Therapy (13 page)

“Hey,” he said tentatively.

“Hi, Jace.”

“Are you feeling any better?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I said, lying to him yet again.

I heard him breathe out a sigh before he said, “Jess, I’m still really upset with you for what you did and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to trust you again. That was all kinds of wrong that you lied about that. I care about you a lot and I can’t imagine not having you in my life, but damn, this is a big deal. I don’t know how to process this kind of thing. I’m not saying I can’t get past it, but I’m saying I need some time. I just can’t say how I really feel about this. I just need more time to decide what I want. I don’t want to lose you, but I need to be able to trust you.”

“Jace,” I started, but my tongue and my tears were working against me. I had to get ahold of myself if I was going to get through this and make him believe me. I took a deep breath, willed my throat to remain open so I could get this out, and steeled myself against the agony of losing him, which was already threatening to consume me. “You don’t have to take time to decide. I can’t see you anymore. We can’t be together. I’m no good for you and what I did was unforgivable.” I bit my lip hard to stop myself from sobbing into the receiver.

Silence answered me and I blundered on, saying what I had always wanted to say to him. “I love you, Jace Collins. I always will.” Then I hung up the phone before he could say another word.

That’s the day I tried to commit suicide. I remember the details vividly.

I locked my bedroom door and pulled my box from my nightstand. I contemplated writing a note, but decided against it. No one would care. In fact, some would be happy to hear I had done it. I pulled the razor blade from the box, clear on my intent, even though the finality of what I was about to do never quite penetrated my reality. I just had a million emotions running through me and I wanted all of it to go away. The loss of Jace, the loss of the unborn baby I was carrying, and an unbearable sense of loneliness plagued my thoughts. I just needed it to stop. All of it. I wanted out. I sat on the edge of my bed and took a deep breath. Tears rolled down my face as I put the blade to my wrist. Just before I pushed down, someone knocked on my window, scaring the shit out of me. I nearly jumped out of my damn skin. I dropped the razor blade to the floor and went to the window. I looked out and there was the little girl from next door again. I hadn’t seen her since that day when she gave me the snowflake. She motioned upward with her thumb for me to raise the window. I unlatched it and pushed it open.

“What are you doing here, Vivvie? Is everything okay?”

“Why are you crying, Jessica?” she asked.

I wiped the wetness off my face quickly and shook my head. “No reason. This just isn’t a really good time for me to talk, Vivvie.”

“Why were you going to cut yourself?”

I gaped at her, thinking she had been watching me through my window.

“Vivvie, sweetie, I wasn’t. It’s okay. I’m okay.”

“Do you have your snowflake?” she asked.

“Uh, yes, somewhere. Do you need it back?”

“No, but I think you really need it right now. You’re sad again. Really sad. Why are you so sad again?” Her big eyes searched me, full of concern.

“Vivvie, I can’t talk about this right now. Thank you for coming by, but I just can’t talk right now. Okay?”

“Okay.” She dropped her head in defeat. I felt awful.

“I’m sorry, Vivvie,” I told her.

“It’s all right. Can you talk tomorrow?”

On any other day her question would’ve had an easy answer. On that day, I had planned for there to be no tomorrow. But she looked at me with such sincerity that I couldn’t say no.

“Sure,” I said. A huge smile stretched across her little face and I had the strangest sense of obligation to follow through with what I’d agreed to. That next day, we sat on the swings and she told me stories about her pet pig, school, and her favorite songs. She stopped by every day, if only just to say hi. Sometimes when I look back, I think little Vivvie may very well have saved my life that fateful day.

For days, Jace had called and texted me, but I never answered or replied. After a couple of weeks, he called maybe once a week. Then, after a month, I never heard from him again. Suicidal thoughts lingered, but never did I get back to such an emotionally charged place that I thought to make that decision again.

I got a job in Dallas as a waitress and a tiny studio apartment. Though I didn’t want to leave without telling Vivvie good-bye, no one was home when I went to her house. I left a note on their door for her. I hope she got it. I think of her often and still have the snowflake she gave me. I canceled my cell phone service and got a new phone and number to ensure that Jace was never able to reach me again. I spent months in seclusion outside of work. I cut every single day and started drinking. When I’d get off work, I’d head to my favorite spot and the bartender, would slip me shots. Then I’d drive home buzzed out of my mind. With the help of the alcohol, I started being more social and fell back into my old ways. My customers and others at the many different bars I worked at hit on me all the time, and I took many of them up on their offers. I had been fired multiple times by different employers. Meaningless sex had planted itself firmly back into my life. One night recently, after leaving some guy’s place, I’d gotten behind the wheel drunk again. I swerved off the road and hit the embankment, hitting my head really hard and bruising my ribs badly. I was knocked unconscious and someone called the accident in. An ambulance transported me to the hospital and during my medical examination the doctors saw the extent of my self-harming. Eventually, I had to face the drunken driving charges, but was sentenced to mental health and alcohol abuse therapy instead of jail. I also paid a hefty fine and had my driver’s license suspended. I had hit an all-time low in my life. The person I had become was not someone I ever wanted to be. I didn’t call my parents. Oddly enough, I called my brother, Jeff. He was working as an attorney at a small firm here in Dallas and he’s the one who represented my case. We’d never been close, but he did what he needed to do to help me.

