38. Eden
EDEN
The next morning, I tiptoe into the kitchen, the first streaks of the sunrise lighting my way. I don’t want to wake Connor as I claim a cup of cold brew.
He’s still asleep when I return to his bedroom. Mission accomplished.
I sit down on the wicker chair in his room and scroll on my phone, sipping on my drink. No need to wake him yet, with twenty minutes before I have to leave.
These two days with Connor have been amazing, but I’ve got to get back to reality at Tolliver. I tried to do my Genetics reading while we lounged on the couch yesterday but kept getting distracted. I’ve got at least thirty pages to go, and the class is in five hours.
I’m scrolling through an email from my professor with feedback on my capstone project, when a moan comes from the bed.
“Nooooo.”
I look up, and Connor’s shifting under the quilt. “No!” he repeats, now as a shout.
“Connor?” I set my glass on his dresser and approach him. As I near his side, he bolts up in a sitting position.
“No.” He exhales one last time. His eyes are focused on the other side of the room, but I’m not sure if he’s looking at something or getting his bearings again.
“Are…are you okay? I think you were having a nightmare.”
He blinks twice, then his shoulders slouch, and the alarm that painted his face disappears.
“I’m…fine.”
But he doesn’t seem like it. I take a seat beside him on the bed. “Are you sure?”
He grabs his glasses from his nightstand and then peers up at me through the lenses. “I’m…”
“You…that’s the second rough wake-up you’ve had with me.”
“It’s…” I stay silent, letting him finish. “You’re right. You probably need to know.”
He doesn’t elaborate and I’m worried. “Know what?”
Appearing fully awake now, he rests his hand on my leg. “Let me freshen up in the bathroom, and I’ll meet you in the kitchen. I need a Red Bull for this.”
I nod and grab my stuff on the way to the breakfast table in the other room. Five minutes later, he emerges from the bedroom.
“You need to leave early, right?” He touches my shoulder on the way to the fridge. “Do you even have time to talk?”
I look at my phone. My goal was to leave in ten minutes. But whatever he wants to speak about seems important.
“I’ll make time. Don’t worry about it.”
“Thanks, I mean we could wait...”
I shake my head, my concern making the rejection of that offer easy.
With my affirmation, he sits down and cracks open his drink. After a couple sips, he sets it down on the table.
“So where to start…” He gives a little half laugh. “It’s been a while since I’ve talked to anyone about this.”
Okay, this sounds truly serious. “I—take your time. I’m here.”
“My…you probably have picked up some of this, but my mom is a…difficult person.” He runs his hand over his face. “No, let me be more specific. She’s a narcissist.”
A breath escapes my mouth.
“Not diagnosed officially. But…”
“You just know.”
“As someone who lived with her alone for two years, I fucking know.”
“I—I’m sorry.” I wrack my brain for everything I learned in Abnormal Psychology class about Narcissistic Personality Disorder sophomore year.
“It’s…done. I thought I had it handled anyway.” He bites his thumbnail. I’ve never seen him do that before? “You know what EMDR is?”
I nod. We touched on it briefly in class. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy—a mental health treatment that uses eye movements and guided instructions to help a patient reprocess traumatic memories.
He gives a slight smile. “Helps to have an almost-doctor around in moments like this.”
“My Abnormal Psych class was two years ago, so I don’t remember a lot, but yes, I know the basics.”
“My girlfriend in college, she’s the only one who knows about everything. Before I got any treatment, I was a mess during my sleep. Among other nervous habits.”
I click through Connor’s behaviors, and I can’t think of many that would set off alarm bells from me, other than the two wake-ups.
“Worse than now?”
He bobs his head. “Much. To her credit, she persisted until I agreed to go see a counselor at the Princeton clinic, which led me to get EMDR treatment.”
“It worked?”
His eyes look off at a blank spot on the wall.
“The first time I had it done changed my life. I don’t know if it works that fast for everyone.
The relentless anxiety that had rooted in my chest, it was almost fully gone.
It felt like…before I could only use 80 percent of my lungs, and EMDR let me breathe at full capacity. ”
“Wow.” Reading about the treatment is one thing, but hearing his testimony brings a different level of understanding. “I’m glad you found it.”
