[56] History is in thrall to repetition

It’s happened once or twice a year since I met Paul – Emil approaches me wearing his deputation face some afternoon when Paul isn’t there and makes a prepared speech about how mommy wants me to get help for something. Which is how she relays to me that she thinks I’m unredeemably troubled (though we hardly ever see each other) and that it isn’t her fault. I don’t know why I said yes this time, to seeing Mister Professor again. Yes I do. I’m not afraid of what I might tell a nerve doctor, in fact, I’m proud of all I could tell. And even if I wasn’t proud, too much else is happening in my life to ponder what he could think or say. Without any inner doubts to betray, and with Paul and Johnny to keep me outside my own head, my mind is safe from other people.

Actually, mommy doesn’t think I’m crazy (I can read her mind better than she can read mine these days). Now she’s the frightened one. I don’t know why parents can be so afraid to let their children go – it isn’t as if she ever liked me – and Johnny is what that permanent abandonment will look like to her. When he’s sixteen, I hope he forgets he has a mother. Better that than him thinking he has to keep listening to me. He’s going to escape the pain, cruelty, and lies I grew up with. All the love I can give, I want him to go out and spread it around – I want him to know how to do that. I want him to know every minute how he actually feels, good or bad, so that he doesn’t have to waste a precious life guessing, or feeling nothing at all. When I think of my own luck, I don’t want him to have to be as lucky. Grandfather took this pin eight years ago and pricked a hole in my shell, and another one at the other end, and blew gently, and I came out, all floppy and ungainly but in one piece and wondering how I survived so long without air.

Truth, it isn’t my psyche that needs help. I don’t want to tell Paul, though if anyone else already knows, he’s the one. I need all the good moments we can have together more than a hard discussion. After his SilverDome show, when the weather’s better, when we’re sitting on a quay bench or in the Singing Swan on a quiet afternoon, I’ll tell him, about this sense of weakening, the pain in places I didn’t used to think about, the energy I have to gather for an hour to spend in five minutes. I’ve stopped getting better. I’m not afraid of it. Sad, yes, but I’m only afraid for the people who’ll have to watch if I start to show it. But does it mean I’m getting worse again? That’s the one I still can’t ask myself.

If nothing else, I’ll get to nap on Mister Professor’s couch again. I won’t mind another hour of that. I always enjoyed hearing him talk – that smooth clear baritone, like chained thunder. Poor man, I was mean to him. I used to act out a lot of things on him, just to get him to react, but he never did. Then I got tired of it and told him one day that I was going to refuse to come back. I’d meant that to be my ultimate insult to him, but he must have been relieved, though he didn’t show it.