*** This is pure fiction. A hypothetical couple's therapy session written nearly a decade ago to create a sense of closure where closure could not be found in any other way. ***
Dr Hank: Do you feel “typical”?
Safina: It’s settled then, I’m A-typical.
Nick giggles in a deep breath awkwardly, and stops himself. Whatever his expectation was, hearing her voice, the words, her cool and self-deprecating tone brought him back. He was fighting the wave of astonishment and nostalgia.
The acute similarity between them. He relaxed only for a second in recognition of her as she was, as he was. Then snapped back…into this room, into this moment, where all things between them have been buried beneath of constant stream of separate responsibilities.
Safina. So….all of these colorful attributes of my parents coupled with east coast boarding school, I now sit before you as the following: Including but not limited to: being Over-critical, over-analytical, pathetically needy and unable to be alone, intensely afraid of commitment, in fact, this part of my peculiar psyche has become more art than mere trait. I actually see illuminated “exit” signs in any given situation that I feel I have committed myself too. Something as small as meeting a fellow mother at the gym, to vacations for my family.
Dr. Hank: Hm?
She only notices his one-syllable response after she has begun her next sentence, and she continues as fast as she started.
Safina: I am self-loathing and lack serious boundaries looking for validation at every turn, thereby making me a very non-private person. I am physical, very physical. Sexually and athletically, but more for the sport and feat of it. Almost anything can be deemed a competition to me. I lack intimacy. Well, if we are being really honest, I was able to be intimate at least emotionally, with a man, but I don’t know him anymore. It was with him and him only, that this word materialized to reality.
Never to be seen since. But that’s only if we are being really really honest.
If we are not, disregard that sentence all together. More good things?...just trying to keep the scale even here. Although it isn’t. (she quips) I have always bought into the racket of “perception is everything” so I’ll will continue.
I also have an enormous amount of compassion and empathy, I feel guilty for things that have nothing to do with me, and those things that I do take accountability for just the same. Now what really makes me homogeneous with the rest of the sordid and affected non-youth of this world full of broken lovers…I thrive in chaos, if thriving can be comparable to balancing a mini-world on a two-inch diameter iceberg with soapy slippers.
Chaos is all I have known; therefore it is my soft and fuzzy blanket. Historically, when life failed to produce conditions that would cause me to function in the state, I would create it, as any well-adjusted young and smart woman would. Right, Right, knowing is half the battle.
Not with me, I tread ahead into shit storms despite my emotional cavalry setting mind-mines the whole way as little warnings. Its futile, old dog...blah blah…. Let’s see, what else?
She looks again to both men, whose attention she has fully. A flash of heat shoots down her spine, she takes the momentary break in her spit-fire babble to inhale and speaks before thinking…as usual.
Safina: I have a keen and utterly delightful sense of humor and ability to make almost anyone comfortable or the polar opposite at the slighted of tongue. I enjoy this volley of wits or power almost to a hobby status. After all, we survive our childhoods in many ways. Some retreat to the caves of social recluse, others rebel, or act out. I stayed in the show and learned the trade of deflection, distraction and even juggling. (She chuckles) It is all a masquerade is it not?
Dr. Hank: Are you asking me?
Safina: Well. In my world, you hide what people are not equipped or prepared to see or hear, so I make them laugh, or squirm depending on my mood. Need I go on?
Dr. Hank: Would you like to?
Looking at Nick and then back at Dr. Hank.
Safina: (She laughs). Sweet. This is really fun.
Nodding slowly as if to agree with herself and then laughing again, she claps her hands.
Safina: Well, clearly, my damage is done here…
Safina: (She laughs). Sweet. This is really fun.
Nodding slowly as if to agree with herself and then laughing again, she claps her hands.
Safina: Well, clearly, my damage is done here…
Dr. Hank: Do you really think this is funny right now, or is that part of the “masquerade”?
She childishly points to Nick.
