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Iwakeupinan empty apartment sometime in the late morning. I remember Jake had woken me up when he left this morning, at an hour I never really see unless I hadn’t gotten to sleep yet, but vaguely. I can’t believe he trusts me in here. I can’t believe I didn’t leave. What’s stopping me from squatting in here until he gets back, and then what would he do?
I manage to pull myself out of bed before it sucks me in for another hour and head to the kitchen where I’m confronted by what is apparently Jake’s coffeemaker. Shit. I have no idea what to do with that, and I can think of about a million ways it could go poorly. I settle for a quick steam shower, grab my things, and head out, locking the door behind me.
Before long, I’m home with my favorite coffee in hand and sinking into my favorite spot on the sofa and pulling up my email. Okay, looks like I have sold a couple of my articles. At $0.05 a word, I’ll probably come away with $75 bucks each. Not bad, but still not quite good enough to call myself a real writer. Onto the next, I guess. I try my best to focus, but my mind keeps pulling me elsewhere. I wonder how long it has been since I watered my plants, because I can’t fucking remember and it’s a miracle that they’re still alive. I research unkillable indoor plants and wonder how many is too many for my small, dank basement apartment. I get on craigslist and look for studios with an outdoor space. Unsurprisingly, they’re out of my price range.
In other words, I waste time. I really wanted to get this done today, as it’s my first day off this week and I have plans tonight with Alex, assuming he remembers. I don’t plan on pushing it. Regardless, a cloud of anxiety descends at the mere thought, and that isn’t going to help me with my current problem at all. Thus, with a head filled with something akin to impending doom and feeling uninspired, I decide I need some kind of break. I pull on a pair of stonewashed jeans, my docs, and an old t-shirt with a quilted parka. My curls are a mess, but it’s the kind of day that I can pull it back and pretend it’s because of the weather. I grab my anxiety cigarettes from their hiding place and head into the bitter cold.
I walk for a while, just taking in the city and the scenery. It’s one of those misty rainy days, and I should probably consider aimlessly walking in a different direction because it’s hitting me right in the face. I wish I could say it was refreshing or that it makes me feel alive, but it doesn’t. It’s cold, and it almost hurts. Movies always romanticize rain. So many love stories have culminated in moments of desperation or clarity that can’t seem to be expressed anywhere but in the middle of the street, in the middle of the pouring rain. Somehow, I think those gestures would fall flat for people in Seattle. We do everything in the rain. Entire lives happen in the rain or they don’t happen at all.
I find myself standing next to a staircase on 2ndAvenue that looks too familiar. There are no signs outside, but it must be the bar that Jake and I went to that first night—the one with the cello player. The door is slightly propped, but the open sign is flipped off. For some reason, it still calls to me. Against my better judgment, I descend the staircase, pull the door open, and step cautiously inside, fully aware that I may be trespassing. It feels like I shouldn’t be there, and maybe the door was opened by mistake. The bar is closed. The seating area is completely empty.
“Hey there,” I hear coming through an open door of a back room. I look and see a thin woman with glasses, probably in her late 50s or early 60s. “Are you here for the group? We’ve just started. We’ve got a seat for you right here.”
Shit. This must be Jake’s group. She looks like she would be a therapist. Everything about her is inviting—from her warm tone to the many smile lines on her face to the soft shades of beige in her clothing. I see a circle with about seven people of all different ages and ethnicities gathered around her and I’m struck by what an interesting choice of venue this is—I wonder what the story is around that. I realize I should go. This feels like a violation of Jake’s privacy in some way, even though he is not here. Yeah, I should definitely go.
But instead, I say, “Um, yeah, I am,” and take the empty seat.
“What’s your name?” asks the woman I’ve assumed to be a therapist.
“Um…Olivia,” I lie.
“Welcome, Olivia,” she says, hitting the name with an intonation that I believe implies she realizes it’s a fake, but that names are not of importance here. “We’re glad you’re here. We’re just getting started. Lana,” she says, addressing another woman in the group, “You had started to tell us that you’d had a breakthrough. Let’s go back to that.”
And so, I listened to this woman, Lana, talk about how she took a huge step this week meeting an old friend for coffee. After an abusive relationship that had ended about a year ago, she was just starting to find her self-worth again and her homework had been to try to reconnect with important people from her past whom her ex had isolated her from in an effort to control her. She talked about how hard it was to reach out and how she had been embarrassed at first. She’d essentially been a prisoner to this man that didn’t even ever let her into his life, and who had eventually just left one day and had not come back without saying a word. After that, she had to face the fact that she’d been manipulated into giving up all the things that mattered to her, and all the people, too. She had hurt this friend while simultaneously hurting herself.
She didn’t know what they would even talk about. She had lost herself and had forgotten all the things that had once bonded over and shared. But the friend had forgiven her and had, in fact, been so overjoyed to see her and to see that she was finally getting her life back that none of that even mattered. They even made plans to meet up again the following week.
