A Christmas Carol

 Wouldn't that be something? If I could create such an enduring story to last over a century, and given freedom by so many interpretations throughout the arts? No... this is simply a story of a lonely child, that became a lonely young adult who on very rare occasion, would become impulsive. This starts with an unkind admission that perhaps I knew only of "It's a Wonderful Life" through satire, before ever really watching the movie. That moment happened one Christmas Eve.

This is not a great story, and I am far from flattering as a main character. My girlfriend (engaged to a college-attending junior), was going away to meet her cousin and his family for Christmas. She asked me if I "would keep her closest and only friend company during Christmas because she will be alone." I said I would, and she handed me a slip of paper with Christine's phone number on it. It seemed obvious to me at the time that she was serious about this request. The mere thought of sharing a "sacred" holiday with someone I'd only briefly met, terrified me. My entire relationship with the girlfriend was terrifying enough.

Obviously, the story doesn't end here. Christmas Eve morning, I would have rathered done anything than the contemporary Christmas with my parents, and I left my body. I called the friend and asked her if she was open to "just doing a movie and having a meal together?" As I recall, my thought pattern at the time was akin to "putting a ball in her court" and "I can't be scolded for not doing what the girlfriend asked" - there also was a bravado about going outside the box that had worked successfully in attaining said girlfriend. My recollections about this moment are probably colored by my own lenses, much like my parent's ideas about my childhood. I did not expect this stranger to meet my bluff, she afterall was just a satellite in the solar system that was my girlfriend; "her anxieties are mine to a fault". Not only did she call the bluff, she told me to bring music, and what to get from the store. 

I was living in Tampa, Christine was on the edge of Seminole, right before you get to the intercoastal. I arrived at her house at dusk, she looked so much different than our brief encounter on the Publix bread aisle. Christine invited me in, and our sentences to one another were awkward and tight... she asked me to put on some music, and she alternated her time between the kitchen and sitting in the dark corner of the room opposite of me on the couch. I believe the house was hers, and her parents house was on the same property - but they were away for the holidays in Germany. I asked the obvious, "I don't think they really love one another anymore and it's just uncomfortable." The house looked and felt as heavily German as one could muster in a mid-century home on the edges of Seminole. This entire aspect of Christine was unfurling in front of me; her heritage via decor and paintings, her history as a ballerina, her features - blonde, fair, pallid. Vividly, I remember the sensation of being swooned by this young woman for no other reason than what my simplistic rationale could formulate into culture. But she was also, inescapably attractive to me. 

"Catastrophe Ballet" was not so much her thing, as much as the Dead Can Dance and This Mortal Coil she withdrew from her collection of records. On went "The Serpent's Egg", Jimmy Stewart now at a point of desperation; muted; our reason for meeting tonight. As dinner cooked, Christine would emerge with "Can I ask you a question?" - followed by my agreeable assurances, and then increasingly probing questions about my relationship with her best friend. This was at least my perception until I began to realize that I was being lead upon a path that was not the reality I arrived with. Christine must have thought me stupid at first, but then realized that my sincerity was rooted in ignorance and inexperience. We spent many hours together, throughout the incredible meal she made, and all three TMC albums until something between us shifted. I still don't know what happened; perhaps two fragile people finding hope in one another, perhaps sympathy mistaken for romantic feelings; perhaps two people under the weight of my gf finding a light she did not allow either of us to have? Yeah, it turns out the gf was as controlling of Christine as she was of me, only she had endured it throughout high school.

The following day, I called Christine, and asked if I could come over? She was taken aback, working on restoring some bookcases, she hadn't planned on company. I offered a gift. She agreed. I gave her the only thing I had been proud of up to that point in my life; a pencil drawing I had done of Andy Warhol, framed and ready to hang. I don't know what she truly thought of the gift, probably less impressed than I was, but we spent an evening together talking. Our discussion shifted to more intimate things, and she and I made out in the waning light of Christmas Day. I should mention how annoyed my mom was that I left on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day - it changed the dynamic of family Christmas from then on. Anyway, Christine invited me to stay the night, but did not want to extend intimacy beyond what we had already shared until after the girlfriend returned.