Safina: Does he have to speak? I don’t understand what we are doing here…
Dr. Hank: We are here for several reasons. Nick will speak when he is ready; right now we are focusing on you.
Safina to Dr. Hank: That was perfectly cryptic by the way Dr. Hank. Brilliant, really.
Safina to Nick: Can I get you some popcorn and M&M’s?
Nick tilts his head slightly, finally removes his hand from his mouth, drops his leg and looks at her as if to beg her not to look at him, and to beg her to hold him at the same time. She is stifled.
Dr. Hank: Nick, No response necessary.
Safina: (facetiously and with visceral anger with a throaty laugh) That’s really cool! Is there a button behind his scapular bones for the “go go gadget” arm too? Okay, Okay I will play fair, but only if he has to wear “skins” too when he joins the game.
Dr. Hank: Safina, what do you feel about Nick?
Safina: Dah Dah Dan…..Are you serious? Do you understand I couldn’t answer that question in the past 3 years, let alone in 1000 times the amount of time, and money for this session?
Dr. Hank: Okay then, one word, whatever one presents itself in this moment.
Safina: Forlorn.
Dr. Hank: That’s a start.
She is laughing again, but this time less from the throat, as her throat is closing up.
Safina: No… That’s the end.
Dr. Hank: How does it make you feel to see him now, today?
Completely hesitant to open, she counter-intuitively lets go and tears begin to well in her eyes through the words.
Safina: When I look at Nick...
She repeats, for more time to gather herself and to fight the urge to breakdown.
Safina: I feel like a war veteran, sitting here in my chair. He is like a limb, a phantom limb of mine, I walk around in my life, surviving, surviving all the things I’ve been through, him included, and every once in a while I notice a piece of myself isn’t there, that every step is that much harder because I’m missing that ridiculous piece of myself…goes back to the boundary thing. “Where I end and you begin…” But when I look at him this very second?
She swallows two times, and clears the tiny space left in the back of her tongue not fighting off the neuropeptide rush of anxiety and past pain. Nick is looking at his feet, and she is disappointed that this unrehearsed display is something he gets the right to avert.
Dr. Hank: Yes.
Safina: I ache. I ache beyond description, and that says a lot coming from me. I truly feel like someone has presented the carnage of myself, from my own love war, and I cant make it fit back in, but I can feel myself trying to move it, trying to sense things through it, as I once did, and I ache in my incapacity.
Dr Hank: That is quite a vivid description.
He hands Safina a box of Kleenex, while Nick is looking out the window, stoic.
Safina: That’s enough. I can’t do this.
Dr. Hank: Do what, Safina?
Safina: Rip off my stitches in front of him, so he can validate that his are healed Dr. Hank.
She says his name in the same authoritative tone he used with her.
Dr. Hank: Do you feel challenged right now?
Safina: Yes. I feel like a fucking animal being gutted on some twisted fucking wooden alter to be bleed for his feast.
The inertia of her anger begins to evolve.
Safina: That’s why we are here right? So he can get closure, so he can move on? Give him the guilt-free pass for anything he does or doesn’t know he feels?
Dr. Hank: Is that what you think?
Safina: Why doesn’t he have to speak?! I’m done. This was so ridiculous; I knew it was, I don’t know why I agreed.
Dr. Hank: Because you care. It's the right thing to do. You were consenting to speak honestly, listen and find closure.
Safina: Ah.
She lifts her chin, nodding slowly and with a contained fury neither men could truly appreciate. She looked to Nick.
Safina: Are you where you need to be? All better, dear?
She says sarcastically, hating to see him, hating to feel so magnetically charged towards him and repelled by its power at the same time.
Safina: I’m done here.
She gets up and darts for the door, sweeping up her purse and moving faster than either men have seen a woman move before.
Nick: Safina, wait. This is not how I planned it.
He says letting a breath out, while shaking his head.
To be Continued in: A Novel Never to Be Published (Part 3): "Actions Speak Louder Than Words."
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