Authors: Annie Jocoby

Ever After (10 page)

Chapter 13

Scotty

I was sitting in my hospital bed, feeling full of despair and anxiety. I was understanding that I took a really drastic step in slashing my wrists, but I started to feel that the walls were finally closing in on me. It wasn’t just that Mr. Lucas was no doubt going to use his power and influence to destroy me career-wise. That was just the final straw. The final straw. I had gone through so much in my life, most of it because of that monster. With every incident, however, I felt like there was an accumulation of sadness, stress and angst. It would pile on me, and I would get better, but the old wounds had never healed.

Then, when I finally figured out that my career would very likely come to an end because of that sadistic creep, that was just the final straw. The final straw. I couldn’t take it anymore. I felt like there was just nothing else in my life that could be taken from me by that man. And I think that I went more than a little bit loony tunes once I realized that fact.

Nick was in the hospital room with me earlier, of course. Of course he was. And I loved him for it, yet I still felt a distance from him. I wasn’t entirely sure why.

So, I went to sleep that night, having been given a sedative to help me sleep, and I was scheduled for therapy in the morning with the hospital psychologist. I was actually looking forward to this session, because I needed some kind of guidance and help in understanding what was going through my head when I tried to kill myself. I never thought of myself as suicidal, yet I just tried to kill myself and I had suicidal thoughts before. To say that I was concerned for my own mental health at that time would be an understatement.

∞

The next day, my doctor came down to take my vitals, and then my nurse came in to take me to see my therapist. I was actually scheduled for a three hour session, so I felt that I could get a lot of talking done. I really wanted to feel less screwed up, and seeing this shrink was the first step to doing so.

This therapist was named Dr. Ringold, and she was a tall and thin woman with auburn hair and wire-rimmed glasses. Freckles covered her rather youthful-looking face, and she had a genuine smile on her face as she held out her hand for me to shake.

I couldn’t help but smile back.

“Have a seat,” she said, motioning to the maroon leather chair. Her office wasn’t nearly as posh as Adele’s office, of course, but it still was warm and inviting. She had a colorful throw rug on her hardwood floors, and her desk was cherry wood with a granite top. She had a picture of a cute bichon frise on the surface of the desk, and there was a painting of a Scotty dog on the wall. The painting looked familiar, and then I realized that I had seen a similar one on the internet, painted by George Bush, the former President.

Somehow, the fact that Dr. Ringold was a dog lover made me more comfortable with her.

“May I get you a glass of water?” she asked me.

“Yes, please,” I said.

Dr. Ringold got me some water and handed me the cup. I sipped on it, and then leaned forward with my elbows on my knees. I expectantly waited for her to ask me her questions.

“Now, Scotty,” she said. “I understand that you had a bit of an issue, which is why you’re here.”

“Yes,” I said. “Um, by any chance, did you happen to get a copy of my file from my other therapist, Dr. Adele Holloway?”

“I did,” Dr. Ringold said with a smile. “And I’ve had a chance to review it as well.” She looked down at my file. “Let’s see, now. I see that you have two main issues that you are dealing with. Your mother, who is a long-time alcoholic and is currently in rehabilitation in Beverly Hills. And a Paul Lucas, who sexually violated you over a period of a year in your youth, and then again in January of this year.” She looked at me, and smiled again warmly. I felt slightly put off by the fact that she so succinctly and matter of-factly recited my traumas, but, then again, perhaps that was just her way.

“Okay,” she said. “I’d like to know what caused your acute trauma.”

“You mean, why would I attempt suicide?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Well, I don’t know. I think that I finally snapped. I’ve lived for most of my life with some type of trauma or another. My whole life. In my childhood, it was my mother. In my adolescence, it was Mr. Lucas. And the rest of my life was pretty much me trying to suppress all that and attempt to live a normal life, but never actually dealing with my emotions about any of it.”

“Okay, then,” she said. “Go ahead.”

“Yes,” I said. “Well, there was always a constant in my life. Always. And that was that I was going to make something of myself. I wasn’t going to be like my mother, turning tricks for money. I was going to get an education and I was going to pursue architecture, because that was a passion of mine since the very beginning.”

Dr. Ringold was scribbling some notes feverishly. She looked up and said “okay, please go on.”

“Well, I just feel that it’s really just me in the world, and that I’m going to need a good income to support myself. And, well, it just dawned on me that Mr. Lucas was going to take that away. He was going to take away my own ability to support myself away. And I really couldn’t take it. I basically felt like my entire foundation was rocked when it was revealed to me that Mr. Lucas’ power and influence are probably going to be used to ruin me.”

Dr. Ringold looked at me thoughtfully. “Let’s go back to something that you just said. Now, you said that you felt that you were alone in the world. Is that correct?”

I nodded my head.

“Yet,” she said, “these notes indicate that you have a significant other, and that your relationship with him is ‘good,” she continued. Then she looked up at me with questions in her eyes. “Tell me about that relationship.”

I took a deep breath. I realized, as Dr. Ringold was talking to me about it, that I still didn’t consider Nick to be a part of my team. I still felt like he wasn’t going to always be there for me, and that was the real reason why having my career path so threatened was so devastating. “Um, well, let’s see. Nick is a great guy. A truly fabulous guy. He has never done anything to make me not want to trust him, yet, I think that, deep in my heart, I really don’t. I just have this awful feeling that he’s going to lose patience with me, and he’ll be gone. He’ll be gone, and, if I don’t have my career, then how will I live? I can’t depend upon Jack to always be there for me, either. I just feel that they’re both going to abandon me.”

