I fly to a treatment center in Arizona to attend an emotional trauma workshop called Survivors. Survivors “delves into childhood trauma that impacts current day life…[it] explores the origins that fuel self-defeating behaviors such as addictions, trauma, mood disorders, and troubling relationships.”
My flight takes off on a warm Sunday evening in May. I kiss my husband, Pat and my two kids goodbye and roll my suitcase out of my house, the sound of the wheels on the pathway clunky and loud. I am determined and resolute in my thinking: I will not speak to her. I will not talk to her. I will cure myself of the ailment of the affair.
I am unsettled by everything I experience: the crowd in the airport, the candy shop across from my gate, scrolling my Instagram feed – every action and inaction feels punctuated and tarry. I land in the dark night of Tucson and ride a shuttle to my rent car; I have an hour and a half drive to the treatment center down, and when I get there scratchy neon lights of the motel sign flicker down as I shut my rental car door.
I get my key and pass the turquoise pool, lit-up in the night, and I pick up my suitcase to walk up to the second floor. My room is right here, at the top of the stairs, and as I slide the key into the slot, I take in the surreal nature of this moment: I’m in a town in Arizona, by myself. I’ve recently had a heated affair with a woman I cannot stop thinking about. I have a husband and children I’ve left in Texas so I can…what? Get better? Be cured? Stop dicking around? Not be a lunatic?
*
Monday morning in Arizona I am in a multi-purpose room with teenagers and middle-aged women. There are a scattering of males, most of them young boys. Several haphazard rows of chairs are lined up facing a screen with a presentation set to its title page. I’m in the back row with an open notebook on my lap. I click and unclick my pen; I can’t figure out how to take myself seriously in this sea of addicts and teenagers. I’m a Mom, I keep thinking to myself. I have two children.
Two women lead us through a lecture on trauma, abuse, the adapted child, the functional adult, brain development. They stand with clickers in their hands, trained to deliver sensitive information to sensitive people. I try to listen to their descriptions of these words – trauma, abuse. I process the blunt logic of what they are saying, veering off when they start using the word “cortex” a bunch of times.
At the end of the lecture the women inform us that during this workshop we will learn to re-parent ourselves, to release negative emotions, to address the wounds of our childhood. I listen to these promises with a sense of hope for the others in the room. I bet this works! I think to myself, and, I hope everyone here gets what they need! But I don’t know how to consider this information for myself, and I worry I’m in the wrong place. I know some low-grade trauma, but what does that have to do with my very confusing affair?
I’m given a packet to be completed by the next morning.
“Bring it to your group tomorrow,” the woman announces. “It will be handed in to your therapist.”
When I get in my car it smells like burnt carpet. It’s so hot I almost can’t register the temperature, and I wonder if I’m actually cold. I stare at the steering wheel for a second and then peel off my thin outer shirt; I enter “Whole Foods” in my navigation and decide to make the hour plus drive to kill the afternoon. I’m buying tulips in Arizona, alone. What the fuck is happening? It’s not only the temperature I can’t register – my numb disassociation is following me throughout this whole foreign state. I get back in the car and chain smoke with the windows down, letting the hot, dry air both scorch and soothe my skin.
*
Back in my motel room, I open the packet and revisit my childhood with a focused lens. When did you feel unsafe? List every time. Who was your mother? What was she like. Who was your father? What was he like. When did you feel noticed, valuable, forgotten, discarded? Describe what you wore and how long your hair was. What were your teachers’ names? Did you have any activities you enjoyed? Friends you played with? I spend over an hour at the desk in my room, writing my childhood summary, my feet tucked under my butt, my fingers stiff and tired.
I come to the final task: write a letter to the caregivers who let you down. Let out your thoughts, your feelings. Tell them what you needed, prepare to read these letters out loud. I write Mom’s first, the words pouring out of me without pause. The letter is sad, but I don’t cry; the sentiment is painful, but I don’t wince. I’m used to talking about mother’s mistakes and honestly, I’m sick of it. Talking about my mom is all I’ve ever done. I wait for thunder to sound, lightening to strike – to be suddenly enlightened by something, anything, but all I do is set down my pen and reread the letter for typos before moving on to my Dad’s.
I’m on the verge of tears as soon as my pen starts moving, and the feeling doesn’t abate the entire time I write to Dad. When I call Pat to read him both letters, I can’t get through Dad’s letter without my voice cracking several times. My sadness is whipping – why is it so strong, so harsh?
