11. Julia #2
“Say I tell her I helped Tessa with something. Maybe Tessa needed me, so I rearranged something or spent a day helping her deal with a problem. Mom might listen at the time and think it’s nice.
Then two weeks later, if we argue because I couldn’t come over when she wanted me to, suddenly it becomes, ‘You always have time for your friends. You’re exactly like your father.
Everyone else comes before your family.’”
The familiar bitterness reaches the back of my throat even though none of this is happening now.
Kai remains quiet long enough that I look at him.
There’s no shock on his face, which I suppose would be ridiculous considering what I’ve already told him about my childhood. He looks thoughtful instead, his pen resting motionless between his fingers.
“So something you shared because you felt close to her in one moment can be reinterpreted as evidence against you in another.”
“Exactly.” The relief of him understanding it without making me explain three additional examples is immediate.
“And then I get angry because whatever I told her had nothing to do with her. I wasn’t choosing Tessa instead of my mother.
I was just helping my friend. But suddenly I’m defending whether I love my family enough. ”
“Does that happen specifically with Tessa?”
I laugh once, without much humor. “Tessa is probably her least favorite person.”
“Why?”
“Because she thinks Tessa gets too much of me.”
I look down at my hands again.
“She would never say she doesn’t want me to have friends. She absolutely does. She wants me to have people, go places, have experiences, be happy. But sometimes when I actually do those things, especially if it means I’m unavailable to her, there’s this undertone that I’ve chosen somebody else.”
Kai nods slowly. “So the message can become contradictory.”
“That’s my mother in one sentence.”
The corner of his mouth moves, but he doesn’t take the invitation to turn it into a joke. I’m grateful for that.
“She wants me to do things she never did,” I continued.
“She’ll tell me I should travel, take chances, live my life, not waste years being afraid.
And I believe she means it when she says it.
But then sometimes when I actually do something she wouldn’t have done, something maybe she didn’t have the courage or opportunity to do herself, I can feel...
” I search for the right word. “Resentment sounds too harsh.”
“Maybe it is. What does it feel like instead?”
“Like she’s happy for me until whatever I’m doing reminds her of what she didn’t have.
” Kai’s eyes stay on mine. I shrug, although there’s nothing casual about the feeling.
“Then somehow the conversation becomes about that. I tell her something that happened to me and within five minutes we’re talking about what happened to her when she was my age, or what my father did to her, or what she would have done differently.
And suddenly whatever I came to tell her isn’t really mine anymore. ”
The room goes quiet around the words.
“When that happens often enough,” he says eventually, his voice lower and more thoughtful than before, “you don’t only start asking yourself whether something is safe to share in the moment. You start asking whether it will still be safe later.”
I look at him because that lands harder than I expect. “Yeah.”
“And if you can’t predict which version of the information will come back to you, withholding it starts to feel safer.”
“I guess.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
I lean my head back against the chair. “I’m trying not to make her sound horrible.”
“You haven’t.”
The answer comes so simply that I look at him again.
Kai’s posture remains relaxed, one forearm resting against the arm of his chair.
“You’ve told me repeatedly that your mother loves you.
I believe you. You’ve also described a relationship where closeness sometimes comes with the risk that vulnerable information may later be used during conflict. Both can be true.”
“That’s the part that always makes me feel like an asshole.”
“Because?”
“Because I know why she is the way she is.”
He waits. I know enough about him now to recognize that silence, but this time I don’t resent it.
It just gives me time to come to my own conclusion before I finally say.
“She went through hell with my father. For years. And then there’s the depression, and everything else she’s dealt with.
So when she does something that hurts me, there’s always this explanation sitting right beside it. ”
Kai nods once. “Understanding where someone’s behavior comes from can give you compassion for them. It doesn’t require you to pretend the behavior has no effect on you.”
My fingers stop moving against the bottle. There it is again. One of those sentences that sounds annoyingly simple once somebody else says it.
“I’m very good at explaining people.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“I can usually tell you exactly why somebody did something.”
“Yes.”
