4 For Thursday

I.

Jake showed up all red-in-the-face, splotched with a rashy sort of devastated look that let you know he only just stopped crying. I wasn’t sure what he wanted from me but let him come over regardless. He didn’t say anything about it, though I assumed it had to do with his recent breakup. Instead, we sat on the couch, his head cradled in my lap while I twisted my finger through his curly hair.

I offered sex and he accepted, but his heart wasn’t really in it. Afterward, naked and sweaty, he asked me if I ever made a wrong decision about love. I nodded and told him the truth: how years ago I broke up with someone because I was afraid of getting older. Then I was so certain that love was meant to feel like a long blazing perpetual bonfire: hot enough to burn anytime you got close. Love, I learned later, was more like the tide or the winds: flowing in and out, occasionally dropping but returning in devastating force when you least expected it.

“What happened to him?” He asked me.”He fell in love with someone else and we never spoke again.” I said, and then Jake started crying again.

II.

I’m weaning myself off the current anti-depressant I take, Amitryptiline. I saw a psychiatrist who recommended either going up on the current dose or trying out a new one, a serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI), because they usually have fewer side effects. I’ve never been to a psychiatrist and was anxious about the process and how it might differ from the work I do weekly in therapy.

I got prescribed this medicine for something else: associated gut pain from IBS diagnosed years ago. I’ve written about it before and how, after weeks of taking it, I felt my brain change.

It’s a regimented process: two 25 MG tablets of the old medicine + 1 37.5 MG pill of the new medicine for two weeks, then a step down: one 25 MG + 1 37.5 MG pill for a week. I take them at night, before I go to sleep because both can make you drowsy.

I’m kind of scared that my gut pain symptoms will come back, but so far they haven’t. That period of my life was terrible for me. I was afraid I was dying. My life was unspooling around me. During that time, I went to Colorado and hiked in the Rocky Mountain National Park. I sat by a lake and had a small lunch. I saw a massive Moose and nervously bit my fingernails as I descended the winding mountain roads in a large van. Colorado was cool and quiet. I wanted the trip to be something special: a symbol that I could make a choice, a decision, and plan something rather than forcing everyone else to do that for me. My therapist at the time thought it was a good idea.

I never told anyone the theory behind the trip.

I’m worried about symptoms coming back but also worried about them going away. What if, a simple change in medication is all you need? Would that mean the past was meaningless?

III.

She was most proud of her table setting. Delicate white plates lined with thin strips of gold were placed atop gold chargers—plastic sure, but authentic enough. She used cloth napkins trimmed with a rich forest green and tucked gently into a metal sleeve, just as her mother taught her many years ago. Then there was the tableware, sparkling clean and silver (not real but imitation), and the centerpiece, a bundle of fresh summer flowers hand-picked from her side garden.

Next would come the positioning of party guests. It took a special touch to set the table right. One couldn’t just let guests find their own spots or conversation would lull as, inevitably, people would group up naturally next to the people they liked most. Instead one had to carefully consider the status and relationships of each person they set. For example, it seems intuitive to put the most chatty of guests in the middle, so that they might unite both sides of the table in rigorous conversation. But, that was a false strategy and usually resulted in the middle of the table engaging and rigorous conversation while the ends struggled to make sense of what was being said.

Instead, the quietest but most interesting person should be positioned in the middle. This person should be full of interesting stories and anecdotes but naturally inclined to introversion. Across from them, you should take your most inquisitive friend, regardless of their placement on the introversion-extroversion spectrum. This person, after a few glasses of wine, will naturally stimulate conversation, nudging the person across from them to tell stories. They should also be the most connected of the two distinct groups and act as your buffer: uniting the two opposite ends of the dinner party in a series of often invasive questions.

The trick is to curate not manipulate. The difference is fine, but not to the seasoned veteran.

IV.

On Saturday you come up to visit my new place and go grab a barbecue at a place seven minutes south of me. You’re retired now but still never stay long. I get it, your schedule is tight: you live two and a half hours away, are older and can’t drive well at night, and have a dog now. Plus, you have to be home in time for the baseball game.

Still, I wish you’d stay longer.

In therapy, I talk about you with a sigh—always qualifying the things you’ve done with the love and support you’ve given me.

When I broke up with the first man I ever dated, you came up to Austin just to spend time with me. I think the inequality of it all made my brother mad. We went and got cupcakes and walked down South Congress and I tried to pretend to you like I wasn’t falling apart.

When I broke up with the first man I ever loved, you called me and told me how sorry you were. It’s been hard for you to be soft sometimes. You grew up on a farm and rode horses in high school. You don’t have the vocabulary for what I am and still, I’ve never worried you lack the sentiment. “Sometimes,” I tell Zach. “I know they love me, but they’re just not interested in me.”

In therapy, I talk about the water, the harsh chlorine smell of summer, and the ways our past can weather great caverns into the hard rock of our bodies.

You told me once when I was spiraling out, about a breakup you had when you were young. You were obsessed with a man, wanting his affection, attention, and respect. You would drive by his house just to see if he was there. As if some proof of life could tame your anxious brain.

I hated you then. How you could hold something so serious inside of you and never let it out. How, if you had only spoken your anxieties out loud I could have seen my own mirrored back at me.