20 #2
Calliope has, of course, not texted me the name of it, but I google and I’m able to figure it out.
I go through some of the ideas about it online, and I end up on this cool website that has all these videos and self-paced worksheets, and this seems great, like, who even needs a therapist if you have this?
I kind of throw myself into it, and it’s all I do for maybe four days.
I talk to Hannah on the phone a few times.
We have a conversation about her taking the Plan B pill. She says, “I maybe want to have babies, though.”
“Just not mine?” I say. “Maybe they’d inherit my crazy. You should totally have Gatlin’s babies.”
“I don’t want it forced,” she says. “That’s all. I want it planned. And obviously, if we’re doing this, all of us, I would have your babies, Ellis.”
I believe her.
“I do love you, Ellis,” she says softly. “I think I have for a long time. But you don’t deserve it.”
I groan. As far as declarations of love go, it’s pretty hard to hear. “I’m sorry, Hannah.”
“I don’t want you to be sorry,” she mutters. “I only want…”
“Me to stop having sex with women who aren’t you?” I say.
“Well, that would be a good start, I guess,” she says.
“Yeah, well, I want that, too,” I say. “And you should not have my babies if I can’t fucking manage that for you, for serious. You really should break up with me.”
“Well, I know that,” she says. “But I’m not going to.”
“Thanks,” I whisper. “I don’t deserve you.”
“You don’t,” she says back, “but then, I don’t deserve you either.”
“Yes, you fucking do,” I say. “I’m going to do better for you.”
“I keep thinking about what you said about how I need to feel secure in myself or I won’t believe people when they compliment me,” she says.
“You know, I said that to you, but maybe I’m still working on it myself,” I mutter.
“It’s only that the alphas…”
“Yeah,” I say, grinning. “Yeah, they’re, um, easy that way, huh?”
“They made me feel cherished, too,” she whispers.
“They’re good for us,” I say.
“I think so, too,” she says.
I have a few other conversations with Hannah over the next few days, during which I sound like the DBT Handbook, probably.
It’s all about more stuff I’ve found out about this kind of therapy, how I really feel like it makes sense. I’m super excited, and I feel… I don’t know… fixed.
On the fifth day, of course, I break.
It’s not about Callie.
It’s honestly just stupid.
I plug my phone into an outlet that I’ve never plugged it into upstairs in my bedroom, and all of the electricity on one of the circuits cuts out.
Except I don’t realize that at first.
I just get downstairs and I can’t turn the lights on.
I panic. I pace through the house, turning on other lights, and they’re all working just fine, and I can’t figure out what the hell is going on, and I feel that awful helpless feeling welling up in me, coming from the bottom of me, taking me over, squeezing itself around my chest like an iron band.
I punch a hole in the wall.
I don’t think. I feel out of control and then boom.
And it doesn’t help anything, that’s the thing. It doesn’t make me feel as if I’ve released my anger or anything. If anything, it makes everything worse. Now, my knuckles are all skinned up. Now, there’s a fucking hole in my drywall. Now, I’m ashamed of myself.
I’m so ashamed of myself that I want to punch another hole in the wall, but I can tell that would be a stupid idea, so I run out of the house, onto my back porch, and I scream out into the neighborhood, probably freaking out all of my neighbors.
At some point, the haze clears.
Sheepishly, I think of circuits, and I go down and find my breaker box, and sure enough, there it is, the tripped breaker. Easy fix. No reason to punch walls. No reason to lose my shit like that.
Belatedly, I think of all of the DBT worksheets I’ve been doing on naming your emotions and observing them, getting really mindful in the moment and noticing where the emotion is in your body, and then, asking yourself if the most effective way to deal with that emotion is to do what feels natural and let the emotion take me over or if I should try to do the opposite of the emotion.
But in the moment I didn’t even feel like I could access this. I was just a big ball of reaction. I wasn’t thinking. I was feeling. And the emotion was, like, in charge.
I spend the rest of the day googling how to be able to think when you’re angry.
I don’t get a lot of good answers, because it’s a bunch of, Count to ten and Stop and observe your surroundings, and these are all good ideas, but I can’t see how I’m ever going to remember to do them if I’m feeling an intense emotion.
So, then I do something impulsive, but then, that is my modus operandi, I guess.
I drive into town and walk into one of the tattoo shops. The guy there says that he can’t tattoo me right now, that I need to make an appointment, at least, unless I want one of these tattoos here, in this book.
They’re all super freaking generic tattoos—roses and butterflies and tribal patterns and then—weirdly—a jar of peanut butter.
I pick that one.
“I want it here,” I say, showing the guy a spot right on the back of my hand, just below my knuckles.
“You want a peanut butter jar there?” the guy says, eyebrows raised. “Right freaking now? Dude, are you aware that these things are permanent?”
“It’s just to remind me to stop and think,” I say.
“It doesn’t matter what it is, but I want it somewhere I can always see it, and I want it there forever.
” The tattoo is probably overkill. I could have gotten a ring or a bracelet or I could have gotten some henna tattoo, because if I had it there for a few weeks, it’d probably be long enough to make a habit.
But I like the idea of it always being there, and I like that it’s not obvious what the tattoo is. No one has to understand that I need a permanent reminder indelibly written into my flesh to not let my emotions control me. I know that’s what the peanut butter means. But it’s just for me.
Anyway, maybe it works, because later, I’m scrolling through Callie’s Instagram, and I get the urge to just call her up, or no—better—just go and find her.
Go to wherever she is, stand out at the edge of everything and wait for her to come running up to me, and then go off with her.
It sounds epic and fun and exciting and—
I look down at the peanut butter jar and I don’t act.
I think about it. And think about it.
The urge kind of fizzles out. I don’t go anywhere. Instead I call Hannah, and I tell her I’ve been thinking about going after Callie, but that I haven’t done it, and I sort of want to ask Hannah if she wants to come over and watch a movie, but she doesn’t have to.
She does.
She snickers over my peanut butter tattoo. I don’t tell her what it means. She doesn’t ask. She just says it’s a very Ellis thing to do, get a random tattoo.
Her phone beeps, and she gets it out and smiles widely and starts typing a response. This text conversation goes on throughout the movie, but I don’t ask about it for at least forty minutes.
“It’s Gatlin, obviously,” she informs me when I do.
“Seriously?” I’m happy about that. “Cool. I’m so glad you two are talking.”
“Me too,” she says, picking up my arm and winding it around her shoulders so that she can lie against my chest. “I really like him.”
“Good,” I say. “I was afraid I fucked everything up.”
“No, you are not as good at fucking everything up as you think you are, Ellis.”
I have to smile at that.
The next day, I get a call from one of the therapists that an appointment has opened up. I start therapy the week after.