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“What?” Oh, the smile had disappeared again.
“Relax, best friend. He still hangs out with my parents. I don’t see him.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” He took a right, and looked over at her once. Twice. “Your parents still hang with your ex-boyfriend? Seriously?”
“Seriously! Isn’t that wild? I didn’t think that was messed up until recently.”
He blinked hard and returned his attention to the road ahead of them. “How could you not see that was messed up?”
“Dance break,” she said breathlessly. “Can I have this water bottle? I’m parched.”
He chuckled and nodded as she pulled an unopened water bottle from the cupholder and chugged half of it. “That was a workout,” she admitted.
“Yeah, you were all the way in it. Just full-tilt dance mode. The ex-boyfriend?”
“Oh. Right. Well, I think when you are in a toxic family relationship, you learn to put up with things over time. My parents had explained how heartbroken they were when we broke up, and how much they loved him, but looking back, I think they mostly loved him because he kept me in line with them. They were always this little…team.” She scrunched up her face. “I should know better. I’m educated in the mind, you know? I’m a therapist. I should’ve seen what was happening to me every time I advised a client to cut contact with relationships that were doing the same things to them. But with my family stuff, I was a little blinded. Or numb, maybe? Just used to it.”
He turned down the volume, and she noticed he leaned a little more toward her, like he was intently listening. With a shrug, she admitted, “I had grown up wanting a family like the ones on TV. The relationship was so choppy, and I was always the problem. As hard as I tried to be their version of perfect, they were always looking for things I did wrong. But, looking back, the things they thought were wrong were just parts of me, and not wrong to me.”
“Was it hard to cut them off?” he asked quietly.
She thought about it before she answered. “Not as hard as I always thought it would be. I had tried so hard for so many years to get them to love me in a way that was healthy, and to be supportive. I was exhausted when I finally hit that last straw,you know? I think when I cut them off, I was hurt, and crying pretty often, and questioning myself for the first few months, but then I felt something change. I felt relief. No one was dragging me down anymore, and I was figuring out who I was without someone telling me who I should be. Between my parents and my ex, they had this checklist of who they wanted me to be. When I strayed from that, they would get together, talk shit, and have family meetings telling me everything I was doing wrong that was unacceptable. After the cut-off, I didn’t have to sit in family meetings where the people who were supposed to protect me preached about what an abomination of a woman I was being. The only negative person I had talking in my ear was me.”
“What do you mean? Why would you be negative?”
“Because that’s how chronic emotional turmoil works. You don’t just snap back to the person you were supposed to be after you cut ties to toxic people. That part of my healing process surprised me. It was a long time of my mother’s voice being the biggest voice in my head, putting me down, putting me down, putting me down. And then when her voice faded, in a way, I stepped up and replaced her negative voice with my own, because I didn’t know how to exist without that hater in my head.”
Wreck made a soft grunting sound, like he understood, or like she’d said something profound.
“I’m probably boring you—”
“Not at all. The things you say make sense. You’re really good at saying your feelings out loud. It’s a rare thing. You seem to really know yourself.”
“You have to get to know yourself when you sit alone with yourself for that long,” she said softly.
“What was the last straw?” he asked.
“We don’t have to talk about this boring stuff, you know. We can go back to me teaching you some of my groovy dance moves.”
“I like your dance moves. I like when you talk like this just as much. I’ve been thinking about the things you said about your family.”
She didn’t understand the interest. There were lots of families that were destructive. She wasn’t special.
“What was the last straw?” he asked again.
These memories weren’t her favorite, and honestly she tried not to think on them too much. “Ummm, a couple years ago, they invited the woman they had tried to adopt, and my ex, to their family Christmas celebration.” She pursed her lips. “I wasn’t invited.”
“Whaaat the hell,” he ground out, and now the cab of his truck heated to an uncomfortable temperature. She rolled down the window to let some fresh air in, and he muttered, “Sorry. Give me a minute.”
He was quiet for a few minutes though, and the temperature was slow to come down.
“Everything is okay,” she said, trying to help. She slipped her hand across the console and rested it on his forearm without thinking. His skin was hot, but not like before. Still, she flinched back as she remembered the burn on her arm. Once she realized he wasn’t burning her, she slid her hand to the inside of his elbow and massaged little circles. “I’m happier now.”
“I can hear the truth in your voice at that admission,” he said in a gravelly voice.
“See? Everything happens for a reason. The communication died off after that, and they seemed happier, too. They don’t reach out either. We all just kind of distanced, and they kept the family they wanted intact. They have my sister, Sasha, who is good at being understanding with both sides, andmy ex, and the adoptive daughter they’d always wanted. Me leaving the family made sense for everyone.”
“I haven’t seen my mom in years,” he said suddenly.
