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Chapter Fifteen
Although Mark had given me no tangible reason to feel this way, I couldn’t shake the sensation that something was off the next day. Which was ridiculous. We’d made a plan, and he’d answered all of my questions logically about his house and telling our friends about our relationship.
Which meant the problem had to be me. That I hadn’t fully accepted I deserved this second chance and worried Mark would wake up one morning realizing he’d made a mistake. It was this unexplainable insecurity which had me knocking on Dr. Mac’s door for a long overdue appointment.
The older gentleman with kind eyes and a graying beard answered the door and then ushered me into his beautiful home. “Hi, Juliette. I was happy to get your phone call this morning.”
“Yes. Well, thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”
“Of course. Right this way into my office. Can I get you coffee, tea, water?”
“Oh, no, nothing for me, or I’ll have to pee, probably at the most enlightening moment ever.” Ugh. Nerves were already getting the best of me as I was completely over-sharing.
He chuckled. “I understand and can only hope for such a moment. Now, then, take a seat. Tell me what brings you here today.”
I took a deep breath. “I think I can’t let myself be happy. Almost as though I don’t think I deserve it. And I’m worried I’ll end up sabotaging this new relationship with a man who is so very good to me. Who wants a future with me and my son. Who makes me feel like—Gah, I can’t even describe it. I think my past keeps making me wonder if I’m good enough. Keeps me questioning when it’s going to turn. It’s as if something is off, but I can’t put my finger on it, which probably means it’s me and my neurosis.”
He blinked at me before adjusting his glasses. “All of that is good information. But how about you start at the beginning? Take your time and tell me about yourself and this past you referenced.”
So I did. For the next thirty minutes in a continuous upchuck of information.
During it all, Dr. Mac simply made some notes and posed a few questions. Once it was all laid out for him, he set his pen down and met my eyes.
“Hearing about your history helps me get the entire picture and understand you better. If you don’t take anything else from this session, what I want you to hear is how very proud of yourself you should be for getting out of your marriage when you did. For making that decision for your son and leaving.”
A single tear tracked down my face. “But why did I stay so long? How did I get so low that I put up with it? That wasn’t me. At least not the me I pictured myself to be.”
“The short answer would be because you’d been with him since you were sixteen. The man he started to become was so very shocking that you were stunned in place. Another theory could be because your own father left your mother to raise you and your sister alone, and you didn’t want Tristan to grow up the same way.”
Wow. This psychoanalysis stuff went deep and way back. “I never considered my childhood might be coming into play.”
“You can spend hours, days, months trying to figure out what led to your decisions, thought processes, and reactions, but is it worth doing that? Because if I’m hearing you correctly, despite everything you’ve been through, it got you to this place which you’re saying is pretty good.”
“It is, but then why can’t I shake this feeling that something will go wrong?”
“Because fear is a powerful thing. You have something you don’t want to lose. Once you’ve been through heartache, the stakes are always higher for the next relationship. I don’t want you dwelling on what you could’ve or should’ve done differently in your marriage. What I do want to encourage is for you to learn to forgive yourself. I think there is a part of you that is still questioning what you could’ve done differently that would have made the marriage work.”
He’d hit the nail on the head. “What if it was partially my fault, though? What if I made him so unhappy he turned to drugs to cope? Or drove him to become this other person?” This question came from a dark place that until now, I hadn’t been able to vocalize.
“This is where you have to remember when he started using the pain killers. After he sustained an injury. You didn’t cause the injury. If you continue along with this logic, you’ll see he left behind everything he loved for the drugs. You, his son, and even the police force. He became an addict in the truest sense. Nothing mattered but his next hit. Not his family, not his career, not the law and, ultimately, not his life.”
“You’re right. And the logical part of my brain believes that.”
“Then you need to focus on those thoughts. Walk yourself through the logic whenever you start to go down the other road. Understand that from this experience you are stronger, wiser and, most importantly, will never settle again. From the sounds of it, you’ve found someone who builds you up.”
“He does, but he’s also damn near perfect.” Don’t say Mark’s name, don’t say Mark’s name.
“Ah. Is he? Are you saying he doesn’t ever make mistakes?”
I thought of how many times Mark had apologized for not getting things right and smiled. “No, he has. It’s been a long time since he’s been in a relationship, and we, uh, fumbled at first. I suppose we’ll keep on fumbling to a certain degree.”
“Do you think if you got your degree, cursed less, or lost those ten pounds you mentioned as being part of your Juliette 2.0 plan, he’d want you more?”
I thought about it a second but ended up sure in my answer. “No. I don’t think he cares about any of that except for supporting me in what makes me happy. But I do want to get my degree, regardless. Although I need to take a simpler math class next time.”
“Then you should do that. But for yourself. For your goals, not because you think it’ll make you more worthy of someone’s love or affection. You’ve been through a lot, Juliette, but it doesn’t define you. It shapes you, and therein lies the difference.”
I nodded, agreeing with what he was saying.
