"Robyn you baffle me"
Somehow I was not surprised. I'd gone into this "session" with the full intent of crossing my arms protectively around my heart and letting the man across from me ask the questions while I gave short answers which revealed nothing. I would be stone.
So much for that plan.
"Most people come into this place because someone else makes them. Most people don't want to see their problems and try to solve them. Most people, in fact, resent the very idea of counseling."
I flinched at the word. I couldn't help it. Counseling implies broken. Counseling implies troubled. I was neither. Or maybe I was both. I preferred the word survivor. I was still here, wasn't I? I hadn't taken the pain killers. I hadn't given up. Not yet anyway.
"You are not most people."
That got my attention. Wasn't I? I was just as hesitant about "getting help" as anyone else would be. I hadn't expected that I'd be sitting here facing this same man for over an hour and a half, words tumbling fast and measured and sometimes torn from me by sobs I could not control. He had handed me a tissue box with gentle concern and gone back to his seat opposite me, contemplating me like a bird contemplates something strange in the grass. Head cocked to the side, he listened and wrote and listened some more, sometimes interjecting with a question but never interrupting the flow of my story. I was surprised that so much time had passed and I still had more to say. I guess I had never told anyone the full details cover to cover before. It was my story. It was our story. And it was painful.
"Robyn, I want to help you." Sure you'll help me. I pictured prescriptions for strange pills. Referrals to psychiatrists in long coats who stood around and shook their heads at me, declaring me "incurable." Or even a round of flashcards where the "patient" stares at ink blobs for an hour wondering if this is all their life is worth. A bunch of half-formed splats on a note card. A series of accidents. Nonsense. It was all nonsense. Making something of nothing.
"You are obviously a writer. A story teller. Well, we are going to rewrite your story."
I thought about this. What did that mean? Here I had spilled my mistakes into his hands, laid out every doubt and fear and painful moment in a row like children lay out rails for a toy train to chug around. The perfect set-up for a train wreck. Only the wreck had already happened, and I was here to try to put it back on the rails.
I have written this particular story a thousand times in my head since last June, when it all started. Sometimes it was a drama, a soap opera where each of the actors cried a lot and seemed to take several episodes to get anywhere. Sometimes it was an action piece, or a love story, or a comedy. Sometimes it was even a fairy tale, complete with the words "happily ever after" inscribed in gold on the back cover. But most often, it was simply a tragedy. And that's where it stopped. That's why I was here. No matter how I looked at it, the past year of my life had been one big loss. Loss of family, loss of control, loss of self. And now loss of the only person who had come to know me better than I knew myself. The only person to say she truly hated me.
But to rewrite my story. This was something else again. How does one begin to rewrite themselves? Is that even possible? Was that saying I would ignore what I did? Forget my guilt and cast myself as a hero? Impossible. I couldn't do that. In at least one way, I was the villain in my own play, in turns ruining and trying to UN-ruin the lives of those around me. I couldn't change that. I couldn't re-script it. It had already happened.
But maybe my counselor meant something else. Maybe he was referring to the future. Could I change the future? Hadn't that been my goal for the last four months? Or was I still stuck in the past, just like all of us? Was I only fooling myself when I said that I had gotten better, had stopped my old habits? Suddenly I wasn't sure.
I hope to God that you never know what it feels like to want to die. To know that your actions may have helped cause someone else to want to die. I had contemplated suicide, helped cause someone else to contemplate it, and talked another person out of it; all in a matter of weeks. I told them that life was worth living, even though I wasn't so sure myself. I was driven to undo the damage I had helped to inflict, and in the process I forged a deep connection with a woman that until January, I hardly knew.
This young woman and I had a strange understanding. Over weeks of e-mails, messages, and visits, we got to know each other. I realized the extent of my influence on her life and tried to reverse it, to smooth out the bumps and return her to the simple road she once traveled down. Only it wasn't so simple to begin with, and the scars of past misunderstandings cast a shadow over everything. Depression was common. Mood swings were common. One week she was as serene as a lake; still as glass. She told me she loved me as a sister, and she forgave me, and that things were getting better. The next week she was a raging swollen tide, shattering in on itself and reminding me of my part in her pain. She shouted her rage, her hatred for me, and the hopelessness of her life.
I could only tread water in this host of intense emotions, neither drowning nor making any progress to land and to normalcy. But what was normalcy anymore? Did it even exist? I didn't realize that I was so invested, so convinced that if I wasn't able to help her than I was a failure. In the end she shut me out entirely, choosing to keep the hate and discard the friendship.
Can this be rewritten? I don't think so. I am not the author of her life, and as much as I would like to say that I never did anything wrong in trying to help her, I know that is a lie. I know sometimes I made it worse. And maybe it wasn't intentional, but in this life, that hardly matters.
So what CAN be rewritten? Not the past, because it is already done. And not the future, because it is full of uncertainty and pain. But maybe the present. Maybe I can dedicate myself to this moment, and this day, to not hurting anyone anymore.
I'm sorry for the changes I made, and the person I became in the process. I'm auditioning for a new part now, and I hope it makes a difference.
