Change of Season
If happiness is a warm summer day, I live in a perpetual winter. At the best of times, I can feel the cusp of spring just around the corner, like I could touch it with my fingertips if I just stretch myself out far enough. If I could just touch it, just feel a little of that warmth, it could defrost my mind and save me from freezing to death. I'm already stretched thin though, “I don't know how much further I can go.”
My psychologist is behind me trying to push me into the sun, “What thoughts have been getting stuck in your head this week, Em?”
My eyes drift around the modestly furnished room resting on the vase of flowers captured by a gilded frame. “That all of my friends will leave me for their partners and I’ll be alone.”
“So the usual.” She smirks, crossing her legs as she sits back into the plush blue armchair. Her notebook of all the secret things she thinks about me sits proud on her lap.
“Yeah, but then I had this thought that some of them aren’t even that happy.” I move to the edge of my seat but don’t look her head on, lest she see my mad eyes with tears stinging at the edges. “Like they’ll get treated like shit sometimes or just have like a pretty crap boyfriend or whatever, and they’d all still choose their partner over me if it came down to it.” I flop back into the nest of cushions I've created on the couch and stare at the stark-white ceiling. “I’m never gonna be someone’s number one.” I can already feel myself spiralling. I don’t want to talk about this.
I have weights tied to my ankles that no one can seem to break. I feel like I should be able to take them off, that I could do it at any time, that I put them on myself. I don't know what I’d be without them.
She tucks her hair behind her ear as she uncrosses her legs and sits forward; she’s about to press on a sore spot. “You keep talking to me about your issues connecting, but I would like it if you could talk about Isiah. Why did it take you so long to tell me about that?”
I sit back up and cross my legs and my arms, folding myself inward. “I don’t know, I don’t really remember it that much. I’m fine with him now, I don’t even think about it anymore.” And then the tears come. I blink them back and wipe them away, but still they come. An overflow.
“That’s not something you just get over. Have you talked about it with any of your previous psychologists - in depth?” She sits there patiently waiting for me to pull myself together enough to talk, but it’s the kind of crying that doesn’t stop when you want it to. The kind where you can’t breathe.
“Not really,” I finally stammer through gasps. “It kind of felt normal at the time. Everybody fights with their siblings.” I clench my eyes shut and focus on my breathing. In for seven, hold for three, out for five. In for seven, hold for three, out for five. In for seven, hold for three, out for five.
“Fighting requires at least two active participants, otherwise it’s just abuse.” I hear her rise and walk over, and then I feel her hand on my arm. I open my eyes and she’s squatting down beside me.
“But he was a kid as well, it wasn’t like he was way older or anything.”
She looks me right in the eyes so that I can’t look away. “Em, some of the things you mentioned last week were pretty severe, you can’t belittle that.”
“Well, I don’t know,” I sigh. “I don’t really care that much about it now that it doesn’t happen anymore. He’s not like that with anyone else or anything, so it’s not like he needs to be stopped.”
She squeezes my arm before heading back to her armchair, taking a moment to add another secret thought to her notebook. “It still matters what happened.” She says before looking up at me. “It would have been traumatic to grow up like that, and trauma tends to stick around if you don’t deal with it.”
“I don’t feel traumatised though. Like I said, I hardly even remember it.”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about how often you’ve mentioned not remembering things or going blank.” She puts her notebook down. “Both depression and PTSD are known to have effects on that. When you’re depressed you skip through life like you’re skim reading; unable to focus on what’s happening in the moment because you’re so distracted by your internal monologue. And with trauma your brain blocks out things it doesn’t think you can handle, or things it has learnt to push down, which is what I think you do. There’s simply no way you’d be able to go through the better part of two decades of consistent repetitive abusive behaviours without at least remembering it in the way you exist now - in your behaviours, the way you hold yourself, the way you allow others to treat you.”
I look down at my hands and how they shake. “I hadn’t really thought of it that way. I’ve always hated how much of a pushover I can be and how much I try to just keep the peace. But I don’t know how much this has to do with my issues connecting, if that’s what you’re getting at.” I fold my hands under my arms to stop myself from fidgeting. “I honestly can’t remember a time when I didn’t feel like this. I think I was born without some integral human quality; something is fundamentally wrong with me. Why didn’t I get crushes or want to talk about boys when I was growing up? Why did I feel like I was pretending with all of my friends and that they were just pretending to like me?” Frustration and anger whip around me like a violent wind. The room darkens and I can feel myself slipping.
“Em I don’t think you’re incapable of feeling these emotions, I think you just don’t know how to let yourself do it. Every time you start, you either withdraw or let everything overwhelm you. You clearly never learnt how to face these emotions as a child. No wonder you’re struggling with it so much now.”
“Ok but I can’t just let everything overwhelm me all the time, I won’t last.”
“No, you can’t. You’re going to have to start with little things: stop wiping away your tears and let yourself just sit there feeling vulnerable. Allow yourself to feel uncomfortable and know that it’s ok, it’s normal.”
Everything goes quiet. I can’t even respond. It’s ok to be uncomfortable.
For once I have something good stuck on a loop in my head. I leave the office and step out to the car park. I run a finger across the side of a truck and watch the trail I leave in the dust. I walk to the back of the building and out into the park. The sky is filled with pink and yellow flowers carried by the wind. It is a storm of colour. The warm colours of spring snapping at the heels of the cold blue winter sky. I watch a hint of purple form where the two bleed together. The dark trees in the distance are silhouettes against the change of season in the sky.