Page 47 of All That Remains
“I…” I faltered, pushing stray hairs behind my ears. “It might mean…I’d end up alone? It sort of makes me feel alienated, I guess. It makes me feel that if people knew thetruthabout how I think or what I think…they wouldn’t…y’know…they wouldn’t like to be around me. They might think I was mental, or sick in the head or something.”
“It’s ok,” she assured me when I grimaced. “We’re just working through some of those rigid presuppositions.Internalizedcore beliefs.”
I nodded and she continued.
“So, you’ve come to think of her overmuch by denying yourself the opportunity to think of her at all without self-ridicule. You’ve fallen into a mental paradox,thinkingaboutnot thinking. And you’ve accomplished this by making yourself feel ashamed of contemplating things you cannot help. Punishing yourself for experiencing things that are beyond your power to control.”
"I don’t think I follow?"
“You see, Rafe, in limiting yourself fromfeeling, and by censoring yourself fromexpressing, you have given her every bit of the control you sought to maintain.”
“H-how?”
“Surely it would require far more effort torememberherand not to speak, than it does to allow those thoughts free reign, air them out, and create an opportunity for you to move past them.”
“But..." I puzzled. "How can I do that without letting him take over? Without feeling overwhelmed?”
“Think of herfreely, without restraint, without apprehension of the consequences to come. You simply need toprocess. Allow your mind time to process the thought. Let it run its natural course. The fear and evasion of the thought is what makes it a recurring one. You must face it head-on and defeat it.”
She reached over and patted my hands, which were trembling atop my lap. I wrung them to hide the tremors.
“Tell me everything,” she whispered. “Let go, Rafe. You’re safe here, you know that. She can't hear you, she can't get to you.”
I choked up, hiding my face behind my hand and weeping unreservedly. I was an idiot. When you've spent so much time isolated with loathsome truths, afraid to make one false move lest it upend your life or the life of another, it was difficult to feel sane.
“I can’t…”
“Youcan. I know you're exhausted. Take your time if you must. But in the meantime, tell me what you’re feeling right now.”
“It just…fucking…hurts,” I managed, balling my hands into fists and hammering my head.
“Don't punish yourself,” she said, firmly. “I know it hurts, but itcanbe endured. Sometimes the pain may be too fresh, toorelevant to contemplate. So why don’t we start at the beginning? As far removed from the trauma as possible?”
I swallowed thickly and faced forward, unable to look at her anymore. If I was actually going to revisit it all, I needed to avoid being unnerved by her stare.
“It was just supposed to be one night...” I began, staring entranced out the window behind the desk.
17
Modes of thought, Naomi would always say. If there is one phrase I remember from the countless hours we'd spent together since 2016, it was this. These modes shaped our thoughts over time, and inevitably our actions and relationships. Since meeting him and allowing him to run roughshod over my existence, he inhabited my every mode of thought. I now viewed life through a post-Rome lens, incapable of recalling who I was before he intercepted my world.
As I left therapy, I got a text from an unknown number. It simply read: "Hey." I knew who it was right away. Still, I replied, "Hey, who is it?"
"Roman."
Fuck’s sake,it was happening. I climbed into John’s Land Rover and kept quiet about the text. After he finished ranting about Jen overflowing the toilet because she used unflushable makeup wipes, I replied to Rome.
"How are you?"
Rome: "Good. You?"
Rome: "I missed you."
My heart leapt. He’d doubled-messaged. Just like old times.Had he missed me already? From just last night? Something came unhinged. I was keyed up, ready to hurl. Bile percolating, beginning to climb.
At last, I replied: "Yeah, you too. It was really good seeing you again."
Rome: "Free tomorrow? Wanna catch up?"
