Life Will Be the Death of Me Read online

  “Is there a feeling?”

  “Frustration.”

  “Because, why?”

  “Because my intention was to listen to music, and now I can’t.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Stupid?” I asked. “Useless?”

  “Helpless?”

  “Yes!”

  “And what does that feel like?”

  “Sad?”

  “Sit with that.”

  “Helpless and sad,” I agreed, “but then where does the anger come in?”

  “Sad is your internal reaction, which turns to anger because anger sets you in kinetic motion to avoid the sadness of sitting there and not listening to music, and knowing your plans have been thwarted. Your anger is your way to avoid sadness.”

  “Hold on. Let me write that down.” I didn’t have a pen.

  “You were a helpless little girl who had parents that left you alone too much. When something doesn’t go your way, you get angry because you feel that helplessness.”

  “So, what is my exercise to stop this behavior?”

  “Identification. Awareness. Modification. Or, if you like acronyms—IAM.” Dan was the one who liked acronyms, so I had no choice but to start liking them too. My life had become filled with acronyms and wheels.

  “You identify the internal emotion you are feeling when something upsets you or doesn’t go your way. You stop, take a breath, and become aware of it. Then you simply modify your behavior—and/or your reaction. You may find that after you give it some space, you may not want to react at all.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard about people doing that.”

  “Are you ever able to sit back when you’ve heard a story more than once, or know the person you’re speaking to is wrong about something, but you withhold?” Dan asked.

  Dan was talking about impulse control. He may as well have been speaking Portuguese.

  “Does impulse control go with empathy? Because I don’t have that one either.”

  I came to understand that motion had been cemented in my life at a time when I needed it to survive, and over time it became the only way I knew. It was my oxygen. I didn’t know how not to move fast, or how not to state my opinion, or how to just observe something rather than insert myself.

  “But all that action doesn’t coincide with my sleep schedule,” I pointed out. “How is it that I can’t stop moving, but I also want to hibernate and withdraw? I can sleep for twenty hours straight, well…if I take a Xanax.”

  “Because you’re exhausted.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry, that was a dumb question.” This was a stimulating conversation. Things were clicking into place. “Well, this explains why I can’t shut the fuck up.”

  “Well…”

  “The other day, I was on my way into the airport when I heard about Trump undoing a ban on some terrible fertilizer that enlarges children’s brains—the company who makes it donated one million dollars to his inaugural committee.”

  “Okay…”

  “When I walked into the lounge, I headed straight to the little section that plays Fox News, hoping to find someone I could excoriate for continuing to support Trump. I can’t go on like this.”

  “Well, that particular issue isn’t an unreasonable thing to have anger about.”

  “Okay, fine, but I don’t want to be filled with such vitriol for Trump supporters. I want to be able to listen, and not always insert myself when there are things I disagree with. Not just with Trump supporters. With everything.”

  Now that I had identified the genesis of my anger, I could better articulate what I wanted so badly to get out of this therapy experience: I wanted to learn how to be quiet.

  My plan after ending my Netflix show was to travel the country and speak to people who had points of view and experiences different from my own. To understand why people continued to support Donald Trump. To do something—besides sitting around on my soapbox and complaining. I was getting so much more out of therapy with Dan than anything else I had ever done in my life. I was being heard, and I didn’t even have to yell.

  “I’d like to order a scoop of quiet determination,” I told Dan. “I’ve only ever had the loud kind. I want to listen more and talk less. Rectitude without the self-righteousness.”

  Dan told me to be reasonable with myself. To know that you don’t break habits overnight, and that being aware of your bad habits is half the battle. It’s downhill after you identify what your bad habits are.

  He told me not to be a perfectionist about it. I had to slow down and go through the process of change. Identification. Awareness. Modification.

  “Just so you know, I’m not a perfectionist. Whatever the opposite of a perfectionist is—that’s what I am. Is there a word for that?”

  “Not that I know of,” he told me. “So, you’re not a perfectionist. You’re winging most things.”

  “Some things come easily to me, but some things are much harder for me than for the average person. Silly things. Like I need very specific instructions to do anything technological.”

  “Do you quit those things easily?”

  “Usually once I get good at something, I lose interest. Sometimes, I lose interest in things before they even happen. I feel like I’m on a Tilt-A-Whirl.”

  “Once the challenge is gone, you probably feel like you’re idling. It’s the need for motion. The need for doing.”

  “Yes, I try hard in the beginning. I won’t give up. It took me over a hundred tries to get up on a wakeboard for the first time—in my thirties. Even the two guys driving the boat were exasperated with me after two hours, and tried to convince me to take a break. My body was sore from being pulled in so many different directions during every wipeout. By the time I got up on the wakeboard, I looked back at the big boat, where hours earlier all my friends had been cheering me on, and everyone had gone inside.”

  We stared at each other for a short while, and then I started to laugh. “Seems to be a recurring theme in my life. Performing for people who aren’t even watching.”

  “Or performing for a lot of people who are watching.”

  “Performing in general,” I said.

  The expression on Dan’s face I see the most is the one where he looks sad but hopeful for me—like he’s rooting for me.

  “But you got up,” he said.

  “Yes, I got up, and now I can water-ski and wakeboard topless. You can probably watch it on YouTube.”

  * * *

  • • •

  That particular morning, I felt strong. I felt strong because all of the previous sessions where I’d cried and cried had fortified me. For the first time, I felt like someone who was able to pair my strength with my newfound vulnerability. I felt strong because I was able to recognize the behavior that I had adapted as my cover and I knew I could handle unraveling more.

  Dan asked me about my relationships with men.

  I told him about my two serious relationships, and he commented that it was odd for someone my age who is out and about, successful, and physically presentable (and also penetrable) not to have had more long-term relationships. It was an atypical thing for Dan to say to me, because he wouldn’t normally say anything that was in the same hallway as judgment.

  “Why is it odd?” I asked him.

  “I think people your age have, on average, been in more than two adult relationships.”

  “Isn’t that my need for constant newness? Constant stimulation?”

  “Dopamine,” he told me.

  Relationships without hiccups were too boring, so inevitably they had to end. Don’t get comfortable. Uncomfortable and not knowing had become my comfort zone. I was always looking for an ultimatum—a way to test someone’s commitment, to prove they would disappoint me, and if they didn’t do anything wrong, I would find a way to pro