“Jessica, the judge will not be easy on you if you don’t go to all of the appointments he’s ordered you to attend. Please keep that in mind,” Jeff told me, letting me know I needed to take this seriously.

“I will, I promise. Thank you again for helping me. I really appreciate it,” I told him as he left.

Sitting here in this mental health clinic, I know when I go in there to talk to the doctor I’m going to be expected to spill my guts and tell all of my deepest, darkest secrets to some stranger with a bunch of papers framed on the wall saying that they know how I feel. The idea that someone could ever understand how I feel is so foreign to me that I don’t even hope that therapy will give me a resolution to my problems. I just hope for a little peace, one step at a time. This can’t be as horrible as I’m envisioning it to be. At least I hope it isn’t.

“The past is never dead.”

—William Faulkner

I’M PRACTICALLY READY to bolt out of this whack job place if they don’t call my name soon. I’ve bitten my nails down to nubs and have aimlessly flipped through stupid gossip magazines ‘til I’m blue in the face.

Can we just get this show, which is my fucked-up head, on the road?

Just as I’m feeling my frustration boil, I hear my name.

“Ms. Jessica Alexander, please.” A stout woman holding a file folder says from the now open door, which I thought probably led to some mental case dungeon of some sort.

“Hi, I’m Veronica, Dr. Ward’s intake assistant. We have quite a bit of paperwork for you to fill out. Then Dr. Ward will be in to see you,” she tells me as she passes me a clipboard full of forms.

While filling out page after page of personal information, medical background stuff, and many extremely personal questions, such as how many sexual partners have I had, I’m more than over this damn paperwork. To be honest, I have no idea how many sexual partners there have been in my life. All I know is the number is high. I guess with a ballpark figure and leave it at that. Next, it asks if I’ve ever been pregnant. There are options to fill in the dates you gave birth, or a section to say if the pregnancy was terminated or if you miscarried. Filling this out is painful for me, to say the least. I turn the page to the next form, and it’s a questionnaire with multiple choices ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree with all the other variations in between. I scan over it briefly and blink, looking more closely at each question. The questions have an uncanny resemblance to all of my problems. It’s like a Jessica test.

How odd is that?

I read through the questions and statements once more before filling in my answers. I answer strongly agree to all of them with the exception of number seven, seeing as how I don’t really have career goals to start with. I’ve had so many jobs over the years, all of them waitressing, but I either get fired or quit because I can’t get along with my boss or fellow employees. Whatever this test is for, it seems very clear that it’s practically made for me. The fact that there’s a questionnaire like this out there suddenly makes me feel like it’s possible that I’m not the only person to have all of these problems. I hope this means there’s an explanation, or, better yet, a solution.

“Ms. Alexander, Dr. Ward is ready for you now. Please just give her the paperwork when she comes in. Follow me,” Veronica says before heading out of the room.

“Sure. Thanks,” I reply.

I follow her up and around the corner into a large office. I expected to see the typical shrink sofa thing, but there isn't one. There are two large soft sage-green wingback chairs with dark wood end tables beside each of them. A glass-top table sits off to the side with bottled water and a Keurig on it. The walls are neutral and adorned with elegant abstract paintings all in soft colors. The room has a relaxing feel to it, which is a good thing, I suppose. There’s a huge mahogany desk with all of the typical desk accessories sitting on it, along with a computer. Behind the desk is a wall-to-wall bookshelf full of different, very organized, books and what looks like awards and certificates in frames. I sit down in one of the big chairs and nervously fiddle with my pen, clicking it open and shut over and over again. I hear the door open and a woman with dark hair walks in. She doesn’t look to be too much older than me, and she’s classically beautiful. Her slate-gray dress suit hugs her slender body perfectly, which comes just above her knees, revealing long, toned legs. She has on solid black heels and her hair is pulled over into a low side ponytail that swoops down just below her shoulder. She has dark brown eyes and tan skin. Her makeup is perfect and not a single hair is out of place.

“Hello, Ms. Alexander. I’m Dr. Ward,” she says as she extends her hand out to me.

We shake hands briefly and I give her the paperwork. She sits down behind her desk and flips through the file, scanning through each page momentarily. She places the file down and reaches in her desk to pull out what looks like a recording device of some sort.

“Ms. Alexander, I prefer to record my sessions rather than taking written notes because I like to look at my patients when they talk to me. If you’re comfortable with that, I will start the recorder now. Is that something you are okay with? You’ll be assigned a patient number on the recording in order to keep your identity private.”