“And apparently that’s a problem too.”
“Not necessarily.” His mouth softens slightly. “It only becomes one when understanding someone else consistently replaces understanding what their behavior did to you.”
I look away because that one hits closer than I want it to.
Outside, the heavy white clouds move slowly against the gray sky, and I follow them for a few seconds before speaking again.
“I think that’s why I stopped telling her certain things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Anything I don’t want turned into a comparison.” I give a small shrug. “Relationships. Some friendships. Plans before they’re certain. Anything I’m excited about if I don’t want somebody immediately explaining why I should be careful or why their experience with something similar ended badly.”
Kai’s gaze stays on me. “So you protect the things that matter to you by keeping them private.”
I consider that. “Sometimes.”
“And does that feel like a boundary?”
The question catches me. “I don’t know. It feels more like... information control.”
A faint smile touches his mouth. “That may be the most law-firm answer you’ve given me yet.”
I laugh despite myself, but the humor fades naturally rather than turning into another exchange.
“Maybe it is a boundary,” I say after a moment. “It just doesn’t feel like a particularly healthy one.”
“Boundaries don’t always begin elegantly. Sometimes they begin because someone learns that access has consequences.”
That keeps me quiet.
“What I’m more interested in,” he continues, “is whether you still make choices based on how you imagine your mother will react, even when you’ve decided not to tell her about them.”
My brow pulls together because immediately, and annoyingly, I know what he means. “Sometimes.”
“Can you give me an example?”
I think about it for a moment, then let out a small breath. “I don’t know if I have a specific one, but I do sometimes hear her opinion before I’ve even told her something.”
“Even when she isn’t there.”
“Especially when she isn’t there.”
That earns the smallest shift in his expression. “Then perhaps that’s something worth noticing this week. Not whether your mother approves of your choices, and not whether you should ignore her opinion. Just how often you consider what she would think before you’ve asked yourself what you think.”
I stare at him. There’s something irritatingly familiar about the direction he’s steering this.
“This is going to become another homework assignment, isn’t it?”
“It doesn’t have to.”
“That means yes.”
His mouth curves slightly.
I shake my head and settle farther into the chair. “Fine. What exactly am I supposed to notice?”
“The point where somebody else’s voice enters the decision before your own.”
That makes me freeze.
Because that is substantially more interesting than choosing cereal or deciding what I want for dinner.
Kai picks up his pen again, only to turn it once between his fingers before resting it against the notepad.
“What I’d like you to pay attention to this week isn’t whether your mother’s opinion is right or wrong, or whether you should stop considering what the people in your life might think about the choices you make.
That would be unrealistic.” His voice remains calm, the same measured tone he uses whenever he wants me to actually hear something rather than react to it.
“I’m more interested in the order in which those thoughts appear. ”
I frown slightly. “The order?”
“You’ve become very good at anticipating other people.
You know what will upset your mother before she says it, what Tessa will probably think about something, what somebody at work will need from you and how a person is likely to react before you give them an answer.
I want you to notice how often one of those voices enters the conversation before your own does. ”
For a moment, I simply look at him.
“That sounds disturbingly difficult to keep track of.”
“I don’t need a spreadsheet.”
“You say that now.”
The faintest trace of amusement touches his face, but he doesn’t let me derail him with it.
“Just notice it. If you’re making a decision and the first thought is what somebody else will think, pause long enough to ask yourself what you think before you do anything with the answer.
You don’t need to change the decision. You don’t even need to tell anyone what you wanted.
I only want you to recognize when your own preference arrives late to the conversation. ”
I slowly turn the water bottle between my palms while I consider that.
The assignment sounds deceptively simple, which is becoming a recurring theme with him.
He asks questions that would barely qualify as questions anywhere else, then somehow turns them into things I think about while brushing my teeth three days later.
“So basically, I need to figure out how often everybody else lives in my head rent-free.”
Kai’s mouth curves slightly. “That’s one way of putting it.”
“And then what?”
“Then we talk about what you notice.”
“That’s it?”