Perspective
“I never went to the counselors everyone wanted me to see after my parents died,” I admitted, ashamed to meet the psychiatrist’s, who Zac called Doc Holliday, eyes when I said that. Should I have let my aunt and uncle send me off to some doctor then? Maybe. “I mean, my parents died. I understood that that was a tragedy or whatever. And it hurt like hell. But what did I need to talk to someone about? It wasn’t like there was anything wrong with me. Nothing I had done to cause the accident, nothing for me to feel guilty for or need to work through to accept their death. I just… well, I guess I was a stubborn teenager, too, but I just didn’t see the need.”
“Even if it’s not your fault—and it certainly wasn’t—it can help to talk to someone. You have thoughts and feelings about what happened, and it’s good to talk those through with someone.”
“I guess,” I said, still not looking the doctor in the eyes. “Anyway, I got through high school and college on my own. I just did what had to be done, I guess.”
“On your own?” He prodded. “You talked about your aunt and uncle, though. You lived with them. You weren’t entirely on your own.”
“It felt like I was, though. I’m not saying they didn’t love me and give me the best home they could. Of course they did. But it was never my home; it was theirs and I was just staying there. And the whole time, I was dying to get out on my own and just do things my way. Not that I’ve proven myself very good at living my own life, I guess.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Well, I mean… I know you know, at least from Zac’s perspective, what—happened between us. What we did.” I couldn’t look at Zac when I said that either. He had been silent beside me, his hand on the arm of my chair but not touching me, through this entire session.
I could practically hear the doctor’s amused smile. “How about I hear it from your perspective now?”
“I fell in love with him,” I said softly, my voice barely above a whisper. “It’s really as simple as that. I mean, it was a stupid crush from the second I saw him, and then I saw… I don’t know what I saw. Something in him, some hurt, some pain. I never would have thought of myself as the nurturing type, but that drew me to him. Maybe more because I wanted to wallow in it and share my pain with him than because I wanted to help him. I don’t know.”
Both Zac and the doctor were quiet.
“I really can’t explain how it all happened, but it did. I don’t know, maybe I just have a thing for older men.” I tried to laugh the last statement off, but as soon as I said it, I knew the doctor would latch onto it.
“Why do you say that?” He asked.
I sighed. “I was just thinking, I guess most of the guys I’ve dated have been older than me. Just a few years, really, but it makes a difference, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” Zac said softly. “It’s always so strange to me when I remember you’re the same age as my little sister.
Sometimes you do seem younger and it makes me want to protect you, but other times I forget completely.”
“I never really think about it at all, but I guess it is a pattern,” I said, looking at Zac but still not meeting his eyes. I turned back to the doctor then. These were things I hadn’t told Zac, and I wasn’t sure that right here and right now was the best time and place to reveal then. But if not now, when? I took a deep breath, then began. “I wasn’t exactly popular in high school, you know? That weird girl with the tattoos, then that weird girl with… with no parents. So I didn’t really date. There was a guy I had a crush on; Marc. He did some of my tattoos. So he was a few years older, and eventually he convinced me it wouldn’t work between because of that. I guess he was right, and we ended up better friends than… well, anyway. I didn’t date much in college, either, didn’t really take the time to get to know anyone that well. Except… except Joseph.”
I had to pause then, and it was a moment before Doc Holliday made a little murmur of encouragement.
“Joseph was, uh, he was my piano tutor. I worked with him for years, all through college really. He was a grad student when I was just a freshman, so there was… there was an age gap. And he always liked to remind me of that. I don’t know when it became something more than just the tutor/student relationship, but it really never should have. He was so… like I said, always lording it over me that he was older, smarter, more mature. And I guess I believed him. Somewhere around my final performance before I graduated, my final evaluation, I just… had enough.”
Zac’s hand had slipped onto my shoulder, massaging it gently, but there was something protective in his mannerisms, too. His voice deep and dark, he asked, “Did he hurt you?”
“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “Not like that. Not—not physically. It was all mind games, really.”
“But those games can hurt. My stupid games hurt you, too,” Zac said softly.
“What do you mean by that?” The doctor asked. “What games?”
“All of this back and forth,” Zac replied, but he was addressing me, not the doctor. “Giving you a little bit, then taking it back. Never being able to decide what I wanted. Or deciding, but changing my mind when I sobered up—or when I got drunk again. I never meant to push you and pull you like that. I couldn’t see that I was doing it, not until I got my head clear. And I’m sorry.”
