Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Logan
Idelete the message I just typed:
You being in the stands.
Seriously, Logan, if you want to scare her off all the way, that’ll do it.
It’s the truth, though. Seeing her in both outings made all the difference.
My brain was so much quieter with her in the audience that I could try Dr. Chang’s vergence technique in earnest—and it worked.
Pitching became an extension of myself again, not an internal battle.
It helped that the thing I was focusing on past the laces of my glove was her, whether or not Dr. Chang would approve.
Logan
Turning my mind off.
It’s something my brother can do with no problem, but I struggle with it. Now the team’s sports psychologist has me doing this thing called vergence that seems kind of dumb, but it worked like a charm tonight.
Georgie
Mergence?
Sorry, autocorrect! Tell me about it.
If you don’t mind.
You don’t have to, of course.
I smile at the phone. Georgie asking me to tell her about it and then worrying she was sounding bossy is something I already know is vintage Georgie.
I glance around my apartment, which would be lifeless without my stacks and boxes of books.
I’m still in the two-bedroom apartment Lucas and I leased at the beginning of the year.
As much as I tell myself it’s easier to keep up the more expensive lease than it is to move to a cheaper one-bedroom place, the truth looks a lot more like my trouble with the knuckleball.
I hold on too tight and release too late.
Dr. Chang wants to go back to brainspotting in our session tomorrow—trying to access that part of my brain that’s hiding my unprocessed trauma from losing my mom.
I want to avoid it completely.
Dr. Chang says avoidance feeds anxiety.
And that just makes me want to avoid my session tomorrow.
Take that, Dr. Chang!
Logan
You focus on something close for a count of three—I use my glove lacing—and then you let your eyes drift out to something far away. Something neutral. It’s supposed to interrupt the anxiety loop without requiring you to think your way out of it.
Georgie
Wow. Brains are awesome.
Logan
I wouldn’t mind my brain being less awesome.
Georgie
Cough *humble brag* cough
Logan
Haha
Georgie
No, seriously. It’s so cool that your brain is so good at protecting you, and it’s so cool that you’re training your mind to work around the overprotectiveness. That’s a really determined, really awesome brain you’ve got there, 49.
Logan
That’s a nice way of looking at anxiety.
Georgie
After my mom passed, I started talking to the school counselor every week.
She helped me see that mourning isn’t a sign of something wrong but a sign that something was ever so perfectly right. The love you used to give has to go somewhere and do something, so it carves a space for itself inside your chest and stays there.
Logan
Your school counselor and Dr. Chang should meet.
They’d like each other.
Georgie
:)
It’s great that you have someone helping you see that your brain’s not the enemy.
Logan
It might not be the enemy, but it’s at least the well-meaning toddler who thinks it’s helping when it clears the table but keeps breaking all the dishes on the way to the counter.
Georgie
It’s doing its best. Be kind to your brain.
I happen to like it. <3
Logan
Is that a sideways ice cream cone?
Georgie
Beg your pardon?
Logan
Did you type “beg your pardon”?
Georgie
You asked about a sideways ice cream cone? It seemed like the politest way of asking for clarification.
Logan
Your Southern manners are making me feel like the biggest Yankee who ever crossed the Mason-Dixon Line.
Georgie
Ha!
Now about that ice cream cone?
Logan
Your message: <3
Is that a sideways ice cream cone?
Georgie
This would be a sideways ice cream cone: <))
This is a sideways heart: <3
Logan
A heart?
Wow, someone’s angling for more tickets.
Georgie
Please hold while I hide my face under a pillow.
Logan
Don’t hide under a pillow.
But you could come to the game tomorrow if it works with your schedule.
It’s a day game.
Georgie
Shoot. :( I work until three.
But if you ever want a great non-sideways ice cream, Mudcakes is amazing.
Logan
Are you asking me out?
Because yes.
Georgie
…
Okay!
Does this mean that I…
Made you an offer you can’t refuse?
Logan
I’m starting to think this Godfather thing isn’t a joke.
BTW, why the punctuation symbols instead of emojis?
Georgie
This is so basic. My mom liked emoticons more than emojis. She said they were more personal. Also, she thought the yellow blobs were weird. :)
Logan
Not basic. I don’t curse casually because my dad drilled it in me that it’s the sign of a weak mind. I get where you’re coming from.
So … Mudcakes at 430?
Georgie
Yeah, that’s great!
Logan
I’ll be the guy who remembers to change out of his cleats.
