“Joey,” Sora began.
I braced myself for the inevitable question.
“What was your dad’s favorite food?”
For a moment, my brain short-circuited. No therapist had asked me a question like that before.
The inky-black wings at the corners of Sora’s eyes tipped up when she smiled. “Was it something delicious or awful?”
When I first opened my mouth to speak, nothing came out. I closed my lips around the narrow yellow straw of my Capri Sunand sucked in the sweet nectar of childhood. Maybe that’s when my affinity for emotional support drinks started.
After a long moment, I found my voice. “Tuna fish with rice and salt-and-vinegar chips.”
Her almond eyes lit up with warmth and kindness when she burst out laughing. “No way!”
I found myself infected by her pure delight and couldn’t help but join in with her laughter.
My new therapist, whom I stayed with until I turned eighteen and she could no longer see me, never once asked me if I wanted to talk about it.Itmeaningmy dad. Every week for years, she dove into talking about him with ease, like it was the most natural thing in the world to discuss someone who was no longer living. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized she was intentionally building trust, knowing that we would eventually get to the hard parts—managing my grief and understanding and navigating my mom’s addiction.
I’d been seeing her for months before she asked why I go by Joey and not Josefine.
By then, she’d firmly earned a spot high on my list of trusted individuals, so I didn’t hesitate to share the story.
When my mom, Elin, was pregnant, she and my father chose not to find out my gender before birth. My dad, Noah, had a dream that I was a boy, and nothing my mom said could convince him otherwise. He was so damn certain his dream was a premonition that he painted the nursery pale blue early one Sunday morning while my mom was sleeping. While I was still in her belly, he started calling me Joey. I laughed out loud to Sora that day, reminiscing about how my mom would interject during this part of the story, saying, “I felt like a kangaroo!” But my dad was so persuasive that even my mom got in the habit of using the name.
When she went into labor three weeks early, my dad—deckedout in all blue in the delivery room—got the surprise of his life. After hours of intense labor, the doctor lifted me into the air à laThe Lion Kingand declared, “It’s a girl!”
My parents had called me Joey for months and agreed that they couldn’t come up with a name more fitting, even after seeing me in the flesh. So I was Joey from day one, although legally I’m Josefine Noa Beckham. My middle name is for my dad, though they chose to use the Dutch spelling to honor my mom’s side of the family.
All those years later, after my dad’s death, it took months to find the perfect therapist, but the journey was worth it. Sora was everything I didn’t know I needed.
At our last session, I cried tears of gratitude when she gifted me a mini plush kangaroo. I begged her to take on adult clients so we could continue our sessions. Then I asked her why she never asked me the dreadedDo you want to talk about it?question like the other therapists had.
Her response? That people who ask that question mean well, but the person they’re asking may not be in the mental headspace to receive that question. She promised that, over time, those words would be less triggering.
Sora was right. Because for the first time, when Brooks asks if I want to talk about it, I say yes.
“I’m scared,” I blurt out, surprising myself by diving right in. Usually I tiptoe around my feelings, testing the waters to see whether the person I’m considering confiding in can handle my emotions.
Brooks is unfazed. His deep brown eyes are warm with encouragement as he reaches across the table and squeezes my wrist.
Exhaling, I continue. “I feel so alone.”
When I don’t elaborate, he asks, “How so? Alone in what?”
Where do I even begin? I’m an only child,so I’ve carried at least a little loneliness around with me for as long as I can remember. Even though my mom is still part of my life, she hasn’t been capable of giving me mental or emotional support in a long time. Tyler is a constant in my life, but even he can’t be my everything. He hustles like mad at work, and when he’s home, he’s attached to his clients with an umbilical cord disguised as an iPhone. Don’t even get me started on all the required nights outfor work. Most days, I have to fight for his attention.
Every one of those answers swirls through my mind, but my writing and this book are what shove their way through to the front of the class, shouting, “Pick me! Talk about me!”
So I do.
Brooks removes his hat, fluffs his dark curls, and listens intently while I spill about how I can feel trapped in the quiet alcoves of creativity. He nods at the mention of feeling both blessed and burdened by my career choice. Wild ideas blossom out of nowhere, and I want to water and watch them grow, but sometimes loneliness settles like a thick fog over a meadow, making it impossible for me to tend to them.
Writing a book is like living on an island. Like being tethered to the shore of solitude but drifting in a sea of endless ideas with waves of self-doubt crashing against me, drowning me with impostor syndrome.
“I get it,” Brooks says, resting his elbows on the table long after our coffees are drained. “We need the quiet and solitude to create, but we long for connection.”
“Exactly,” I whisper. “I need not only validation, but someone to share the highs and lows, the triumphs and struggles. But I don’t want to be a whiny burden.” I let out a sad laugh.