“And I’m sorry, too,” I said, finally looking him in the eyes. “Sorry that I didn’t see it for what it was or… I don’t know, stand up to you sooner.”
He shook his head. “It was all on me. You couldn’t have stopped me, not until I was ready to be stopped.”
“He’s right,” Doc Holliday said. “But he’s got a lot of guilt of his own to work through, and we are working on that. When you’re in the throes of an addiction, your actions truly aren’t always your own. It’s okay to recognize that, but you still have to take responsibility for the consequences. Doing that without drowning in guilt and turning back to the addiction to cope… that’s our biggest goal here.”
I nodded. “So maybe I do have some guilt issues. And probably some daddy issues, what with the whole older men thing.”
“Maybe,” the doctor replied, chuckling softly. “I wouldn’t call them ‘daddy issues,’ though. I’ve never been the biggest fan of Freud or Jung. But I think, for all your talk about wanting to be out on your own and be independent, live your own life… there’s a part of you that, understandably, wants to be nurtured. That’s something you have to understand without fighting it—or always giving in to it.”
I nodded. “How do I do that?”
“By talking to someone,” he said. “You can get a lot of perspective from it. If you want, I can give you some referrals in the city. And we can of course talk again the next time you come to visit Zac. This was good, I think, to give him some perspective on who you are. Now you two need to figure out who you are together.”
“Are you sure we really want to know?” Zac asked, chuckling softly at his own joke.
“Just because the circumstances were bad and at least one of you was in a bad place when it began… it doesn’t mean only bad has to come from it. I think you two are off to a better start now. A fresh start. But there’s still work to be done.”
I nodded. He was right, I thought. We had been through so much, some of it our fault and some of it not, but what good did it do to dwell on that when I could already see how far we—Zac, especially—had come? There was a good future ahead of us. I was sure of it.
“Now, I have another appointment soon, so why don’t you two get some lunch before Colby has to leave? The cafeteria here isn’t much, I’m afraid, but it’s all we’ve got.”
Zac grinned and took my hand. “It’s not so bad. It’s Taco Tuesday. Come on, Colbs.”
After everything we had just shared, the fact that he could just smile and be so excited about tacos should have annoyed me, but it didn’t. It was just another sign that things were going to be okay. We were going to be okay.
Both of us were quiet, aside from a little small talk, as we made our way to the small cafeteria and filled our plates with tacos and rice. Once we were seated alone at a table in the corner, Zac finally spoke again.
“I didn’t know all of that stuff,” he said between bites. “I mean, about your ex. I think you mentioned him once, maybe, but you didn’t say much and I didn’t know what to ask. Maybe I didn’t want to ask then. I don’t know.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted to tell,” I admitted. “I didn’t trust you well enough, I guess. After everything we’ve been through maybe that’s silly. I don’t know. But I trust you now.”
“I hope you do,” he said softly. “I don’t want you to doubt me or my intentions ever again. I don’t want you to distrust me. I never wanted to be that guy—the crazy, drunk, unreliable asshole. But I guess it was easier, once I got that reputation, to just stick with it rather than put in the work to change.”
I nodded. “It is easier, sometimes, to stick with something bad than get up the guts to do something different. I never thought about it, but I guess… I guess after all of Joseph’s bullshit, I should have known to cut you some slack. To understand how suffocating it can be, to be stuck in something you don’t want. Stuck being someone you don’t want to be.”
“That’s it. That’s it exactly.” Zac glanced down, then reached across the table and took my hand in his. The cast rubbed my wrist, but I didn’t care. “But this is me now. This is who I should have been all along, who I was deep inside. I hope you believe that. I hope you can feel that.”
“I do.” I nodded. “And I like this guy. I like this Zac.”
“I like him, too,” Zac agreed, then laughed. “I like this me, and I like this us. And I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
We held hands like that for a moment before Zac admitted that he needed his hand back; even with the cast, it was more useful to him than his right hand. To prove his point, he tried to lift a taco to his mouth with his right hand, and although he did eventually succeed, it wasn’t without scattering lettuce everywhere and smearing salsa on his chin.
I had to laugh. He was ridiculous. But for once… finally… he was mine.