This is where I will end this tale. It isn't my finest hour. I think about Christine more often that I think about that gf. So many things changed that Christmas - in my head, I refer to it as my "Late Judy Blumer". To this day, I can imagine such an incredible life with Christine... she was so intelligent, and liked such amazing music, and was intrigued by me... not something I was accustomed to. But this is the moment in my life that I broke Christmas for my mom, and carved my first scar upon myself for my failures to do the right thing. I acted with my cock instead of my heart or mind - and I deserved the pain I received. Christine did not. The guilt from that moment should have been a life lesson, it wasn't. The "girlfriends" of the world bait my insecurities every time.

Christmas, "It's A Wonderful Life", they invite me to a different person, a different life; one I embraced and destroyed in the course of a few days. Reality crash in the most ironic way for my gf; but betrayal and a passage back under foot for Christine... or so I assume. Maybe it was enough for her to bail on the whole affair, no pun intended. It was my first intention to die... I remember that as well. My holidays - setting fire to the happiness and stepping out as a cruel after thought... how long until it works? Until either I win, or guilt wins? 

This Ascension - "Carol Of The Bells"

Don't Send Surveys to Dead People. Dead People Cannot Respond. A Therapy Defloration Story... or Therapy Madlibs For Wallflowers

 I have an email to send, later, after this post has been composed. It's going to a therapist; one that I spent an hour with yesterday. My procrastination comes as an innocent bystander, caught in war between my conscience, and my annoyance. This, having been my first ever therapy session, I am not sure what is demanded... if anything at all. I suppose a third option for such an individual is to hide until resolve takes the higher ground. Innocence, not quite, I am therefore conceding that the next person at post will have not benefitted from the awareness I didn't share with interested parties. Indeed - anger at my perceived and unvalidated notions that you should be reading me better than I am reading you. Shouldn't your expertise wield my body language like a crowbar to a coffin? Shouldn't my words hang like tethers that you pull until unwound? I do not know; you have not told me - but you did share that we are going to spend some time on a checklist that the clinic makes you complete during the first session. Our journey into Ron is not fluid or surreptitious; it's a halting, often stalling, jerky-kind of rollercoaster of defining, detailing, and saying the same things in a backwards walk through a thesaurus. If perhaps, I'd thought to bring a family tree, we may have shaved off a minute or two to talk about, trauma? I had a wild thought while staring off into the corner. As yes/no/who/when darts were thrown in my direction, I wondered how much easier, and less off-putting it would have been to maybe answer all these questions before my session... you know, on my "free to me" time. There were enough unrestrained brain cells to ponder my body language... 

"what's her body language?"

"Oh - I don't think I like that?" 

"I wonder what else this office is used for? There's two chairs, her chair, and a patient chair like you'd find in a medical clinic. The bright fluorescent lighting is not amiable to the therapy session I had in my head. Should I ask her if we can turn off the lights?"

"Jack, my step dad is Jack... Charlie is my real dad. Jack is the one that raised me my entire life." Sigh. "Oh, there's her body language firing up. I hear a different tone than before."

"This might be a good time to tell you that I believe I am on the spectrum." 

"Well, because I had numerous indicators as a child, and I recognize some of my adult tendencies to be aligned with possibly Asperger's Syndrome."

"Okay, we'll circle back to that?"

"Artist's Colony in CELO that was founded in the 60's, that's cool... can I guess that it's a lot of glassblowers and potters? Bet they have cool coffee mugs there." 

"No, sorry, Charlie, the real dad, he's dead. Jack - he's the one who married my mom and is still married to her. He married my mom AFTER Charlie married my mom. No - I'm not adopted. Yes, they are still alive. Jack and Mary are alive and still married."

"Oh, I should go to a CELO event and introduce myself to the artists. Yeah, that not really how..."

"Okay, you can't figure out how to send the link, maybe I should just take a picture of your notebook for the never time I go do this?"

