Twenty-Four #3
“Of course.” She waved off the concern quickly. “The work, it compels me and eludes me. I keep taking up additional subsets of study trying to find the missing piece or the new research to solve the puzzles or show the full picture, but there’s always another variable.”
Gillian’s chest tightened, a familiar ache to mirror the one in Maura’s voice.
“What did I miss?” Maura repeated.
“In your studies?” Gillian asked. “You have the most comprehensive research agenda I’ve ever come across.”
“And yet, there are holes. People continue to behave in ways that baffle me, and not just illogically. I could handle that. Humans are irrational for plenty of quantifiable reasons. I’ve studied dysfunction and disorder, trauma, and a million other things that contribute to any number of maladjustments.
I’ve studied genes and behavior theories and development theories and every therapeutic modality, and yet every day I feel further from my subjects, my students, my colleagues, my … ”
“Your family,” Gillian finished for her.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know,” she started tentatively. “I certainly don’t want to speak out of turn here. I wouldn’t presume to tell you about your work or your parenting.”
“Please.” Maura made a ‘move along’ motion with her hand, and Gillian once again admired this woman’s willingness to face things head-on. “I’m asking for your observation. Don’t coddle me.”
“The issue may lie in trying to turn your people into research projects. Humans aren’t lab rats, and you cannot isolate factors in their existence, or maybe you can compartmentalize in very specific instances, but you cannot extrapolate a whole from some parts.”
Maura stared at her as if trying to process this information. “You don’t study the people you love?”
“I suppose I’m guilty of falling back on other crutches.
” She smiled softly. “I think we all have our own coping mechanisms. I like professionalism and best practices and over-intellectualizing, and now that I think about it, those things may’ve led to some compartmentalizing for me, too.
And I do love to study theories, research, concepts, and new ideas, but not my people. ”
“How do you resist? How do you relate?” Maura pushed, almost pleading. “What do you do instead?”
“I love them.” Gillian’s voice caught as the simplicity of it all hit her square in the chest. “I love them and I’m interested in them and I enjoy spending time with them when I calm down enough to let myself.”
“I don’t understand.” Maura shook her head. “I love Sawyer, but I cannot understand Sawyer. I cannot make them fit with any knowledge I hold, and I cannot trust something I cannot understand.”
“You’re not trusting something. You’re trusting someone.
” Gillian felt a new kind of certainty building in her.
“You have to trust people, and I haven’t done that enough.
It’s hard. Hard and vulnerable because you want to protect them, you want to nurture them, you want every good thing in the world for them, and let’s be honest, people like us, we think we know how to do that.
We’ve spent our lives finding solutions for the problems we see all around us, but we’ve chosen productivity over presence, and it’s not a fair trade.
Sawyer didn’t need you to fix them. They just wanted you to be with them in the process. ”
“But they don’t even know who they—”
Gillian held up a hand. She didn’t want to be interrupted.
She wasn’t even talking to Maura anymore.
“Sawyer and Robin figured things out on their own. They didn’t need me to protect them or warn them.
They needed me to support them and remind them they are good, smart, capable people.
Brooke and Tegan needed the same damn thing.
I’ve been beating myself up for a year for not being there for them, but the whole point is that they were there with each other. ”
Maura looked at her like maybe she was yet another thing in her life that made absolutely no sense, but for the first time in a long time, Gillian’s life made sense to her.
“They all did fine on their own. Daphne said as much, but it hurt me to hear it because they scared the living shit out of me.”
Maura grimaced at the profanity, no doubt finding this entire outburst uncouth or unprofessional, but maybe that’s what she needed more of in her life.
Maybe that’s what Daphne had provided her.
“I’ve told people time and time again that I switched from finance to therapy because people were more complex with more compelling variables, and I love a challenge. ”
Maura nodded. “I remember. I always admired your willingness to establish studies that controlled multiple and multifaceted variables.”
“I like that about me, too,” she admitted, “only I think I got too caught up in trying to control the variables in my life when I should’ve engaged them.”
“Engaged them?”
“Embraced them even.” Gillian laughed. “Maybe that’s why I’ve stayed in private practice longer than intended, or maybe that’s why I’ve lived with the chaos of it all, not because I’m a failure at controlling it, but because a part of me craves it.”
“You crave chaos?” Maura’s disbelief registered plainly on her face. “I find that incredibly hard to believe.”
“Me too. Which is why I don’t think it is chaos. What if it’s just humanity? What if you and I are both trying to wedge humanity into a containable model because we ache for it even when it terrifies us. What if the things we label as ‘variables’ in life actually are what defines life?”
“The variables are what make life messy and unreliable and impossible to solve for.”
“Only if you’re living in a lab.” Gillian pushed herself up to standing, not quite certain yet that this new foundation would hold her, but, surprisingly, she didn’t falter as she took her first step.
Maura seemed surprised, too. “Are we finished?”
Gillian shook her head. “Not unless you want to be. I care about you, and I think you’re going to hate this, but you are one of the messiest people I know.”
Maura looked so immediately offended, Gillian knew her assessment had been correct, but instead of backing down, she laughed.
“It’s a compliment, Maura. You’re complex and strong and fierce and brilliant and brutal and insensitive, unintentionally or not.
You’re as full of contradictions as the rest of us, and that’s a good thing, but don’t chalk it up solely to neuroplasticity in your datasets.
Call your kid and talk to them about something other than your work.
Ask them about Iceland or scuba diving. Talk to them like a person, not a problem. ”
Maura sighed. “Rather prescriptive of you. Are you giving yourself the same homework?”
“No,” she said. “You were right earlier. I’m past that. I just forgot for a while.”
“Forgot what?”
“Life’s supposed to be messy, and while I’ve been running around trying to clean it all up or control for every possible outcome, I’ve missed too much of the good stuff.”