Dialogue From A Novel Never to Be Published (Part 1) : A Nihilist and A Boy-man Walk Into Couple's Therapy.

*** 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. *** 

It's pretty entertaining and a bit heartbreaking to read the words never said; the sadness never known. BUT....I say this whole-heartedly and on the eve of a truly devestating day: "All is well that ends well." 

Couple's Therapy:  too little, way too late:

It is nothing and everything that I have brought. Leaving, or being left, yet again, with the void.

She enters the small three-flat building having stopped twice at public restrooms at various fast food restaurants on the twenty-mile drive into the city. The drive in was a colossal movie like rendition of memories from their first encounter to the devastating ending. The childish laughs and the full blown adult fights, everything between now and then feels like something that didn’t happen, but rather was branded into her. It has always felt that way. Heavy or light, but nothing wasn’t committed to a long term memory store.

Her heavy steps down the small, musty hallway felt much like plank walk to a destined doom. She tried not to fidget. “Be open and calm” her voice whispered in her head. A green chair sat right outside the wooden and cracking door. She could here the muffle of a low moan voice behind it. It was non-distinguishable yet still completely frightening. She sat. The floor creaked as foot steps fell upon the wood floors, getting louder and more in synch with her heartbeat. She was unable to decipher the difference between them when the door opened.

She has always done things too quickly, made decisions feverishly. She moves at great speed. The grand and the minor. Her body shows the scars of the latter. In the space on her buttocks below her hip and above panty-line is a constant purple mound of dried blood cells, where her finger nails scraps the skin every time she rushes her pants off, even just to change. Her thumb-nails leave a mark of movements too quick to notice. This, like all her actions, is so fast the pain of their repercussions never quite hits soon enough.

Without saying a word, she made eye-contact first with Dr. Hank, a stout man, wearing glasses. Her first reaction was to hold her breathe, as historically, when coming across men that looked like east coast fisherman in corduroy elbow patched blazers. A man that looked like this, with a grey beard and shiny head, usually smelled like ketchup and faint fish-breath. They locked eyes, and he nodded her in.  She obeyed.

The room was dark and the blinds were cracked. She could see the trees being swung around in the Chicago wind. They looked lifeless and at the mercy of the stifling cold of nature, not unlike her near future. Two chairs were set up in front of an old English maroon leather beaded chair. A small non-matching desk was pushed against the window with a non-specific stack of books on its left corner. The entire room smelled like books, cheap aftershave and onions.

This already appeared dismal. Until she saw him, sitting in the chair with his back to her. He stood up, gave her a silent but grateful look and put his hand out. This was new. She couldn’t remember the last time she shook his hand, even an awkward, obligatory closed hand hug would have sufficed, or at least felt appropriate. The entire entrance felt too clinical. Foreign. She sat.

The general theme of their supervised encounter was laid out in almost outline form, yet Dr. Hank tried to seem nonchalant, and calming. This intention did not follow-through with such discomfort. Two people who haven’t even spoken in months, with a history of a lifetime in five odd years trying to be wiped clean, perfectly weaved in to an angle-less knot of closure. The sheer idea of it seemed preposterous, but then again, the entire foundation of their relationship had been deemed as such, so she stayed focused on being open.

Dr. Hank: So, Safina, tell me about you.

Safina: I’m not sure I understand what you are asking?

Dr. Hank: However you would like to understand it is fine. Just respond, however makes you comfortable.

Nick is sitting nervously with one leg bent, his foot resting on the knee of his right leg. His hand is up to his mouth, covering it, almost as if he is signaling her to both speak and say nothing at the say time.

Safina: Ahhh, see that is what I truly loathe about therapy, all the pre-meditated, cue-giving, all the open questions and answers. It’s like you are steering something, but without a wheel.

Dr. Hank makes a point not to nod, or make any kind of gesture. Just piercing and open eyes under his bushy grey, surprisingly frantic eyebrows.

Safina: Okay, the concise version in your speak. (She sits back in her chair uncrosses and re-crosses her legs, looking to Nick for some kind of supportive or curious encouragement. He is motionless aside from the quick bobbing of his foot.) I am a classic text book case of abandonment. My mother left me emotionally years before she did physically, and now, in her age and “wisdom” (Safina motions quotations with her hands) she is incessantly and quite self-servingly apologizing for her absence, and happy agreeing that she was an awful mother, only justifying all my hatred for her and even more my disgust in her boundless ability to be selfish. 

That coupled with my father who was an incredible man, but due to his child trauma growing up used boundaries everywhere…I can count the times he hugged me in my life on one hand. His fear of crossing the line left him constantly standing behind one. I grew up with his over-criticisms which I took with great pride as a sign he cared about me.

Thus, I have been on a path seeking men just like him, looking for patriarchs. (Her eyes land on Nick so heavy he looks away, and then she aims them back at Dr. Hank without the slightest of movement of her actual head.) All that plus boarding school and freedom at 15 fantastically has brought me to the be the person I am now. Again, obvious, so forgive me if I am boring you with typical conclusions.

Dr Hank: Do you feel “typical”?

Safina: It’s settled then,  I am A-typical.

...To be continued in "Part 2: Dialogue: I'd rather shatter than stand untruthful to my soul. I'd rather bleed to thrive than be stoic to survive." 

