Thursday, December 23rd
Ronan
My grandmother was right, of course. I’ve barely begun to emerge from the sticky tar that’s been holding my psyche hostage for months now.
The constant work and movement keep my mind busy, and I feel okay until it gets quiet in the house, until I’m in my room, until my body comes to rest and my head has a moment to catch up. And it always catches up. I no longer sleep away the day like I did the first weeks after my arrival, but most nights I still wake up drenched in sweat, heart beating frantically in my chest, though my grandparents have to pull me back into consciousness less frequently. For the past few days I’ve been mostly able to wake up by myself, only rarely interrupting my grandparents’ sleep with my nightmares. So I guess that’s another positive development, and it’s definitely something I’ve been relaying to Doctor Seivert, who still has me on a strict routine.
Tuesday and Thursday are my therapy days, and every session for the past three weeks I’ve brought up my desperation to talk to Cat, Shane, my brother, my friends, none of whom I’ve been allowed to speak to since leaving New York back in October.
It's also the first thing I bring up to her today.
“When can I talk to Cat?” I ask the moment Doctor Seivert logs on to our virtual therapy session this afternoon. Because Doctor Seivert is in New York and I’m obviously not, I’ve been attending sessions with her virtually, being granted access to my laptop for the twice-weekly two-hour-long sessions so I can sit on my bed and stare at my screen, pretending to feel better about my life, pretending to be healing.
“How are you doing with the grounding techniques we’ve been working on?” Doctor Seivert asks me in return.
“Fine,” I say instinctively. It’s my go-to response. And it’s also a complete lie. Doctor Seivert and I have been working on redirecting my thoughts when I’m about to spiral into a panic attack or anxiety threatens to suffocate me. There’s circular breathing and redirecting my thoughts to become mindful of what’s real to help my body understand that the threat it’s perceiving isn’t real, at least not anymore. The problem is that by the time I recognize what’s happening, I’m already too far gone for breathing to make any difference at all. I usually end up retreating somewhere to sit or lie down, letting the fear wash through me, my heart hammering in my chest, my body hot and sweaty yet freezing cold until it passes.
“Ronan, I can’t help you if you’re not being forthcoming with me.” Doctor Seivert always calls me out on my bullshit. She’s good at what she does, and try as I might, she can always tell when I’m lying.
“Alright, fine. The stuff isn’t working. Not well, at least. Honestly, I’m okay during the day, but I feel like I’m drowning at night,” I confess with a deep sigh.
“That’s because you use avoidance during the day. You’re distracting yourself physically, but the evenings and nights are when things slow down and you’re forced to sit with everything that’s happened to you. Do you want to talk about what goes through your mind when you feel like you’re drowning?”
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
I look at her, frustrated. “Because I don’t want to. I don’t want to talk about my mother; I don’t want to talk about my feelings; I don’t want to tell you how fucked up my life is. I just want to fucking forget it all,” I groan. I get up off my bed and set my laptop down before I begin pacing the room, raking my hands through my hair.
“The thing is, Ronan, that what happened to you happened. It can’t be undone, so you need to work through it and learn to cope in a healthy way.”
I stop dead in my tracks. “I’m not doing anything that isn’t healthy. I’m not a drug addict, I’m not a fucking alcoholic, I don’t go around beating people up for shits and giggles, I don’t have unprotected sex with random people. I always do exactly what everyone else tells me to do. I’m here in Montana, aren’t I? Even though I didn’t want to go. And I’m doing these pathetic therapy sessions when, trust me, it’s the last thing I want. I get up every fucking night to help my grandparents on the ranch. I do my freaking schoolwork without complaining even though all I want is to go to bed and shut it all off. I get up every damn day and do it all over again when, really, all I want is to sleep and not fucking wake up. It’s what I’ve always done. I pushed harder, I worked more, I studied longer because I thought maybe that would make things better, but it. Doesn’t. Fucking. Work. Never has, never will.”
I’ve worked myself up to the point of yelling. “So, no, I don’t want to fucking talk about it,” I shout, pretty damn certain that my grandmother can hear me in the kitchen downstairs.
I continue pacing for another minute while Doctor Seivert stays quiet, giving me an opportunity to calm down.
“Do you drink alcohol, Ronan?” Doctor Seivert asks.
Her question catches me off guard. “Yeah, sure,” I admit without really thinking.
“How often?”
My breathing slows. “I don’t know. Usually when I’m with my friends.” I sit and pick up my laptop.
“So, you only ever drink when your friends are around?”
“No,” I say sheepishly. I think about the times when I snuck some whiskey when I was at home, alone, desperate to numb myself.
“Do you ever drink when you’re by yourself?”
“Sometimes.”
“Why?”
“To take the edge off. I don’t do it all the time, just… just when I feel really tense.”
“When was the first time you ever had a drink?”
I shrug. “I don’t know, when I was eleven?”
“Do you ever get drunk?”