Georgie
:)
Logan
<))
I wait for another minute or two, in case Georgie sends anything else after she puts a heart on my message.
I know she won’t—it’s the natural end to an unnaturally good conversation—but I wait anyway.
Holding on too long is my specialty.
Although, my knuckleball disagreed tonight.
For the first time in years, maybe so do I.
***
At four fifteen, I’m sitting in my truck outside of Mudcakes ice cream shop, texting with Lucas, who messaged me as soon as my game was over.
Lucas
Six innings and only three runs. That’s the STUFF.
Lucas doesn’t believe in jinxes or curses or even superstition, and he definitely doesn’t see a problem with telling his brother what a good game he pitched.
I still wonder if being told I played well in the state-championship game in high school is coming back to bite me in the butt anytime I throw a bad pitch.
What would life be like without anxiety?
Logan
Thanks bro.
Lucas
How did it feel?
Logan
Good.
Lucas
Good is right.
I look up from my phone at the Mudcakes sign, which is hand-painted on what looks like the side of a red barn that someone converted into an ice cream shop decades ago.
It has a screen door and plastic chairs, and it’s teeming with teens, who must have come over after school.
There’s a chalkboard out front with the flavors written on it, and I already know I’m going to have a hard time choosing.
Logan
Do you think I’d rather eat Pothole Pecan or Silted Caramel ice cream?
Lucas
Did you hit your head?
Oh, wait, aren’t those flavors at the ice cream place? Mudpies?
Logan
Mudcakes
Lucas
ARE YOU ON A DATE?
Logan
No, I’m going out to get celebratory ice cream.
Lucas
With Georgiana. It’s happening.
Logan
Why are you even suggesting that? I told you after the All-Star Game that I couldn’t find her and told you to drop it.
Lucas
I know you. You track your macros like you tracked your reading minutes in second grade. If you’re eating ice cream before dinner, it’s because you’re treating yourself.
Scottie agrees with me, by the way. She says hi. She also says to get two scoops—silted caramel on top and compost crunch on the bottom. Not pothole pecan. They have the same base but compost crunch also has toffee bits and a bunch of stuff in it and is yummier.
Her words.
For your date.
Logan
No comment on the date.
But thank Scottie for me.
Lucas
Anything to help. We’re rooting for you.
I pause, looking at the way he said “we” about him and Scottie the way I still say “we” about him and me.
It’s hard going from thinking of yourself as a unit to seeing your unit move on without you.
I put the phone face down, take off my hat, and massage my temples, glad the AC is keeping up with the muggy day.
Stress tightens my shoulders, but I force myself to think back to the flotation tank this morning.
I’ve done over a half dozen sessions now, and this morning was the most productive one yet.
I started tracking my own heartbeat and trying to keep tabs on where my body ended and the water began, but then I thought about Georgie quoting “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.”
Except, I didn’t make it past the mention of promises before everything seemed to go soft.
The darkness stopped feeling like absence and all sensation blurred into this feeling of oneness.
My thoughts, my skin, the boundary between my existence and the universe, they all faded completely and I just … was.
Dr. Chang and I met in the small room adjacent to the tank afterward, and I could tell he was pleased.
“How did it feel?” he asked, looking at me over the reading glasses he kept perched on his nose for when he wanted to write in his notepad.
“Different,” I said. He waited. “It’s like I was alone but also part of something. Part of everything. That sounds dumb.”
“It doesn’t sound dumb. That’s the goal. Now the challenge is to remember that feeling. You don’t have to turn your mind off completely, Logan. But you can let your mind take its proper place in the universe.”
“What place is that?”
“Very, very small.”
I chuckled.
The brainspotting session after wasn’t quite so effortless.
Dr. Chang wanted to locate the spot in my visual field where my eyes naturally lock up—the rationale being that the body holds the emotional memory of your stored stress or trauma in a specific physical location.
It sounds fake until your therapist is slowly, methodically sweeping his pen in front of you, and suddenly you feel this intense heaviness when you look at seven o’clock in your visual field and you have to hold it on that spot while you think your darkest thoughts and worry you might not come back.
I’m still not sure what happened when I looked at it today, but when the panic kicked in, I reached for that sense of dissolution again, and it helped.
I came back.
I pick up my phone, seeing another text from Lucas.
Lucas
If Georgiana’s already there, good luck. We love you, man.
Logan
You guys love me? You are so mushy, it’s embarrassing.
Lucas
Scottie typed that.
Logan
Whatever. I’m telling Lee.
Lucas