My therapists words aren't coming so sharply now. In fact, if I answer with a "yes" to a question, I am then coached thru another list (an outline format if you will where clicking on said ailment opens a sublist of symptoms). We are losing the precious minutes, I'm confident someone timed themselves asking these questions to ensure it filled an entire 60-minute session. Again, these are things that a simple survey would've answered prior to our meeting, and we could have drilled down on the traumas beyond a simple; "did this happen?", "when?", "who?", "did this happen?", "when?"... you get the idea. Here's a thing no one told me to do... during our fluorescent endeavor into the surface psyche of the therapy virgin - I was supposed to be evaluating whether my trust in this stranger with a clipboard was swooning or drowning (because that's how it happens? 

"You be vulnerable, I check a box."

" - funny, you don't look like my manipulative first love? Frankly, she's probably still quite hot. I wonder how many syringes are in that orange box? Wouldn't it be kinda Clockwork Orange to bust that open and stab all of them into her neck? No - not adopted. We just moved a lot. I have some theories on why? Heroin. No, I'm not violent. Syringe. Hmmm." 

Wow - I just said out loud all the events that took 51 years to fuck me up. That was... unpleasant. This is what therapy is, right... saying ugly things that make you feel ugly to someone you don't know.

"I don't want to speak for you Doc, but I really like where this relationship is going. Not only do I get to hear about your therapist and how good she is, but I also get to know A vulnerability about you and the passing of your husband 12 years ago. Are we married now? We may have a problem."

I think we ran out of Madlib pages, because suddenly the notepad snaps shut and that "all-downhill rollercoaster" just left the tracks. Suddenly, like the thunderclap following a successful exorcism, the atmosphere of the room sucks in to a minutely tiny mass. It hovers and spins violently for a milli-second...just enough time to formulate awareness of the event, and then it explodes into a shrill force that expands aggressively, filling every surface of the room with the weight of a million suns. 

"You've shared several events from your life with me that I think I can help you manage. WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM THERAPY?"

"Huh, to receive it? How do I answer this? Just say some words that make sense."

"All of it?" "I'd like to seeing my way to thinking about stuff in a healthy way as opposed to allowing the last 50 years wreak havoc on my exhausted brain?"

"Okay, so I need you to figure out what you want therapy to do and when you figure that out, let's speak. Let me ask you this, do you trust me to be your therapist?"

"I can't answer that, I have no idea. I'm completely disassociated and fantasizing about stabbing you with dirty syringes, maybe that's a no?"

"Well - think about that as well, and if you want to see me again, make an appointment."

In summation. I haven't asked anyone yet, whom I know to have tried therapy what to make of this defloration. It feels a little like violation, but as a side-effect of having to do complete the checklist. Had we sat, and stared deeply into my soul, studying the intricacies of my analytical trauma - I do not believe my disposition on this event would be different. One of us should have been a saboteur, it should not have been me. Sure, you have the facts, but I got more than a little bit of your personality, and it's not romance I anticipated. Maybe it's the "there's 40 checkout lines and only 3 cashiers kind of vibe". 

"Did you ever love me, therapy person?" "Was I not witty enough?" "Are you not entertained?" "Maybe it's Frasier's fault?" "Honestly, I've always been in Lilith's camp."

I am not going back, and I now need to write a Dear Jane letter, "it's not you, it's me..." 

"Now that I think about it, we never did circle back on the autism, but Jack is exactly where he should be. And so is Bill - in there, throwing out the abuse swag. Oh yeah, that's why I hate DC."

So... I need to figure out some stuff. Was this normal? Do I need to know what I want from therapy? Is day 1, SATs? Is therapy like ordering a cake? My instinct says this was abnormal, and my therapist is just as happy that we won't be sharing a small medical office room in the future. I am not abandoning the journey simply because this was off-putting. But I need to find out if there's any validity in the one substantive question she asked, and if so, how do I encapsulate layers of traumatic events into a formulaic a + b = ? I feel kind of crazy (no pun intended) that I the victim of traumas should have enough understanding and awareness of unprocessed trauma on the brain after 45+ years, to say - please turn my trauma into an artistic masterpiece that I can live off of. Oh wait - I'm giving that to you so you can live off of it. Maybe you are my first love after all...  has the student become the master?