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I hand him the bottle because professional hockey players with psychology degrees apparently treat emotional collapse with floor spaghetti and shared liquor.
As treatment plans go, it isn’t clinically sound.
As friendship goes, we’ve done worse
Tonight, I give him the thing neither of us has ever known how to ask for without shame.
26
Charm
On Monday morning, I sit across from my therapist and ask her to tell me what is broken.
She doesn’t answer immediately. Therapists love silence almost as much as Ryan does, but his silence always forced me to find my own answer. Hers makes me want to throw the decorative pillow behind my back through the window.
“What do you believe is broken?” she asks.
“I’m paying you to know that.”
“You’re paying me to help you understand yourself.”
“I already understand myself. That’s the problem.”
Her expression remains calm while I grip the arms of the chair. I tell her about the fight with Ryan, his accusation that I love weakest whenever survival takes control, and every example he used to prove it. I tell her how I accused him of using me because learning about Temple terrified me. I explain that he asked me to fight for him, then got into a Corolla and left before I could turn fear into another reason he should stay.
By the time I finish, my chest hurts and the tissue between my fingers has been reduced to damp pieces.
My therapist asks about Charlie.
I stare at her. “What does my dead brother have to do with accusing Ryan of betrayal because he slept with someone a year after he left me?”
“Charlie’s death changed the way your family functioned. Your parents responded to losing him by tightening their control over you, and you learned to survive by becoming whatever caused them the least distress.”
“I know.”
“You learned that safety came from managing the emotional responses of the people around you.”
“I know.”
“When you couldn’t control Ryan’s choices, you attempted to control the meaning of them. If his night with Temple became a betrayal, your anger became justified and you no longer had to sit inside the fear that he had lived a life without you.”
“I know.”
She waits.
The pressure behind my ribs becomes anger. “Ryan doesn’t need me to explain why I hurt him. He needs me to stop fucking hurting him.”
Understanding where the behavior began doesn’t teach me how to end it. I leave the appointment with another discussion about Charlie, my parents, and the survival responses I already spent fifteen months identifying.
On Wednesday, I meet with a trauma specialist.
She asks about Charlie fourteen minutes into our first appointment.
The following week, an attachment therapist asks what changed inside my family after my brother died. When I explain, she tells me I learned to equate love with preventing abandonment.
“I know,” I say.
She asks why the answer frustrates me.