Then, there was Terrence, who was struggling with getting his life back after addiction following a childhood filled with abuse. Ashley, a young waitress raised by narcissists, struggling to form meaningful connections of any kind with others, unable to get out of bed most days. And on it went. I was surrounded by hurt children turned wounded adults and was relieved no one had asked me any questions or seemed to expect me to speak. No one really even looked at me, but fuck, I felt seen. I also felt like I was eavesdropping on Jake, although he wasn’t there. Still, this had to be crossing a line. Shit. I wonder if I should tell him or bury this.
The therapist, whom I learned they called Dr. Rae, closes by telling everyone to try to find something that ignites a spark of some kind this week and seize it, even if they don’t want to. She mentioned something about checking in with their ‘buddies’, which means that there was a good chance that one of these people were Jake’s ‘buddy'. I wondered who it was. I wondered if it helped.
As people start to gather their things and head for the exit, Dr. Rae motions me over. “Olivia,” she says, “I’m so glad that you joined us today. Will we be seeing you next week?”
“Um no, probably not,” I say. “I’m usually working at this time.” Not really a lie. “But I’m glad I stumbled in. It was enlightening, in a way.”
She doesn’t say anything, but I can see that she’s waiting for more. She’s practically pulling it out of me with just her knowing expression.
She must be really good at her job.
“Honestly,” I tell her, “I don’t know if I’m depressed. I’m technically the happiest I’ve been in my life. Or stable, at least. Maybe stable is a better word for it. Um, I was a neglected and abused child,” I say, my eyes filling with tears. I’d never painted it so plainly before. “But you know, I’ve done okay. I have a couple of good friends, I got my degree, I have a job that pays the bills. I’m safe now, but also, it’s like something inside of me is just kind of broken, I guess. Like a part of me is missing, and I can’t fill that hole. Even when I’m surrounded by people, I still feel so alone.”
It was all true, and the hole was big. It was a chasm that was always there. I could distract myself with work or alcohol or sex, but it would still be there, empty and constantly threatening to vacuum the life out of me.
“You feel that way because your parents were supposed to teach you what love was, and that you are worthy of love. They didn’t do that. It’s a lot harder to learn as an adult, but it’s doable. You have to want it, though,” she says.
“Is there like a step-by-step guide or anything?” I say, jokingly.
“No, there’s no guide, no one-size-fits-all manual for healing your inner child. But—forgiveness is a good place to start,” she tells me. “You have to forgive yourself and know—really understand—that what happened to you was not okay, nothing you did caused it, and you did not deserve it. And then, and this is the hard part, you must let the pain go. You can’t use it as a security blanket. You must let it go, and you have to be okay with letting it go without ever getting an apology and without ever getting retribution for the things that were done to you or the harm that it caused. And that is the hardest part.”
Fuck. That is the hardest part. I’ve often fantasized about having this breakthrough moment with my mother or my father—that a time would come when they’d have a moment of overwhelming clarity and beg for my forgiveness, and maybe I’d give it and maybe I wouldn’t, but they’d ask. They’d take responsibility for and acknowledge that they had done wrong by me, and that would be how I moved on. Obviously, that moment hasn’t come and will likely never happen. All I can do is nod in response.
“Obviously, we’d love to have you again,” she says. “We have another group that meets on Sundays if that works better for you, but Olivia, regardless of if you decide to come back or not, I hope you find someone that you can talk to, and I hope your soul finds the peace that it deserves.”
“Thank you,” I say, and head back towards the staircase. I’m visibly shook.
I light a cigarette and start to walk home, her words continuing to echo in my brain, bringing on yet another feeling of impending doom, when I look up and notice that at some point, while I wasn’t paying attention, the city has started to put up its holiday decorations throughout downtown. Thanksgiving isn’t until next week, and I feel like for some reason, that would normally bother me, but I can’t think of why, and it doesn’t right now. It warms me. I realize that I feel a spark like Dr. Rae had said and decide that I might as well seize it. I drop into a store on the way home and pick up a small tree, a few strings of lights, and some other small decorations for my apartment.
Once I’m home, I ditch my wet shoes and coat and dump the contents of my bags onto the couch. I’m not really sure what to do with any of this stuff, but I am excited about it. Growing up, some years we had a tree and presents, and some years Christmas went by all but unnoticed. I always told everyone I hated the holidays. I don’t necessarily know that it’s true. I think I just didn’t like that I never knew if they would come for me at all. This could be therapeutic, in a way. I wonder if I could take this opportunity to reclaim Christmas and release whatever uncertainty and unease surrounds it. I spend the rest of the afternoon unpacking ornaments and resentment, telling myself that it makes me feel better. I think that it does. Jake’s therapist would be impressed.