“Yeah. It’s helped that I’ve been in Princeton or Orlando most of the time since, not in Alabama. Away from…her. But I think…it’s sort of glitching a little lately.”
“Is that normal?”
“Not really. The reprocessing benefits don’t wear off from what I’ve read. But, apparently, you can need more EMDR if you’ve missed some layers of long-term trauma. And of course, I had one giant exposure event in July that could’ve triggered some unaddressed memories.”
A realization hits me. “The wedding.”
“Yup. Lovely, isn’t it?” Sarcasm coats his voice. “The most special event for my sister, my whole family, really. Yet, somehow, exposure to my mother triggered a revival of her malignancy in my messed-up brain.”
I put my hand on his. “That’s not your fault.”
He dips his head, keeping his hand enveloped by mine. “I know. Really, I do know.”
I try to find the right thing to say. “Do you…what can I do to help?”
“You don’t have to do anything. I—I should reach out to my Princeton counselor, probably, see what she suggests. Maybe she’ll even have a referral for someone down here.”
I nod. “Your siblings…do they struggle…” I cut myself off. It’s not right for me to ask him to reveal their mental health journeys.
He reads between the lines and answers anyway. “Not in the same way, as far as I know. It was different when they lived at home.”
From this comment, I realize he hasn’t told me anything about his mom’s actual behavior.
“Different…how? If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay.”
“No, it’s alright, I can tell you.”
My phone dings, and we both look at it. It’s a notification from one of my apps, but it forces me to note the time. The ten minutes have passed, and our conversation is now eating into my homework time.
Still, there’s no way I’m leaving or cutting off the discussion. “Go ahead.”
“With all of us kids in the house, it was easy to ignore her behavior, all her remarks. We had each other’s backs and would act as buffers, even once it was only Rawley and me. She also didn’t push as many boundaries.”
“And then?”
“When it was just me, well…it was hard to avoid her. She thrived having my undivided attention. All those toxic criticisms, meant to belittle us to make herself feel better—I became her only target, with no clear way of escape.”
“Oh, Connor.” I pick up his hand and thread my fingers through it.
“Then there’s the sleep thing. As time passed, she kept crossing more lines. My senior year, she started coming in my room at like, four in the morning, and shaking me awake. Every night.”
Oh my God. “I’m—that’s awful.”
“‘You’ll never amount to anything, Connor. Sleeping is for the weak. You will not be weak under my watch.’” His Alabama accent deepens as he repeats the quote. “Shit like that, in the early hours. Mind you, I was a straight-A student admitted to Princeton, at the time.”
“Why didn’t…I mean, I’m not blaming them…but why didn’t your siblings intervene?” Landon was in the NFL by then, and the little I know of him, he seems like the type who wouldn’t let a situation like that persist.
He looks at me straight on. “They didn’t know. Still don’t.”
What? “Connor…” I stop myself before I say what’s on the tip of my tongue: “They’d want to know.”
“It’s my burden. No reason to tell them something that only I can fix at this point.”
I guess…that doesn’t sit right with me, though. I suspect his siblings would strongly object, too.
“Anyway, I’ll get an email off to my old counselor. I don’t want…to startle you in the mornings.”
“It’s okay, it’s fine.” There are so many thoughts swimming in my head, and I’m at a loss at how to react other than—“Can I hug you?”
He twists toward me in his chair, opening his arms. “Yes.”
We hold each other until he has to leave for practice. It’s thirty minutes past when I intended to leave, but being there for him after what he shared is nonnegotiable.
As soon as I’m back at the dorm, it’s not my neglected Genetics reading I reach for. It’s my old Abnormal Psychology textbook.
I devour the relevant sections, and it confirms several things:
-it’s extremely rare for narcissists to change, meaning his mom isn’t likely to “get better”
-trauma like Connor’s can be successfully treated by EMDR, based on numerous clinical trials
-EMDR targets the amygdala (fear center), hippocampus (memory center), and prefrontal cortex (logic and control center) of the brain
After looking at the references, I skim through a couple of the clinical trials online. Their findings are reassuring.
This treatment works. I just hope Connor reaches out to his old counselor.