huh? I'd hate to go back through that thing and read the ramblings of a guy who had messed up his life and spent an inordinate amount of time feeling sorry for himself because of it. I’d rather be kicked in the nuts.
“Do you mind if I read what you wrote? I'd like to see what triggered your reaction,” Dr. Todd asked me. If I said no, he wouldn't push. Not about that. There were some things Dr. Todd pushed me about. Things he forced me to face even when I didn't want to. But the cool thing about him was that he understood when he needed to back the hell off. It's what made our dynamic work. Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid. Except that I was in a mental health treatment center in Florida. And I wasn’t a gun slinging outlaw. Oh f**k it, never mind.
The point was that I had fought therapy for so long that our easy candor was pretty unbelievable. It was no secret that I didn’t like people. I avoided them on a good day. But Dr. Todd was different. Maybe it was the fact that he didn’t look at me like I was crazy. There was no forced sympathy or condescending advice. He let me talk. Or he let me stay silent. He'd push when he needed to but let things go when I needed him to.
So having him check out my journal surprisingly didn’t feel like a complete invasion of privacy. Something I had written had thrown me into a tailspin and go figure, my therapist wanted to know what that something was. Made sense, right? Plus if I ever wanted to get out of here and get on with living my life, I had to figure out how to handle this new level of bullshit I had unloaded on myself. Why couldn’t my life ever be simple? What happened to the normal teenage experience? Shouldn’t I be making inappropriate remarks about girls’ tits with my friends and devising ways to get my girlfriend to screw me?
Nope, I had been given the shitty parents and chemical imbalance card. Woohoo! Lucky me!
I nodded. “Go right ahead.” My voice sounded thready and breathless from my most recent round with the crazies. Dr. Todd gave me a small smile before opening my lime green notebook. He thumbed through the pages until he stopped at the entry I had written. He had asked me to reframe a painful memory. He had told me to think about something that hurt, something that had been extremely difficult for me and to look for a positive to take from it. Reframing was hard on a good day.