I guess I don’t see anything wrong with that. If I have to sit here and talk about all of my shit, I’d like for the person to at least look at me when I’m talking. Otherwise, it will feel like they aren’t really listening to me at all.

“I guess, yeah, that’s fine,” I say in a low tone.

My first session was, more or less, okay, I suppose. It could have gone worse, so I don’t want to dwell on it even though I know I will. Dr. Ward was nice enough and seemed to know what she was doing. The fact that she gave me a diagnosis so quickly after just reading over my paperwork and talking to me surprised the hell out of me.

“I can almost come to the conclusion just from your questionnaire that you suffer from borderline personality disorder or BPD. Looking at your answers, you meet all of the criteria for BPD. This is a very prevalent disorder affecting millions of American adults. BPD is even more prevalent than bipolar and schizophrenia. People with borderline personality disorder see people as all good or all bad and have extreme, blink-of-an-eye mood swings. Their fear of abandonment, combined with feelings of emptiness and self-loathing, makes others feel like they're constantly walking on eggshells around them. A person suffers while living with BPD and causes most all of those around them to suffer as well.”

Every damn thing she said describes me, all of it. How could I have lived twenty-four years of life, most of it being hell, and never known this? I’ve never heard of this BPD stuff, ever. Bipolar? Sure. Depression? Yeah. But borderline personality disorder? No, never once have I heard of it. Why? What causes it? And how did I get cursed with this miserable shit?

After hearing more, I learned that even though there are a few medications that can alleviate some of the symptoms, such as depression and anxiety, BPD cannot be fixed with a pill. The most effective treatment is dialectical behavior therapy. The treatment consists of once-a-week individual psychotherapy by an intensively trained DBT therapist, a two-and-a-half-hour skills training session conducted in a group setting weekly, and substantial homework assignments. It’s very extensive and requires a lot of determination and dedication on the part of the patient—like I really wanted to be back doing homework again.

Now I have to go through some freaking shrink process that will take forever. Why can’t there be a fix-it pill for this like there is for so many other things? This sucks. I guess that place will be my second home between group therapy, individual therapy, and now this DBT shit. At this rate, I might as well just commit myself to a mental ward.

“Jessica, you can do this. Many people who suffer from borderline personality disorder lead very healthy and productive lives after successfully completing treatment. You’re young and have a lot of life left to live. You’ve lived for years in a type of darkness; this is your chance to come out of that. You can claim this life and make it your own. The decision is yours. You may always feel like you have no control, but I assure you that right now you hold all the control in your hands. But you have to really want it for yourself. I can set you up with our DBT therapist and she can start seeing you right away. But, like I said, it’s your choice. Our self-harm group meets tomorrow. I strongly suggest you attend.”

This is all so overwhelming and confusing. I never expected any of this when I went there. I envisioned lying on a couch, spilling my guts to some pretentious shrink, getting a prescription for some happy pills, and being sent on my way. All of this stuff is deep, heavy shit. Before leaving her office, she gave me a lot to consider.

“Jessica, please think about this. Give yourself a chance to explore the possibilities that are out there for you to heal. You can have anything in this world that you want if you want it badly enough. I’m offering you the resources to do that, all you have to do is take them.”

I ponder over her words again as I drop my face into my hands, feeling years of pain and self-doubt, years of questions and blame wash over me. Jace’s face flashes in my mind and his words echo like drums of hope within me, vibrating off of every nerve ending in my body.

“I see you. You need to see you too. If you look deep enough, you will see a beautiful, strong girl that has the world at her fingertips.”

I remember his words so perfectly.

I lie on my bed drinking a glass of 151 and feel the urge to cut so bad, but I know I have to try to will it away. I finally have answers, the puzzle pieces are finally coming together, and there’s a solution, regardless of the effort that I have to put into it. There’s something out there that can really help me. All I have to do is take it and do the work to get better. Thoughts of Jace are racing through my head. The pain of missing him never gets easier; it’s as acute as it was the day I said good-bye to him forever. If this treatment can help me to finally get over him, get over the past and what I did to our baby, then maybe it’s worth it. I need to learn how to let him go. I need to learn how to forgive myself. It’s been six years and it’s time to stop missing him, wanting him, and wondering where he is and if he’s happy. Still, I always hold on to hope that we’ll find each other again someday. It’s an empty hope, I know, but it’s always there.

I run my hand over the bumps on my abdomen and wonder if it’s possible for scars on the inside to be worse than scars on the outside. I reach for my journal and decide to write for a while. I’m fighting the urge for a different kind of release, which I know I’ll soon give into, regardless of my newfound diagnosis. I put pen to paper and write, thinking of Jace.

Distance

Now my only friend

Looking back

Memories of the end