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“Your words of affirmation and positivity lift me up every time we speak,” I told her, trying to contain the laughter and failing.
She was one of the few people who knew I was not just the happy and friendly person I was with most people. This was, after all, the same woman who had found me being led up her front walk with a police escort because of one of the many crimes I’d committed as a hurt, lashing-out teenager. It was difficult to hide just how much of a pain in the ass you could be from someone after that.
“So, what did she get on your case about?” she finally asked once she was done laughing at me.
“Oh, she thinks I’m…” I hesitated, trying to find the best way to summarize things for her. “Well, I guess, holding myself back ever since Rita passed.”
“Ah,” she said, the humor gone from her voice instantly. “Well, what do you think?”
“If I knew what to think, I wouldn’t be calling you to tell you,” I told her honestly.
“That’s true,” she said simply as if it were that easy. I suppose it was that easy for her. Out of all the kids who’d kept in contact with her over the years, she and I always got along the best. The same independent streak in me lay in her, making it easy for us to understand one another. I would bet she knew I wouldn’t call her with something like this unless I well and truly wanted another opinion. “Though I can’t say I disagree with her.”
“Somehow I thought you wouldn’t,” I said with a sigh.
Diane snorted roughly, never caring about dignity or grace. “Oh sweetheart, you’ve been a little heartbroken after Rita, and why wouldn’t you be? I’ve always wondered what made you choose a career that made you face a constant reminder of what you dealt with as a child.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Well, you lost so much in such a short time. Then you chose a career that forced you to connect to people, knowing you had a good chance of losing them. I’ve never been able to connect the two, even though I know there is one. But at the end of the day, you did love this Rita woman, and her death, well, it’s knocked you off-balance. Anyone who pays attention to you can see that.”
It wasn’t the first time she, or someone else, had wondered why I’d chosen the career I had. Even I couldn’t explain why, only that I had somehow slipped into it and found a place that worked for me. My job certainly led to a great deal of personal heartbreak, but I couldn’t picture myself doing anything else. Maybe I was trying to make up for things in my past that I had no control over, or maybe it was my way of making peace with it.
Either way, the ‘why’ was probably better left up to experts.
“I’m not depressed,” I told her, quick to defend myself. One of the biggest reasons I had always been wary of her initially was that she was a child and pre-teen-focused therapist. The last thing I needed was the idea that the woman in charge of taking care of me was also interested in prying into my head.
“No, not depressed,” she agreed readily, making me believe her. “But you’ve certainly been…in the gray zone.”
It was a familiar term she had used with me for as long as I’d known her. The gray zone was the space between depression and healthy mental space. It was where you weren’t quite in the colorless world of depression, but you weren’t yourself either. People tended to slip into the gray zone more than they realized, something I had seen all too often with my patients and their families.
“Things haven’t been very gray to me,” I told her.
“No, but they never do when you’re there long enough. It’s the human condition, sweetheart. We get used to what we have and don’t think anything has changed. It’s no different from being nose blind. You smell something long enough, your brain blocks out its importance, and it’s the same with emotions. You’ve…well…”
“What?” I asked, knowing that whatever she wanted to say was important, even if the habit of being careful was deeply ingrained in her.
“So much of your life has been marked by mourning and grief. Two things you’ve always struggled to rid yourself of, so why wouldn’t you struggle now?”
“This is starting to feel like a therapy session,” I grumbled, glancing up as the man across from me grabbed another cigarette from his pack. I felt a flash of yearning and was tempted to ask if I could borrow one. Four years of practice allowed me to shove the urge aside.
“Well, it is a little,” Diane admitted with a chuckle. “But strictly off the books.”
“Are you allowed to do your shrink thing with friends and family? I could report you for this.”
“I’m sure the board would be amused to hear that my son was reporting me for being a mother.”
“You just admitted it was a therapy session!”
“Yes, because separating the mother and the therapist in me isn’t as simple as hitting a switch.”
“Well, it should be,” I said with a huff.
“Remember when I got that nasty bug last year?”
“Uh, yes, you were out of it for like four days.”
“And you called Tony every day with instructions on how to properly care for me and what signs he needed to look out for in case I grew worse?”
