Chapter Eleven
Chelsea
Challenge: Go to a lecture at the university
“I’d caution you to remember this is a marathon, not a sprint.” Dr. Rubin sat across a coffee table from me, a fancy electronic tablet on her lap that she wrote on with a stylus. Her hair was soft and curly like mahogany cotton candy. She wore her standard crisp, knee-length maroon cardigan over a gray cashmere sweater. I wrapped my own sweater closer. Her office was freezing, or maybe I was shivering from the anxiety of being under her lens.
Maybe I shouldn’t have told her I was flying through the list, thanks to a certain Greek. I thought she’d be happier about it. “But you were right. I’ve embraced a whole new side of myself. I’ve become fearless. I’m kind of dating even.”
“Hmm.” She pressed the stylus against her lip. “And how is that going?”
“Delicious,” I said, chuckling at the double meaning. Bas must have been rubbing off on me with his terrible jokes. Dr. Rubin waited for me to give her a real answer. “It’s been good. He entertains me, and I just enjoy spending time with him. He’s funny, sexy, genuinely nice.” Adjectives weren’t cutting it. “He makes it super easy to be myself.”
She jotted something down. “That is quite a change from what you were saying a couple of weeks ago. You were talking like you were only interested in what he could do for you—feed you, help you with your list. It sounds like you’re starting to see him for who he is?”
“Maybe Bas is that one-in-a-million guy.” I was being flippant, but that never flew in here.
“Do you think that’s a realistic expectation for him?”
“No, of course not.” I bit my lip, gathering my honest thoughts for confession. “I don’t expect anything from him. But he’s made it effortless for me to sort of practice being in a relationship.”
“Practice how?”
“Now that I hear you say it, that still sounds like I’m using him.”
She waited, letting me dig my own grave with my words.
“I’m just saying that he makes me feel like I’ve got a handle on this thing. I’m discovering I can be friends with a guy and mix in some sex, even some serious conversations, and it’s no big deal.”
She wrote on her tablet. “But it is a big deal for you, don’t you think?”
“It is.” I squirmed a little in my seat while she waited for me to elaborate. “I’m just proud of how much I’ve leaned into the new me.”
“And I am, too. It’s terrific that you’ve taken so many huge risks. I know how scary it can be to let someone into your life, to let him really see you. It takes a great deal of trust, which you’re usually reluctant to give.”
I smiled at that. I’d made Dr. Rubin proud.
She pressed her lips together. “But you know you can’t just snap your fingers and change into someone new, right? You’re doing great work, but don’t expect to become some foreign version of yourself overnight. Real transformation takes time and effort.”
That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “I know. I feel like I’ve locked my old self out, but she’s there, trying to break down the door. Like I’m only pretending to be someone braver.”
“I want to come back to your use of the word practice.”
Shit. I wished I could take it back. I sighed. “Okay.”
“It implies that you don’t think of this as a real relationship.”
“Well, it’s sort of not.”
Her brow arched. “Sort of? Or not?”
I hated when she picked apart my phrasing, even though it was her job. “It’s not. It’s only been a couple of weeks. We’re just hanging out.”
“Does he know that?”
I huffed a laugh. “Oh, thanks to the list, he’s perfectly aware.”
She ran her finger over the screen, scrolling back. “Because you told him you didn’t want a boyfriend when you first met him?”
“Exactly.”
“And since then?”
“Well…” I thought about the past couple of weeks, how Bas had slowly eroded my defenses until I’d invited him inside my house. Twice. “You’d understand if you could see how easygoing he is. Even his best friend chides him for his lack of follow-through. I’m pretty sure he’s along for the ride.”
“He might be, but keep those lines of communication open.”
I thought about the conversation I’d had with Bas at breakfast after he’d slept over. “He’s told me he wants to get to know me better. We’re just keeping each other company.”
She set the tablet aside and brought prayer hands to her mouth. I braced for the horrible truths I was paying her for. Her hands dropped to her lap, and she said, “The thing is, Chelsea…you’ve starved yourself from affection for a long time, and now that you’re opening up to it, I want you to be prepared for the emotions. Love is a hell of a drug.”
