“Maybe, maybe not,” he said with a chuckle. “But that’s the wonderful part of people. We might come to the sameconclusion, or a different one. The only way to know is to say it aloud.”
“I couldn’t read the book again after Mikael was born,” I said quietly. “I remembered it, and I remembered Gina watching it once, but...I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t tell her that I couldn’t stand to watch it. She was always better at separating things. She used to describe it as a series of boxes and screens in her head. She could watch something like that, and it wouldn’t pass through the mental screens she had, because movie stuff wasn’t supposed to bleed into the real stuff. And if it did? She had boxes she could slap them into.”
“Compartmentalization,” Dr. Ramirez said crisply. “A method for coping with trauma...but also a normal way for some people to handle the ins and outs of living. And don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with people who can’t do that.”
“I can’t,” I affirmed. “I never realized how bad I was at it until then. I thought I understood, but I didn’t, not until...not until after her and Mikael...after they died. I thought it was bad enough, but?—”
“What was bad enough?” he asked gently.
“I thought everything Louis did after a certain point was stupid,” I said in exasperation, not sure if it was at myself for my ignorance back then or because some part of me remembered how annoyed I’d been with a fictional character. “But after being a dad and...losing Mikael and Gina...I understand. I would have done the same thing in his shoes. I don’t even know if I would have hesitated. I wouldn’t have cared if it meant well, what happened in the story. If it meant seeing them again, seeing them stand there and talk to me, to hear their laughter, to see their faces. I wouldn’t have cared if it meant they were whatever fucked up thing was going on in that story.”
Dr. Ramirez eyed me carefully. “You say that as if it’s wrong?”
“I mean, the whole point of the story was that it was the worst thing he could have done,” I said with a nervous laugh. “It was stupid, dangerous, and in the end, lethal. I don’t remember how it ended, it’s been a while.”
“His late wife comes back, and it’s inferred that she’s as mad and dangerous as their son had been when he’d been brought back,” Ramirez offered.
“So, a man so desperate from losing his son, uses a cursed burial ground to bring him back, and what comes back is murderous, killing two people, including his wife, and he turns around and buries her there too. Only for her to come back, and he’s probably going to end up dead,” I said miserably. “And then there’s me. I didn’t get to bring my wife and son back from the grave through some evil place, but I’m just like him in the end.”
“Mad and still grieving?”
“Yeah, and haunted by them. He’ll never escape the horror of what happened to them, mostly because they’re fucked up zombies that he helped create, but...he’ll never get away. And neither will I, and in a way, I have my own version of fucked up zombies, but they’re just pictures of them, a few videos, and my memories. And just like Louis, I’m terrified they’re going to kill me one day.”
Dr. Ramirez shifted in his chair, setting the notepad and pen aside. “How so?”
I opened my mouth and eyed him suspiciously. “Uh, I know that look, I know this trap.”
“Trap?”
“Uh-huh, the minute I even hint that I might be...what’s the wording again? ‘A danger to myself or others,’ whoop, there I go. Off to the funny place with padded rooms.”
He smiled. “Intake facilities have come a long way since the horror shows during the fifties to the eighties.”
I wrinkled my nose. “All the way to the eighties?”
“Yes, no matter how much we grow and learn as individuals, humanity still has a way to go before it can be considered whole,” he said with a sad smile. “But it starts with the individual. And for the record, having you admitted to a facility is within my power; you are correct. At the same time, any reasonable therapist knows that thoughts of suicide are not an immediate sign that you need to be put into one of those facilities. Now, if you were to attempt it, or if you were being very clear that you were planning to do so in the near future, yes, then I would consider it. But...are you okay with hearing how I see things as they stand?”
I snorted derisively. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Tell me?”
“You can tell anyone any number of things in any number of different ways, but it means little if they don’t believe it. So...no, I am not here to tell you what to do. I am here to listen, to understand as best I can, to provide you with the means and methods to find help and support, and to guide you on the path that you think will ultimately bring you to a better place. So right now, I’m offering an outsider’s perspective.”
“A therapist’s perspective.”
“And a man’s. A husband’s. A father’s. I am all those things,” he said with a smile, two of his fingers tapping his knee in a steady rhythm. “I am also a son, a brother, both a little and a big one. To some, I’m a Virgo, to others I’m a Snake. I am a gamer and a reader. I’m a horror fan, but I avoid any that result in the death of children or pets. I love all animals, but I’m quietly terrified of snakes, and if you can believe it, chipmunks make me nervous. So yes, perspective from a therapist, but also from a man who has life experience, who has perspective.”
It hurt to be reminded that he had his family while mine had been dead and gone for over three years, and yet hadn’t I just said it had taken being a father to be unable to cope withstories of the loss of children? Maybe he didn’t understand what it was like to stand by as your family was taken, without answers and without comfort. He would know the terror, though, that crept into the heart of every parent, the first tendril finding my heart when I held Mikael in the hospital, and I looked around, realizing how hard the floor was and gripping him tighter, in case I dropped him.
Yeah, he probably knew the terror, so he could understand.
“Go ahead,” I said softly, once again wondering when the pain would ever stop or if I even wanted it to.
“I think you are an empathetic and sensitive person. In fact, I believe a great many people would be surprised at not only how much you feel things, but how deeply you feel them. Which I’m sure has served you well in the past, but with the loss of your wife and son, you’ve tried to turn away from those feelings...and yet you’re in a position people find themselves in all too often—being unable to avoid those feelings. The loss of your wife and child is a tragedy that no one deserves, and it has upended your life completely. I think in many ways, you cannot decide if it is the guilt you should feel, the pain, or to hold onto the good memories of them. Before today, I would have said you were desperately avoiding the past, thus robbing yourself of any chance to move on from it, to find some way to cope with it. After today? I think you’ve come to realize that you’ve been stuck in place for three years...and now you’re trying to figure out what to do about it.”
“Yeah,” I said slowly. “I was just thinking about how I didn’t know if I ever wanted the pain to stop.”
“Is that motivated by guilt?”
“I never said I was guilty.”
