Chapter 17 #2
Her head tilted slightly to the side. “How do you feel about that?”
“About what?” he questioned.
“About calling me by my first name. I saw you had a reaction to that.”
“You did?”
“When I said you can call me Melinda, your eyes squinted slightly, like your brain was taking a photograph to use as evidence against me.”
He never realized he did that, but now that she pointed it out, he had the sense memory of that exact twitch. When he heard her first name, his eyes had reacted.
“Would you like to share why you had a reaction to me telling you that you can call me by my first name?”
He was impressed that she’d picked up on that. Not one of the other eleven therapists/psychologists/psychiatrists he’d seen in the twenty-four years he’d gone to counseling had done that.
“Mental health professionals have patients refer to them by their first name as a tactic to reduce hierarchical barriers, foster trust, and create a more comfortable, collaborative space. It can lead to better communication and vulnerability. Also, studies have shown using a first name releases dopamine and serotonin, which signals safety, creating an optimal therapeutic environment,” he explained the category that put her in when she suggested using her first name.
Instead of addressing his statement, she was quiet for a few moments, thoughtfully so, before asking, “When did your brain start making you feel exhausted?”
Now it was AJ’s turn to be quiet for a moment. No one had ever asked him that question, not directly. She hadn’t even asked him if his brain made him exhausted, she knew it did.
She was the first therapist who hadn’t begun with, Tell me about your childhood.
Every therapy session he’d ever had, the first session was spent talking about his dad dying, his mom working for the Sterlings, her issues with alcohol and depression, him being a twin, and them living in a one-bedroom cottage growing up on the property with two other children who were very wealthy.
Melinda skipped the small talk and backstory he hated.
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.
“I was six.”
“Was there a specific moment or event that triggered it?”
“It was a Tuesday, and I realized I remembered everything.”
AJ knew that sounded vague. He’d never tried to vocalize the experience before, so he paused to gather his thoughts. He wondered if she would move on to another question, but she didn’t. She waited.
He still wasn’t sure he could put it into words, but he tried.
“I became aware that there is a constant hum of activity in my head. I index every interaction, every conversation, every date, every number, and every detail. Not just the big memories, but the way the air tasted on a Friday in December when I was three. The number of steps from the Sterlings’ garage to the cottage.
The color of socks every person in my class wore every day of the entire school year.
I catalog them automatically. It is like a video camera records everything in my head. I can’t stop it.
“It is so much useless information filling up my brain, perfectly preserved, and at any moment something will trigger me and one specific memory will get stuck, like a broken record, and replay over and over on a loop. But I thought everyone’s brain was like that.
And on that Tuesday, Niko asked what we had to do for our math homework, and I didn’t understand why he was asking me when he just had to think about it.
My mom explained to me that he couldn’t remember things like I could.
And Frankie couldn’t, she couldn’t, the kids at school couldn’t.
I got upset and locked myself in the bathroom for hours.
I turned off all the lights, closed my eyes, and put pillows over my ears because I just didn’t want to have any sort of senses picking up any information. It was too much.”
As AJ relayed the event, he realized that Tuesday also happened to be the first day of his selective mutism. He’d never thought about that before. That was the triggering event that started it, which also happened to be exactly a month, to the day, after his dad passed away.
Melinda had started taking notes when he began talking and continued for about thirty seconds after he finished. Then she looked up. “So that is when you realized everyone’s brain wasn’t like yours?”
“That’s when I realized everyone didn’t remember everything like I did and it overwhelmed me which exhausted me. I realized everyone didn’t think like me when I was four.”
“Tell me about that.”
“I was at the grocery store, and I had a few interactions at the checkout counter. When we got in the car, my dad explained to me that I couldn’t just say things even if they were true. I thought I could because it was obvious, and my dad said it was obvious to me but not to other people.”
“What did he mean? What happened?”
“There were a lot of things going on, and I just wanted it all to stop. There was a couple arguing in the line next to us, and I told her that the guy was lying, he was cheating on her with her sister. Then I told the cashier the total was wrong because she didn’t scan one of the coupons, a two for one Go-Gurt.
When the bill came out to one hundred and sixteen seventy-two instead of one hundred and fourteen eighty-one, it really bothered me when things were wrong, it still does, but at that age I had no tools to handle it.
And there was a light flickering overhead, so I demanded that they call the maintenance man, George, who I’d never met but had noticed his nametag in the storage room, and I told him which panel had the fluorescent tube that was about to cause the fuse to blow and would need to be replaced seconds before the light went out completely.
I just wanted the couple to be quiet, the cashier to do her job correctly, and the light to stop flickering. ”
“How did you know the guy was lying and cheating?”
“It was obvious, and I didn’t even understand what cheating was.
He was defensive and fidgeting, every time she confronted him with another fact, his story changed.
He was over-explaining without actually saying anything.
Trying to make her seem like she was wrong for asking the questions she was.
Whenever she brought up her sister, he stuttered over his next words, and every question she asked him about her, he repeated the question before responding, so I knew he was lying. ”
“And you were four?”
AJ nodded.
“I saw her again when I was shopping with my mom two weeks later. She said I was right and thanked me. My dad had mentioned the interaction to my mom, so she knew what was going on. The woman, Trina, bought me and Niko candy bars.”
“How did it make you feel knowing your brain worked differently?”
“Separate.”
“And did that feeling of separation continue through your childhood and into your teen years?”
“Yes.” People assumed that was bad, but it never bothered AJ.
“What about as an adult?”
“Yes.” For the most part, he was fine with that.
“How does that affect your life as an adult in relationships?”
“I can’t always make sense of people’s emotions, especially if they are illogical. I sometimes feel like I’m on a different planet observing, like a scientist in a foreign land.”
“How has that translated into romantic relationships?”
The only person’s face he saw was Poppy’s, but he hadn’t been in a relationship with her.
“Typically, when I date someone new, I study the way they laugh, the cadence of their speech, and the things that make them angry or happy or sad so I can predict their responses and then adjust my own behavior accordingly, not to manipulate, just so I don’t offend or upset them.
It is exhausting, and I still fail. I get accused of having no feelings, and several times I’ve been told that I will die alone. ”
She nodded as she continued writing. “You said typically. Has there been an exception to that rule?”
Again, Poppy’s face appeared.
She smiled. “Well, I think I got my answer.”
AJ had no idea how Melinda was able to read him so well. Most people accused him of being robotic and showing zero emotion. This woman was acting as if he was broadcasting his feelings in HD on a jumbotron in Times Square.
“I met a woman who I didn’t have to do any of that with.”
“That must be nice.”
“It was.”
“Ah, past tense. So it didn’t work out.”
“No.”
“Can I ask how long you two were together?”
“Ten hours.”
Melinda chuckled, but when she saw that he was serious, she stopped laughing instantly. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I thought you were kidding. It’s just, I assumed, wrongly, that it would take time for you to build intimacy with someone.”
“Typically, it does. She was different.”
Melinda tilted her head to the side, her eyes softened. “Yeah, I can…I can see that.”
Thankfully, the subject changed, and they went on to talk more about his brain and the feelings he had associated with it.
He told her about the party tricks he could do, how he could memorize a deck of cards in under two minutes, recite pi to a thousand places, and pick up a new language in a few weeks if he immersed himself in it.
He could read upside down and backwards, and he could listen to a song once and play it back on the piano, even if he’d never heard it before.
He could see a blueprint and build the object in his mind before touching the first tool.