My small-group therapist is a middle-aged, soft-spoken woman with short hair and wiry glasses. She constantly wipes her nose with a tissue and takes slow notes with her pen. I remember everything about her except her name. I hear the way she says “yeah…” in a hushed, compassionate tone. I feel her deliberate silence as we cry and squirm and resist the work. I sense I am not her favorite nor her least favorite of the group, but squarely in the middle, forgettable this way. I like this woman but…barely. This could be purposeful – to be likable but dry, kind but not too warm. We need to trust her enough to guide us, but not so much she becomes a distraction, another adult we want to please.
The room’s windows are covered by blinds and there’s a floor lamp in the corner and a lamp on the desk where the therapist sits. There are blankets in baskets and stuffed animals we can hold onto. There is no overwhelming smell of any kind. Feelings-words posters and watercolored landscapes are taped on the walls. One could almost call the room cozy, if cozy was an available feeling at a treatment center.
I sit with five other women in a semi-circle. The six of us are strangers, but we are bound.
I introduce myself to the group sheepishly, embarrassed at my vanilla background and seemingly normal life. “I am a mother of two. I am married to a man who loves me. I have never overdosed, been raped or assaulted, and my record is clean.”
However: I have crawled into the lap of female who kisses my lips and looks into my eyes. She validates who I am and I do not know how to leave her smooth thighs and green eyes to return to the life I had before her.
Within my suffering these past several months, I’ve maintained the position that I have no right to feel wronged, or upset, or to complain. This stems from an insecurity that my background doesn’t truly warrant therapy, that my situation is not worthy of compassion. There are so many horrific examples and stories of real hardship, and I just don’t qualify. It all seems so navel gazey: poor me, a pretty girl who wishes her parents had taken better care of her.
I went to private school and wore designer clothes and played on the field of the top percent. My husband will drop everything to make me pasta carbonara if I have a bad day (or he used to, anyway), and I have two healthy daughters I birthed easily, with no complications. My parents even call and check on me, for fuck’s sake. What right do I have to be such a goddamn mess?
I use my gratitude list against me – Callie v. Callie style. I don’t deserve anyone’s pity. I’m weak, for not being able to be happy and healthy. I need get my shit together and be grateful for what I have.
But at Survivors, I learn that gratitude won’t save me, and pity is not what I need.
*
In the afternoon we take turns describing ourselves as children, and I feel a pressure deep in my ribs. It’s new, this sensation, like my mind is forming a radical thought and my body is responding in sync. I picture myself as little, my little self. I had brown bangs, big brown eyes, I was tall, I liked to wear knee-high socks and I had freckles on my cheeks. I do it without sarcasm, or resentment, or skepticism. I really see in my mind’s eye Callie as a girl. She’s right here, the pure beauty of her, the sad innocence. The pressure in my middle builds.
“Those little girls are in here,” the therapist says, gesturing around the room. “They’re in you,” she says, flattening her hand over her chest. “We must acknowledge what they need.
”“Fuck,” I whisper to myself, and I rub the ball of my hand over my heart.
When the day is over I am less numb, more heavy. I have opened myself to a new understanding that I was little; I’ve brought to my conscious mind that I was a child. I was a girl, just like the one I have at home. I picture my daughter, her long brown hair and her rosy soft cheeks, the dimples on the tops of her hands and the way she cocks her head to the side when she’s considering something. I picture what happened to me, happening to my daughter. I see her watch me as I stay up all night smoking, drinking, sleeping with men who are not her father; I see her stand to the side during my violent arguments with my boyfriend. I look at her leg after I’ve manically hit it with a phone, and her eyes after I’ve been cruel to her. I imagine her father leaving her, not knowing when he’ll be back. I observe her at dinner tables trying to be a certain kind of quiet, a certain kind of behaved, so that I won’t drink too much.
I feel her haunting confusion of loving an addict, how she loves them, so much, but she hates how their volatile behavior breaks her young heart.
I picture all this, and the ache is full-bodied.
*
The third day is the empty chair exercise. There were hushes of this day earlier in the week – it’s the day when you invite your caregiver or person of harm into the room. You use their name, you act like it’s really happening. The person sits in the chair across from you, and the therapist guides you as you speak to this phantom. You outline each harm, name the pain, directly confront the person who has hurt you the most. You say things from your letter, from other paperwork you’ve filled out, from the sessions with the therapist the day before. As you do this, you hold a box of tissues in your lap, and at the end of the exercise you pull out tissues one by one, tossing them on the ground and releasing yourself from the burden you’re carrying, given to you by the person sitting in the chair.