I’m seriously struggling to understand where she’s going with this. “Rarely. I don’t like the feeling of losing control.”
“Have you ever tried drugs?”
I don’t respond, swallowing hard. Why does this feel like a trap?
“It’s okay, Ronan. Remember, anything you tell me is confidential,” she says, her voice soft.
I scoff. “Yeah, I have first-hand knowledge how confidential the things I tell you during session are.” I’m pretty sure the things I shared with her are exactly the reason I’m here in Montana right now.
She smiles at me. “With a few rare exceptions,” she says. “But whatever you tell me about having used drugs is not something I’d be able to share with anyone. So?”
“Yes,” I say.
“What kind of drugs?”
“Weed and sometimes pills,” I tell her, feeling shitty.
“Ever anything harder?”
“No. That shit scares me,” I say, truthfully.
She nods, taking notes. “How old were you when you had your first experience with weed and pills?”
“Fourteen.”
“Have you had sex, Ronan?”
I’m taken aback by her forwardness. But Doctor Seivert doesn’t appear uncomfortable as she looks at me, expecting my answer.
“Yeah, I have,” I say after several more seconds of silence.
“Any one-night stands?”
I shake my head now, confused. “How in the world is this relevant to what my mother did to me?” I ask, my voice tense.
“It’s very relevant, Ronan. You just told me that you aren’t doing anything unhealthy to cope with your mother’s abuse, but I think that you have, in fact, adopted coping mechanisms—very common ones, actually. You just aren’t aware of it. So, please. Any one-night stands in the past?”
I nod at her as her words begin to sink in and a pattern emerges for me.
“How many?”
“I… I don’t know, but… a lot,” I say, my voice small. God, she must think I’m a fucking dick.
“Can you give me an estimate?” Her voice is kind, soft as she asks me about these exceptionally personal aspects of my life.
I take a moment to think, truly attempting to come up with a response, but I find myself unable to give her a number. I shake my head sheepishly. “No, not really. It’s… I did it a lot. I’m not proud of myself, but…”
“Have you ever had unprotected sex?” she asks, looking at me through the screen.
“No,” I say with conviction, but then reconsider. “Well… actually…” I start again, then stop and decide not to tell her that the only time I’ve ever slept with a girl without a condom was with Cat, who’s the only girl I’d ever want to feel like that. “No, I’ve never hooked up without at least a condom.”
She studies me for a moment. “Why not?”
I make a face at her, feeling like she’s trying to set me up. “Uh, because I don’t want to get some nasty-ass disease or get a girl pregnant?”
“Right.” She laughs lightly. “How old were you when you first began having one-night stands?”
“Fifteen,” I say, matter-of-factly. This is all way too personal.
She nods as she looks down and studies her notes. “So, let me summarize this really quick: you occasionally drink to take the edge off, but you don’t like to get drunk because you don’t like the feeling of losing control; you’ve dabbled in drugs, but nothing hard because that scares you; and you’ve had one-night stands, but never without protection because you don’t want to risk your health or a pregnancy. Does that sound right?”
I nod. “Way to pay attention,” I say like an ass.
She only chuckles. “Interesting.”
I raise my eyebrows at her. “How is any of that interesting?” I’m fucking over it already. I wish she’d call it a day and leave me alone.
“Well, it’s interesting because you’ve engaged in the same coping mechanisms that a lot of people who suffered the kind of trauma you have engage in. But I usually see more risk-seeking behavior. You know, drug and alcohol abuse, engaging in unsafe sex, things like that. My patients aren’t usually as careful as you.” It sounds like she’s talking more to herself than me. It’s probably a good thing because I have no idea where she’s going with this. “Ronan, what do you feel when you have casual sex?” she asks, looking back up at me.
“Umm… what do you mean?” I’m not at all comfortable with this conversation.
Doctor Seivert laughs. “I mean what does it do for you? Other than the obvious physical gratification, of course.”
I take a moment to think about her question, then shrug. “I honestly don’t know. I’m not even really sure why I did it; I mean, obviously it felt good to be wanted… for once… and… I… I honestly don’t know.” I sigh.
She exhales deeply, then nods at me with a warm smile on her face. “You said you’re not proud of yourself?”
I nod because it’s truly how I feel. I still remember that night last May when I made a move on Sophie, fully intending to sleep with her, and I suddenly realized I was only doing it to distract myself from my growing attraction to Cat—an attraction that, I was convinced, would be detrimental to her if I allowed it to bloom into love. I felt overwhelming guilt at the recognition that I was just using Sophie, was using her body in an attempt to shut off my emotions, to numb myself. It dawned on me how often I had already done that, how often I had sought meaningless sex after I had a run-in with my mom at home, after a fight or a beating. “I’m not proud of myself,” I say again.
“Why not?”
“Because… because I know that I didn’t sleep with them because I wanted an emotional connection. It was just… I don’t know. I guess I just wanted… I think I maybe wanted to distract myself or…” I ramble, not sure at all where I’m going with this. My emotions are all over the place. I have the hardest time expressing myself.