There, I said it. I said, out loud, what was truly at the root of all of my pain. I felt like there really wasn’t anybody who I
would be able to depend upon for the rest of my life. Except myself.

Dr. Ringold nodded her head knowingly. “Okay, so you’re afraid that Nick and Jack will both abandon you. Yet, Nick has never shown any signs that he’s going to abandon you, or so you say. What about Jack? Who is Jack to you?”

“He’s my big brother, my guardian and my savior. Well, actually, he’s just really my best friend and my roommate. I love him so much, but, you know, there’s going to come a time when he’s going to have his own life, and I’m going to grow apart from him, as best friends do. Best friends grow apart when one of them get a significant other and raises a family. I mean, yeah, he and I will still see each other. You know, once a month, one of us has a dinner party or a barbecue, or maybe we’ll meet for drinks. But, will he always be there for me on a day to day basis?” I shook my head. “No, and I don’t expect him to. As much as I would love for him to adopt me, that’s just not realistic. So, Jack’s abandoning me is inevitable, really.”

More writing on Dr. Ringold’s part. “Okay, now let’s get back to Nick. You don’t feel that he’s permanent. Why is that?”

I thought about it really hard for a second or two. This was really just the first time that I acknowledged, even to myself, that I felt that Nick was going to leave me. Finally, I just said “I’ve never known a relationship to work. I’ve never seen one work. Ever. I mean, my mother had a revolving door of men. Other than that, I’ve only seen, first-hand, the relationship between Mr. Lucas and his wife, Elle. They were kind of the gold standard for a couple for me, at least until Mr. Lucas started to sexually violate me.”

“So, your mother was unstable, and you felt that Mr. Lucas and his wife might have been solid. Then, when he started to sexually violate you, you felt more disillusionment on relationships and whether they could last? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes, I guess so. So, yeah, it’s been my experience that relationships are not meant to last. And, really, these were some very dysfunctional people, my mother and Mr. Lucas. My rational brain tells me that these particular people could never have functional relationships because they’re just too screwed up.” I looked down at my hands for a second. “And that’s me, too. I’m totally screwed up. I’m totally messed up in the head, just like my mother and Mr. Lucas. So, I feel that I’m really no different than them, and that maybe I won’t be able to sustain a relationship either.”

She nodded her head. “Okay, so you identify with a long-term alcoholic and a child molester. You feel, deep down, that you’re really no different than them. Is that what you’re saying?”

At first, I wanted to protest. She misunderstood me. Of course, I wasn’t like them. I wasn’t perverted and I wasn’t a drunk. Which was true. But, yet, I was broken, just like they were. I was as broken as my mother, and she never had a man in her life for any period of time, so why did I believe that I would? As for Mr. Lucas, there was a part of me that saw that he came from a place of pain as well. It didn’t mean that I didn’t hate him, because I did. I did. Whether or not he had a shitty upbringing was not my concern. He didn’t need to take his impotence and rage out on helpless females. So, I couldn’t ever forgive him.

Yet, I felt that there was a part of me that felt like I was the same as him. He, too, was broken, and he had nothing but dysfunction in his life.

“Yes,” I finally said. “I do feel that I’m no different from them.”

She looked at me thoughtfully. “So, is Nick aware of how you feel about him?”

“I think so,” I said, after pausing several minutes to ponder that. “He’s told me before that I needed to learn to start trusting him, or else he’s going to leave me.”

“Are you familiar with the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy?” Dr. Ringold asked me.

“I’ve heard of it. I think that I read about that in my psychology class,” I said. “But remind me of what that means.”

“It means that you are basically acting in a way that will bring about the thing that you fear. In this case, you are afraid of Nick leaving you, so you act in ways that will actually make him leave you. Then you can say that your hunch about his abandoning you was correct the entire time.”

I nodded my head. That made a lot of sense to me. “So, what you’re saying is that if I don’t act in these ways that Nick won’t leave me?”

“Well, there’s never a guarantee, of course. But you would have a much better chance of your relationship with Nick being solid if you learned to truly trust him.”

“How do I do this?” I asked. “How do I learn to trust him?”

“Only you know the answer to that question,” she said. “But you may teach yourself to trust him by observing his behaviors towards you. If he does not give you any reason not to trust him, then you need to observe that and consider that in a rational manner. Also, if you could overcome your trauma
from your past, then you might be able to learn to trust Nick not to leave you.”

“Well, I was taught by Dr. Holloway how to replace negative thoughts with positive ones. Is that what you recommend that I do with Nick?”

“That would be a start,” she said. “But that won’t address the underlying issues. You can use that as a stop-gap measure, however, until you can truly change your mindset about him.”

So, for the rest of the session, Dr. Holloway and I went through the positive thoughts that I had about Nick, and she taught me how to use those positive thoughts to replace the negative ones that I had.

“Okay,” she said. “Now, tell me a negative thought about Nick.”

I thought about it. “Uh, my negative thought about Nick is that he’s going to leave me because I’m too messed up.”

“Now, what positive thought will you use to replace that negative thought?”

“That he has never given me any indication that he is going to leave me.”

Dr. Ringold nodded her head. “Another negative thought.”

“That he doesn’t love me.”

“What positive thought will you use to counteract that?”

“That he fights for me and protects me all the time, which shows that he loves me very much.”

“Another negative thought.”

“That he’s going to lose patience with me and my problems.”

“What positive thought will replace that?”

“He has shown enormous patience with everything that he knows about me, and he hasn’t shown any signs that he’s getting impatient.”