To wither in denial, the bitterness of one who's left alone.

Every Tuesday I go to Susans office, and it's always just when I need it. A couple days before I left for Mexico I got out of class and called my mom. It was the first of many fights I had with her over the phone, where I lost my control, and then I left myself sitting in the parking lot in my car at school, in shock because of the things we just said. I was in shock of how much I'm really hurting her. Right after I hung up I called Susan in panic and showed up unscheduled. It was my longest session with her, I didn't hold anything in. I felt like I had given her everything. It was relieving and scary to listen to myself. She was quiet after I finished talking. We both were for a while. She does that, she lets me sit there with the things I say and soak them up. She said to me, "I want you to take a look at the things you're saying to me, and I want you to see if you see what I see." I stayed quiet and shook my head. She said, "You spend almost all of your sessions talking about everybody else except for you."

When I got back from Mexico, she called my dad and had him join us. She had us say things we remember with each other. I let him do all of the talking, I knew he had a lot to do. He told her, "We were all we had after the divorce. We spent all of our time together." He said, "One of the most painful days for me was after his mom left, I had to take him to find a day care. It didn't matter what one, how expensive, where it was, I wanted him to be at the one he wanted the most, because it's what he deserved. He spent a lot of his time at day cares, after school clubs, carpools home. We were forced to be apart. I was the only dad ever showing up, and picking him up was my favorite part of the day. It was the first day leaving him there that was the hardest part." I remembered my mom had told me about that day, too. Except instead of dropping me off, she was parked across the street crying while I played on the playground behind that fence.

Susan asked me to tell him exactly what I told her about the drive to California before we left for Mexico. She said it would be important for him to know. I didn't know how to put that out and make it sound real, plus I had already said it. I didn't see the point in repeating it. I wanted him to know it, but I didn't know how to say it again. What I had told her was at one point in the car ride there, after all the arguing and yelling stopped, Matthew put in his head phones and pulled out his book. My dad stared forward while he drove. Susan put her hand on his. Alyssa was asleep against the window, and David was sitting up right behind Matthews seat. Eventually Matthew fell asleep too. He didn't lay his head anywhere he just let it hang from his neck, with his chin to his chest. David handed me a pillow and told me to give it to him. So I set it on his lap, but that didn't do anything. So a couple minutes later David grabbed it and held it up against the window next to Matthew and pushed his shoulder towards it so his head and the pillow would meet. Matthew woke up to the touch of it, realized it, and then just closed his eyes and went back to sleep. And just with that, the quiet in the car wasn't quiet tension anymore. It was just quiet. And all I could hear was the sound of the road. And the feeling of all of us together felt so good. I told Susan that no matter what, we will always love each other. And there was something about that car ride that made me feel the comfort of having a family that I don't get to see that often. Susan ended up telling my dad this for me, while I sat and listened, she didn't say it how I had said it originally. It was sort of modified to the only way she knew how to say it. My dad nodded and listened. But those things I had said just didn't have as much meaning anymore.

I spent a couple nights sitting on my bedroom floor calling my mom in desperation. She told me over and over, that all of this, everything I'm holding myself back with, is all just excuses. Every time I end up calling her, I would end up breaking things around me out of frustration, and our voices were raised like they've never been before. It kills me every time, because she takes on everything I do. Every time I would hang up on her, and all the days I spent ignoring her calls, it was killing me. But I didn't know how else to handle it. When I went for a couple weeks without a phone, there was no other way to get a hold of me. I wasn't at home often, I didn't make any effort to talk. To anybody really. Susan had some messages on her machine she played me for one of our sessions. All the messages were left in secret. One was from my Mom expressing how worried she really is, there were a couple from my step mom talking about her concerns about the medication. I hated hearing them. The fact that there were always eyes of concern on me. I know it's not how things work.. You can't just disappear from everyone and expect no reaction towards it, but it's what I needed to do. I see losing my phone as a blessing for me. I would have to say I'm okay or else she wouldn't really listen and if I'm not okay then its not really understandable. And when she wants to be worried as hell, she bites her tongue so I'll call her back tomorrow. I was so frustrated at what I do, and what she does, and what we became. I hated her asking how my dad and I were. If I say bad then she asks why. I say why and she tells me otherwise. If I say were doing good, I'm lying. If I say were bad, I have to talk about it, when I talk about it I start to hate listening to myself, hearing my reasons, and my problems, and my so sorry voice. It was madness. Everything she'd say to me I would shoot down. The only thing we talked about that felt real was my unhappiness. The only thing she'd ask, the only thing I'd tell. I miss her so much. She said she made herself sick over me not calling. She said she had nightmares, and would wake up telling Walt, "He hates me." Walt would have to remind her, "Hes your son."