*
My voice trembles as I let Mom in the room. “Mom, please come in and have a seat.” I see her short blonde hair take a seat across from me. I see her mad face, lips pursed, head tilted in defense. She crosses her arms and leans back into the chair. What is this is about? she says. She’s put-out, bristly. “Mom, I need to talk to you.”
There’s a rock in my throat I can’t swallow down.
The girls in this room with me are dead silent, like they’ve been put on mute; the therapist speaks to my mother from her chair next to me.
“Mrs. Arnold, thank you for coming today. Callie has some things she needs you to hear.” She looks at me.
“Callie, are you ready to speak?”
I’m nodding; I’m trying to swallow the rock down.
“It’s okay, take your time,” the therapist reassures me. The room is sad; they’re sorry I have to do this.
I take a breath, and out it comes:
“Mom,” I’m so mad at you. I’m mad you couldn’t be like other moms. I’m mad you had asthma attacks, and you couldn’t figure it out with Dad. I’m mad you lied and did drugs and put me in harm’s way. I’m so fucking mad at you.
You hurt me, you yelled at me, you fought with everyone in your life. You scared me when you stayed up all night and slept all day. I was always worried you were going to die. From drugs or drinking or coughing. And I had to take care of Sam – I had to raise Sam. And Sam is honestly so fucked up now, and so am I. I wanted you to be healthy. To be normal. I needed you.
“I needed you, and you weren’t there.”
A village of tears streams off my face onto the tops of my legs.
“Yeah…that’s it. Good job,” the therapist is nodding. “Good job, Callie.”
*
When I invite Dad in the room, I read him his letter. Dad is kinder to me; he doesn’t huff in or want to leave. He feels badly, for what has happened, and I feel badly, for what I have to tell him.
“Dad,” Where were you? Why weren’t you there? You were busy drinking, or having your own life, or being sad about…I don’t even know. But you should have protected me, and you didn’t. I was always trying to be good, to make you happy, to not ask for too much. To not ask for anything. I thought if I was good, you would come for me. And I’ve tried so hard not to be mad at you, not to see your wrongdoing.
“I’ve tried so hard not to lose the little you gave me.”
*
I pull out tissues and throw them from my chair; they float above the ground, hovering in the air before landing. There is a tenderness to the way the tissues move around, a dance of softness to oppose the hard truths I’ve hurtled outward.
“This is yours, Mother. It is not mine, Dad.”
“Take it. Take it back. Fuck you. I hate you. I love you…but I can’t. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t hold any of this, anymore.”
I lean towards them. I want their arms around me.“I’m sorry,” I tell them.
“I’m sorry for everything.”
*
The solace that comes from unloading my pain holds for the rest of the day. I am lighter in my steps, emboldened by releasing the truth out loud. I call Pat as soon as I’m done and tell him how it went. “I’m proud of myself, I think,” I tell him. “It felt hard, but good.” He sighs with relief. “Babe, I’m so glad for you, for this update. I thought of you all day.”
I don’t drive that evening, instead I take a walk at sunset with my headphones on, listening to Annie Lennox as the sky turns orange.
I’m going to be okay, I think for the first time in months.
Everything is going to be okay.
When the night comes, the high wears off; I want to zip back up. My fingers twitch, my breath shortens. The sky is now black. My hope was like my parents in the room, fleeting and imagined.
The next morning I sit through the rest of the empty chair exercises in my group, trying to ignore the flighty urge I have to flee this room, this treatment center, this town. My hands fidget in my lap and I keep losing focus on the girls throwing tissues on the ground.
On my last night in the desert I book a flight for the following day. I’m meant to leave in the late afternoon after a closing session with the group, but I tell my therapist I have a sick child and skip the final session, driving to the airport instead. I fly back to Dallas, Elle picks me up, and I don’t go home to Pat until late that night, planning my arrival time to when my original flight would have landed.
I’m inside a dark room I see clearly. This room is not joyful or loving; it does not bring prosperity or health. But it is mine to know. I have combed the corners and dusted the ground. I have stuck my hands out to find the walls and I’ve mazed my way through. Why leave this room, after working so hard to learn its trickery? Why give up a loyal relationship with the sorrow it holds?
I don’t give up right away. I don’t see the cracked door and walk out.
I see the cracked door and close it.
I’d rather be a master of pain, than a rookie of peace.
***
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Great piece. Love the raw honesty.