Shit Storms, Art forms, The Unforseeable and The Love You Mores...

On Shit storms, art forms, the unforeseeable, and the "I love you mores."

or we can call it:  "Stuff I've learned in therapy."

For more: "Lulu Says: Words from Life"

A short story on being published: “A Father Indirectly Validates A (wo)man, Unimpressed."

 “A  Father Indirectly Validates a (wo)man, unimpressed.”

“I’ve never ever in my life been more sure my father has his hand in this.” I felt it, almost like seeing it: My entire body became delicate and collapsed in on itself. “Of course.” (Choked on the epiphany) “Of course, he was. He was here. Always has been. I’m certain. Even that sliver of me that doubted my memories, and secretly questioned if I wasn’t embellishing as I so innately sometimes do. No, THIS. This is he. It’s how he would have been.” My tears and the extra mucus now filling my sinuses make my giggle sound more like a snort.

“I can see it perfectly. Me running to him, teenager full of audacity and pride:

 ‘Look! I’m published! Not just once, but three times in four days, dad!’

He would look at me. Hold my eyes and watch me squirm with anticipation. Knowing that he, who his whole life has told me to follow my passions and make myself independent, would look at me.

“I’m not making enough to support a family yet, but the payment is exposure! I’m literally on the front page of the Sports section! They posted it an hour after I submitted.”

I would say this convincing him of something he hasn’t questioned, revealing my own self-doubt.

He would look at me very still and quiet with a smile that always seemed like the beginning of a laugh or a mocking smirk, the two almost impossible to differentiate.

As I spoke these words to JS , my body would react exactly in moments precisely like the one I’m describing, my body abuzz, agitated and excited, chills flaring my skin and hair.

 “It’s a big deal, dad. It is. I mean National. The whole town of haters, forced along with my sister to read, not just hear from me. I am going to be a writer!”

I burst out with a tone that feigns joy and appears like the fact to both of us, persuading pride, not resounding it.

I could hear his voice with a vibration and sound I can’t describe to anyone and as only my heart can hear it.

“Lulu, Were you not a writer before this (he’d always minimize) little website took your work for a nominal fee?” 

And there it would be. The truth. The seeming disappointment I was always lead to with him.

No. I know something new now. I’ve pulled back the curtain of a child’s perspective and I can see clearly. His was a position of teaching me. He was teaching me that I was enough. That I always was, could be, and would be…enough. By no name or validation from outside myself. It was the lesson he constantly wrote out in different tones of disinterest, or being unimpressed. The opposite of  what “Baby Boomers” so often do these days.

As a mother, a parent, a human being having lived and loved and lost so much, I see. He was probably covering his mouth to whisper to his own mother, my grandmother, Maryam. He told her of the business plan I wrote at 18, to propose my moving to Sydney. He pointed to me when I would affably approach strangers with kindness and beguiling charm as a child.

He (and this is where I really lose it on the therapists couch)  is staring at me now. Seeing me as a mother, watching me fumble and try.  Almost laughing like a parent does when a child discovers something so simple for the first time. An ability to walk, the first time her motor-skills master the pincer grasp, a boy thinking he could never win a girls smile only to find the surprise of a love-note in his locker. My dad with his mother is pointing now, saying: 

“FINALLY.”

I told JS in way less words than I write here, that he was the father who, when I sent him an email about my getting a thirty percent raise at my first job, and how unheard of it was….he responded: 

“I’m glad they are acknowledging your value to them as a company, but remember Lulu that however good you are, how fast or smart, there is always someone better, faster or smarter.”

 Then he signed it: 

“Good luck and be happy, Dad.” 

I laughed telling JS this. Not just because it is SO him, just like this situational hilarity of my life as it stands, but because I know the quote. He left out the best part! The most inspiring part of his hacked-up mis-quote was  Churchill ending it all with “But never stop trying!”

With this, JS laughs with me. I’m a puddle. I am a wreck; but so sweetly so that even I can
feel it. Clarity doesn’t arrive in epitaphs from God onto stone atop of  a scenic cliff. It doesn’t sing to you with angelic voices. Nope. Mine hit me in my therapist’s office, talking about my chiropractor, who also does genius energy work, merely telling me he was “proud of me.” The revelation I had was messy and hairy and strange. It was not a beaming light shedding golden hue on a new pathway, it was a trip, stumble and then slow-motion cartoon-style rapid movement-attempt to NOT fall, that caught me off guard.

Of course my said dream of being recognized wouldn’t fulfill me and make everything whole. My life is in pieces. Instead it reminded me, or maybe that’s too much of a stretch even. It was finally, after decades of hoping and trying and rejection letters, and unfocused gibberish trying to sound enlightened, that I stood back, looked around, heard the echoing silence and kind words of maybe four people?  It was then, and only then that I saw what he did. The lively, confident, very full of self-belief girl. 

I saw that I had it - and always have had it. Two things of which I need no permission or conclusive opinion in mass. I will finally figure out how to make my passion a profession. And as  important : I won’t fail at parenting. Not even in my lowest moments of doubt and questioning how this is “my life,” I will always, with the conviction of a  woman who as a child was given so many very valuable gifts and lessons, impart less harshly and with far more compassion such strength in my own kids. 

He has always been here, and he prepared me for this, the longest, most convoluted, winding, U-turn riddled road to myself.