It was like a ping pong table between me, her, and my dad. Everyone checking on how I feel. It was everyone telling me how to feel. Nobody listening to what I feel. And then me questioning what the hell I even do feel. In the session with my dad while I held my face in my hands Susan said, "Do you know why Michael is crying, Tom?" I felt she was going to link it back to him and hand over the blame, like we were in the appointments my Mom used to tell me about that they would go to for their marriage. The one that led to their divorce. She says, "Why are you crying, Michael?" I didn't lift my head and I didn't say a word. She looks at my dad and says, "Because he's hurt." I was thinking, what does this have to do with him? He's not my problem. My dad has never been my problem. When I lifted up my face, my dad shrugged, and he said nervously, "I.. I know. He is." All I felt was pity as Susan handed me another tissue. It was disgusting, and I hated how it felt. I kept repeating her question in my head and kept feeling like I needed to provide an answer. Why are you crying? And so I asked myself, why are you crying? Is it because of the memories my dad was saying to us? Because I miss him too? The times Susan asked him to say were the most important, was it his loneliness in his voice? Or was it the fact that the whole reason I'm here, and the whole reason I'm this mess, wasn't even created on my own. That not even all of my problems are mine. That I would cry to Susan about my dads pain, and Davids pain, my Moms pain. How I convinced myself there's no way I could be happy on my own. Not without my friends, not without Stephanie. I felt like all I was built off of was other peoples problems, and the way everybody else felt about me. Maybe it was the fact that the problems in myself were just too hard to admit. The fact that I can't speak up, that I lost who I was, that I always feel like I'm acting. The things I put on myself, and the things I can never forget. The people I miss and the people I can't ever let go of. She put her hand on my knee and talked in a soft voice, she said, "This isn't going to last forever." She would repeat, "I know you're hurting." My dad stayed quiet, and when she would ask him to speak he would say, "Well you know, what he's feeling, are things we have to learn to deal with every day. I know it can be hard adjusting to lifes changes but.." I stopped listening. And I started double thinking everything I just had thought before. This sharp pain came back that I would feel whenever my emotions were misinterpreted. The more he spoke the more he made me feel like nothing I have felt was real. Susan always tells me to try the medication because it would give me a thicker skin. I've been thinking for so long about what that means, and what I do that makes my skin so thin. Was showing up at Davids wrong when he was saying to Alyssa that he was done living again? Was it wrong for me to leave the house because my Dad just sits there and watches it happen? How problems left undone start to feel like my responsibility. How I payed too much attention to the car ride to California, while David was throwing up, and Matthew was bitching, and my dad was yelling. And is it wrong to carry the feelings you have for someone, on your back? I didn't know anymore.

But today I know what she meant by that. My life is my own. And how I feel isn't weighed out by what everyone else feels, or what they're doing. I've been taking time to focus on myself so that one day, what I want and what I need will be the same thing. Not a whole lot has happened around me the past few days, but I've made a whole lot of change in myself. I never realized how right my mom was when she would tell me that positivity could lead me to a whole other place. I never realized how much you can have, once you stop fighting it.