Tell Me How You Feel

"First, do no harm. Second, do your best until you know better then, third, do better." Jake stares at her eyebrows. Actually the space between her eyes so it looks like he's making eye contact but he's avoiding her eye line completely. He saw that in a movie once and stole it. Not that he doesn't want to look at her, but he finds it uncomfortable to sit in a chair for an hour, across from this middle aged woman he just met and tell her his life story. It's a lot.
"Ok Jake, yes, that technically answers my question but I have to be honest with you- I'm not buying it. Sounds pretty rote to me, like something you've learned to say to keep people happy and stop them from continuing to engage. When I ask you for three principles you live by I would like more than a Yogi Tea bag quote. How about you try again, hm?" Janice does this thing with her head, a soft side tilt while raising her brows and giving what must be an unconscious nod. Jake figures after years of shrinking fucked up adolescents, hour after hour, you develop some pretty habitual body language that is supposed to read open and available but to the new kids comes off as exhausted and annoyed. It's something both his parents do. Maybe it's generational, who knows. The patronizing head tilt, chin nod of late 40 somethings in North America. He could write a bit about it. Whatever it is, it annoys the crap out of him. Signals to Jake that who ever he's trying to reason with isn't really listening. They're just waiting to respond.
He and Shauna used to do this bit where they mimicked mom and dad giving them the speech about Personal Responsibility, Great Change, and Unconditional Love now that they were splitting up. How it wasn't the kids' fault, oh no, no, no. Mom and Dad had grown apart and realized that they were better friends than partners, and Dad wanted to give Mom the space she said she was lacking in terms of personal fulfillment and identity, blah blah blah blah blah. Jake and Shauna were 14,  fighting over stupid things like the last pizza pop, who mows the lawn, computer time, and covering each others' back when it came to sneaking out or dipping into mom's wallet. But the split gave them super powers as a team to manipulate their parent's guilt and need to please. Then Shauna literally split, almost a year later, and since then, Jake has been bouncing from one therapist to another, the result of his parent's deep well of of self loathing and sense of failure. Meanwhile Jake stares at the top of the bridge  of the nose between various brows, repeating the same phrases and inspirational quotes hoping against all hope that Shauna comes back home and this Game Of Atonement finally ends.


Comments

  1. UnknownMay 19, 2020 at 4:26 PM

    Think we talked about this one on FB; it just reminds me of some of the first date conversations we've talked about so much, ha!
    SD

    ReplyDelete

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