“Oh, I’m not in—”
She lifted a finger. “Let’s call it affection, then. Fondness if you like. You’ve admitted at least that much. Or am I misreading?”
I shook my head.
“You’ve let someone in, and that’s a positive step. It’s healthy for you to learn how worthy you are of love. You’re building new neural pathways and habits that can strengthen what you’ve started or serve you down the road.”
Her words hung there with a very ponderous unspoken but , and I sucked on my lower lip, knowing she wouldn’t let me go without something to think about.
“But even the most easygoing people discover the complexities of romantic relationships can be a big deal.”
“That’s it?”
She let free a rare laugh. “What do you mean, that’s it?”
I shrugged. “I dunno. I thought you’d tell me not to hurt him. Or tell me not to get hurt.”
“Well, that’s why I encouraged communication so you can both manage expectations. I doubt you’ve set out to hurt each other, but it’s not always in your control even if you do everything right. But you know that better than most people.”
I did. When I started seeing Dr. Rubin, I believed heartache was the only outcome to taking risks with my emotions. My only experience of love was its horrible aftermath: the insults, the door slamming, the ever-present threat of violence or abandonment.
The first time my dad made good on his promise to leave us, I was twelve. I’d come home from school with a D on my report card. I hadn’t been paying attention in class or turning in any assignments. Some of my teachers took me aside and made me do work in class to pull my grade to a B. But my math teacher believed that kids should learn from the school of hard knocks. I didn’t really care, though. Not until I had to present my grades for a parent signature.
I handed the report card to Mom, and she sent me to my room to await my punishment. She told my dad when he came home from work, and he overreacted. He made me stand in front of him while he yelled into my face, “What makes you think this is acceptable?”
I had no answer. So he asked it again, louder, then crumpled up the paper and threw it against the wall.
My mom said, “Wayne, maybe we can talk to the teacher.”
He ranted about how it was her fault I was such a moron, how when he was in school, he managed to get his work done without anyone telling him to do it. I slunk to my room. Only a fool stuck around when the anger was out of the bottle.
My mom stayed, stupidly pouring water on a grease fire, failing to calm him, failing to comprehend that our very presence was the fuel that powered his hatred.
Voices rose. Things broke. The argument devolved into darker things I didn’t understand.
The next day, he was gone, and there was a gaping hole in a wall that hadn’t been there before.
My mom covered it with a picture that wasn’t hiding another hole somewhere else. Then she fell apart. Over the next week, she called friends, looking for him, leaving messages on his phone, begging him to come home.
And she blamed me for his leaving.
I felt ashamed of myself for wishing he’d come back, believing I’d driven him away.
He did come back, and it was like he’d gone through some Pet Sematary reincarnation. He provided for us and occasionally treated my mom decently, but he acted like he resented us, like we’d trapped him and he’d resigned himself to a situation he hated. My mom walked on eggshells around him, but I’d gotten older, and I was a teenager, so I tended to talk back and stir the pot. He was stubborn, though. He made sure he won every argument, even if it meant playing dirty. Even if it meant taking everything out of my room and throwing it in the trash as I watched, pleading with him not to.
When I was fifteen, the night arrived when he called my mom a filthy slut and walked out the front door, never to return.
He left us without enough to pay the rent.
He left us with nothing but each other, but I lost my mom to night shifts and alcohol.
We were better off without him, sure, but we struggled, too. How could he abandon his family? His wife? His child?
Dr. Rubin leaned forward, and I blinked to clear the tears enough to see the box of tissues she was holding. “Your dad may have laid the rut in your path, Chelsea, but every time you choose to lift your tire back onto the road, you’re taking control.”
I sniffled a laugh. “A-plus metaphor, Doctor.”
“I encourage you to keep opening your heart, but try not to become someone else in the process. If you replace one identity with another, you risk falling back on old habits at the first setback. Now, did you want to get into—”
We spent the remainder of the time talking about my frustration with my mom’s current MIA status, but I couldn’t help but notice we’d spent nearly half our session without mentioning either parent. Progress.