“You know, Ronan, I would venture a guess that what you were seeking wasn’t actually the sex, and I don’t think you wanted to distract yourself, either,” Doctor Seivert says in a way that makes me think she isn’t guessing at all, but is pretty damn certain of herself. “Sure, at first glance that’s probably what anyone would think, right? You were craving the sex, the physical gratification that came with it, but I think it goes much, much deeper than that.”
I don’t interrupt, letting her talk, hoping Doctor Seivert can shed some light on my inner workings when I have trouble even understanding myself a good majority of the time.
“I think what you were seeking, what you were craving, Ronan, was intimacy, to be touched gently because what you know is mostly pain. You wanted to be looked at and seen with softness rather than hate. You wanted to be smiled at, you wanted to feel safe, and, yes, you wanted to be wanted when you felt so unwanted by your own mother.”
I swallow hard, noting the painful lump in my throat.
“I believe that’s what it was about. You sought intimacy with girls when your mother—the first, and arguably most important female figure in anyone’s life—hurt you again and again. That’s a kind of pain, a kind of… violence that is soul-shattering. You were trying to fill that deep, deep void of love in your life. It was your mother’s duty, her responsibility to protect and love you, Ronan. That’s what nature intended, it’s what you needed and what you deserved from the moment you were born. That’s how humans thrive. And when you didn’t get that from the person who was expected to provide it to you, you did the next best thing: you sought that love in any way you could and wherever you could find it,” Doctor Seivert says.
There’s a deep, throbbing ache in my chest as my therapist’s words take root in my heart, leaving me unable to speak.
Doctor Seivert’s eyes are soft as she observes me through the screen, though I’m unable to hold her eye contact. I feel exceptionally vulnerable. “Ronan, I know it may not feel like it at the moment, but you’re making progress. And even though you were fighting it, you actually did open up to me today. Good work.”
I guess I did. Probably not in the way she had been urging me to open up—she always tries to get me to talk about my childhood and the trauma, but I haven’t worked up to that. I’m still too afraid to open the floodgates I’ve kept shut as tightly as I could over the last seventeen years. And what’s really weird is that I seem to have some huge gaps in my memory. It’s not like things are blank, but I’m still unable to recall specific details. It’s unnerving because I know things happened, but I can’t remember them.
“Ronan, I want you to keep taking ten minutes every night before bed and try to meditate like we discussed, especially since you told me you don’t want to take your medication,” Doctor Seivert says as we near the end of our two hours together.
She’s right. I weaned myself off my anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medication cold turkey because that shit made me worse. Aside from the fact that I was hardly awake long enough to remember taking my daily meds, the side effects were too harsh. The pills were supposed to make me stop dreaming, but they also made me stop functioning. I was drowsy and my thoughts were jumbled. The meds also didn’t improve my appetite and tended to give me the worst stomach pain. So I stopped taking them altogether.
It was rough for a couple of weeks, but I wasn’t in the mood for slowly decreasing the dose. I’m a stubborn asshole, I know. I got an earful from Doctor Seivert because it’s really not a great idea to stop medication like that cold turkey, but she ultimately relented, and we’ve been working on more “natural” ways to deal with the anxiety and depression that have been my constant companions.
It’s strange that it all only set in after the fact, that I wasn’t depressed or anxious while I was still living in the same house as my mother. I mean, sure, was I on guard when I knew my mom was home? Yeah, but I didn’t get triggered when someone pulled a broom out—like I did when my grandma was sweeping the kitchen a few days ago—or when someone said “come here” in just the right tone, or when I got a whiff of a scent that in any way reminded me of my mother, like the tea she would drink or her perfume. Now those are all giant fucking triggers that send me straight into a downward spiral. Doctor Seivert said that’s because I was in constant survival mode and there was no room for anything else.
I don’t know what’s worse—being in actual danger of getting hurt or your body still believing you’re constantly at risk no matter how much you tell yourself you’re safe now.
“Try to shut off your mind. Guided meditation is probably the most useful for now,” Doctor Seivert says, but I quickly remind her that I have no access to any sort of technology—other than my laptop, which I’m only allowed to use for therapy—to access any guided mediation.
“Oh, right,” she says with a laugh, even though I find no humor in that fact. “Okay, then try to repeat what we’ve been practicing. Systematically focus on each part of your body and release any tension, shutting out all other thoughts. And then keep working on your circular breathing when you feel even the slightest unease come over you. If you wake up at night from a bad dream, utilize the mindfulness technique. Remember: five things you can see, four things you can feel, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, one thing you can taste.”
“Or, you could just let me have my phone back,” I say smartly.
She chuckles. “I’ll see you Tuesday. Oh, and Merry Christmas.”
I wish her a Merry Christmas in return, and I end our conversation frustrated. She still hasn’t granted me permission to use my phone.