Light in the Shadows

I grit my teeth.  “I’m angry at her for making me feel, for a few moments, that I could have a normal life!” I said too loudly.  I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself down.  When I felt I could keep going without blowing a gasket, I started talking again.  “I’m mad at Maggie for giving me something that nearly killed me to lose when I invariably fucked everything up.  For showing me what perfect looked like right before I destroyed it.  I'm angry as hell because she built back up what I had broken, she gave me everything; a life, a future.  And now it's gone.”  My voice cracked and I felt traitorous tears slip down my face.  I wiped them away furiously.  Damn it!  I hated it when I devolved into this. 
     
                     I took another deep breath, feeling my body shaking with emotion.  Now that I had admitted it, I felt...better. See there boys and girls, therapy does work.
     
                    Dr. Todd was looking at me, that impenetrable calm firmly in place. How I wondered what was really going on in that head of his.  Was he really that serene or was he just as fucked up as the rest of us?  What I wouldn’t give to know.
     
                    “That was hard to admit, Clay.  Thank you.”  He leaned forward so his elbows rested on his knees.  “You're feelings about Maggie are intense.  They are all tangled up with pain and loss.  You can't separate the love from the hurt and that's what is triggering you.  You say she was the best thing in your life, yet you have made her the focal point for all of your misery.  We have to pull apart those two things.  You can have one without the other.  You have to keep working on your reframing.  To recognize the positive where your mind wants to look at only the negative.”
     
                     Thinking about the situation I had written about in my notebook, I wasn’t so sure that advice was possible.  I mean, how the hell was I supposed to find the positive in trying to kill myself?  It wasn’t a trip to Disney World for Christ’s sake!  It was me; taking a piece of a broken mirror and cutting my arms open to the point that I had to have forty-five stitches on both arms.  I had heard the doctor in the hospital tell my parents that I had almost hit bone.  I hadn’t been fooling around.  I had wanted to die.
     
                    And for what?  Because I thought, in my twisted head, that Maggie had betrayed me.  I hadn’t been able to see that she was confused and scared and had really only been trying to help me.  And that is where the guilt came in.  Because it started that I had been thinking about Maggie and how for a brief second it had been the two of us, together, ready to take on anything.  Then my mind went to that night.  And all I could see was the darkness.  The moment when all I wanted to do was die.  And I had lost it.  The panic attack swept me away in its merciless tide.
     
                     My anger picked up a notch.  Why couldn't I just think of Maggie?  Why couldn't I simply remember her without all the other nasty stuff, like guilt and shame and the soul sucking anguish?  I only wanted to think of how much I loved that beautiful girl before I had turned our worlds upside down.
     
                     Maybe this was my punishment for being so weak and selfish.  Karma was a vindictive jerk.   
     
                      Because Maggie was my trigger.  And it wasn't a good one.  And I hated that my fucked up mind had taken something so wonderful and warped it into...well....something ugly.  Something that only served to remind me of what I couldn’t have.  Something that I was trying desperately to be healthy enough for but deep down worried I never would be.  No one had ever accused me of being a Pollyanna.  I was not a glass half full kind of guy.  But Dr. Todd was hell bent on changing that.  And damn it, I needed him to.
     
                     I growled in frustration and tugged at my hair.  I struggled to take a deep breath and loosened the grip I had on my scalp.  I could do this.  I could work through this maze of crap. 
     
                     After a few minutes I sat up and let my hands hang limp between my knees.  “Tell me something positive about that event in your life.  Think, Clay.  Think really hard.  The