HE’S NOT OFF THE HOOK

I tell my therapist, Adam, that I can’t stop thinking about Hannah.

If you had held on to that idea when Hannah was still alive, Adam says, that she wasn’t okay or wasn’t over it—though she said that she was—would it have been different?

It’s not that it would have changed what happened, I tell him, but it says something about my carelessness at the time. To not have seen my student’s depression. I feel ignorant.

This isn’t meant to sting, Adam says, but it’s inevitably going to sting a bit, but I just want to see if I can open your mind to a different angle. I think there are times when you reflect on—let’s use your first boyfriend, how you’ve told me that he came from a broken home and he’d threaten to kill himself and somehow it felt like your responsibility to stay with him. I don’t know, there are probably a number of examples in your life where you feel drawn to that thinking. It doesn’t feel like it inside of you—even though I’m not inside of you, I know that it doesn’t feel like it—but it’s kind of like a grandiosity. It has more of a feeling of compassion, like a need to help. And maybe you think, Fuck you, I’m not grandiose. But it doesn’t feel like that. The idea is that you become a linchpin to somebody else’s survival.

That doesn’t sting, I tell him. I think it’s accurate.

The grandiosity that I see in you sometimes manifests in helping others, not in helping yourself. It’s an alternate universe; when you’re doing things for you, it never happens. When you feel like you need to do something for others, that’s usually when the grandiosity kicks in. Yours is usually wrapped up in guilt or a sense of duty.

What about the situation with Mark? I ask Adam. The only person who can really forgive him in this instance is me—because I’m the one he hurt. He can only get resolution from hearing from me and talking to me and feeling like he can help me. Is that grandiosity?

A little, Adam says. Because actually, it’s not up to you. If he wants to get himself off the hook, he has to do that himself. For you to think that if you grant him forgiveness—and it’s not lip service, let’s say you have to do some earnest and deep work to try to actually forgive him—to think that if you’re doing that, then he’s off the hook? He’s not. I can tell you that right now. He may appreciate that forgiveness, and you may feel more free. But he’s not off the hook—because he’s got to live with his psyche. Whatever he works on or doesn’t work on, that’s up to him. So you’re not doing that for him.

. . .

ME: I didn’t want this to be upsetting for you. That’s why when I texted you, I said that I was very happy to hear from you. Because again, I can’t say it enough, I do think you’re a good person.

HIM: I’m sorry to keep not giving you a response to that, but compliments are still hard for me.

ME: I feel bad, taking up your Friday night.

HIM: I don’t have plans.

ME: Do you live alone?

HIM: I live alone. I have a little studio apartment.

ME: Are you still in touch with a lot of people from high school?

HIM: Probably the only person I talk to from high school in the last three or four years is Carlos. We were close for a while. We’re not as close as we used to be. He lives just two miles from me.

ME: I fell out of touch with pretty much everybody. And then I deleted Facebook.

HIM: I didn’t like who I was, and so I didn’t want to be in touch with anyone who knew me that way. Even more than just people grow apart in their twenties, I chose not to hang on to those friendships.

ME: Amber reached out to me some years ago. We chatted. We hadn’t talked for a while, and that was on me. It’s hard if you haven’t talked to someone for a while. How do you explain, Well, I fell out of touch because I just got out of the psych ward?

HIM: And that’s a tough one.

ME: Yeah. Though Amber was cool. She’d be understanding.

HIM: I haven’t talked to her in so long.

ME: She had asked if I had talked to you in a while. I said, No, I think stuff got too awkward, and she asked why. And I said, Do you remember? And she didn’t remember. That was hard. Sometimes these things that are traumatic for you, when other people don’t remember, it’s strange.

HIM: Yeah, I can see that.

ME: But yeah, so you haven’t talked to her in a while.

HIM: No, it’s been years and years. Like I said, I sort of lost touch with everybody.

ME: I worried that everybody thought—and this is probably a self-involved thing to think, because probably no one was thinking about me—but I worried that everybody thought I’d gotten snobby after I left Ohio. But really, well, you read the book. I was having such a hard time. It was easier to just avoid people.

HIM: Which I can totally understand.

ME: So yeah, I just lost touch with everybody. Well, it really means a lot. I hope it was helpful, for you to know I don’t hate you.

HIM: Yeah, I mean, that’s good.

ME: Really, I just felt awkward about it all. And sad.

HIM: It’s a stupid way for a friendship to end. It’s totally understandable, but regrettable is a more accurate way to put it.

ME: Someone asked me earlier, What are you doing later today, and I said, Oh, just catching up with a friend. And that’s how it came out. Not a former friend or anything like that. Just, a friend.

HIM: A friend I used to know.

ME: Yeah, so.

HIM: It’s actually really good to talk to you. I mean, it is, it is nice to catch up. I was terrified of how this conversation was going to go. And I’m glad that it’s gone this way.

ME: And I’m glad that you’re open to this. Not just because I’m writing about this. I mean, I was talking to my editor. I told her that this is what I want to do. And I told her that I want to protect your identity. I would run it by you, and if you want me to change things, I will.

HIM: I kind of feel like you have the right. So I don’t want to limit what you’re trying to do.

ME: Let me tell you, not many people would tell a writer that.

HIM: I mean, it’s things that happened.