#ijournal

April 26, 2024

The iJournal is an open-access academic journal run by graduate students at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information.

Two hours in a doctor's office and I walked out a different person.  I walked out with this knowledge that I hadn't walked in with.  I walked out knowing that not only was I sick, but my illness had a very common name to it.  Morning sickness.  I was pregnant.

From the instant I heard the words, my first and only concern was that of paternity.  It had been a long time since I had been intimate with my former fiance.  Then I was with Aidan.  Then two weeks before, I hit a low point and had made a five-night-series of bad decisions.  And then I was with Aidan.  It had to be Aidan.  If it wasn't, I honestly didn't know what I would do.  I'd like to say the thought of abortion never crossed my mind, but that would be a lie.  I didn't even want to be a parent, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to do it with anyone in the world, except for Aidan.  When the doctor confirmed that I was between six and seven weeks, it was a relief, but it also opened up this entire new problem for me.  I had to tell Aidan, and he had to believe me.  

I prepped myself, as best as someone can, and started the conversation with him.  But here's the thing.  I went into it with three ideas.  Option 1- I could just tell him.  Let him go through the emotional process that I had, coming to the ultimate conclusion that this was happening.  Straight forward.  To the point.  Option 2- I could sweep it under the rug for right now and tell him in a time that was more fitting to us.  Option 3- I could attempt to solidify where we were in our relationship first, then determine if that was a place that we could actually find success for us and our child, and then tell him.  Now, I'm not going to say it was the best way to go about it, but it is what happened, and there was no going back once I began option three.  

Aidan and I are like fire.  Energy is high, almost all of the time.  We don't know how to just sit and have a civilized conversation.  I can go from even and calm to raging and hot headed in the blink of an eye.  I suppress it as far as I can, but inevitably, it's like I'm always a time bomb, just waiting to go off.  (The funny thing is, I'm only this way about Aidan.  I was never this way for anyone else.  That boy brings out the fire in me, and it's always been that way.)  So in true Rem and Aide fashion, we both lost our heads in the conversation of 'what is this' between us.  Words were said.  Voices were raised.  Things were broken.  Aidan walked out.  The details are not important.  The things we said are just words that were filled with emotion, which neither of us were prepared to deal with.  I couldn't reel him back in, so I slipped into option two, changing it just a bit.  I'd leave too.  And maybe I just wouldn't ever tell him.  I got halfway through packing my things in his apartment when it all hit me like a ton of bricks.  I couldn't leave.  I could not walk out on that man, again.  I had to stay and fight.  I owed it to the child within me that shared our blood.  (God help this child if he or she has both of our tempers.)  So instead, I cleaned up the apartment and went to bed, fighting off images of females with their mouths wrapped around his dick.  I tried not to think about his lips against someone else's lips.  I tried to focus on the strong possibility that he had just gone to his sister's home to cool off.  Going after him was not an option.  I knew better than to chase him down.  It was in both of our best interests for him to put space between us, even if I had to lay in his bed that night, in tears, and worry just what kind of space he had gone in search of.

This morning, I woke up just as the last several mornings.  Sick to my stomach.  After multiple rounds of it, I emerged from the bedroom in search of a bottle of water, only to find Aidan laid on the sofa.  He was fumbling with a piece of paper, in a sleepy, drugged stupor.  I left him a bottle of water on the coffee table, then hauled ass to the bathroom, again.  As it was over, Aidan was at the door, assuming that I was hung over.  He offered me a pill, that I knew I couldn't take.  He showed me where there were more tooth brushes, as I had tossed mine after the morning's ritual.  He attempted to care for me, while trying to care for himself.  It wasn't until a minute later, after he started the shower and undressed, that I would see the visible marks the night before had left upon his skin.  I may have spent the night worrying about where he was and who he was doing, but I hadn't worried about him coming back, busted up.  It certainly wasn't the first time I had seen him in such a condition, but it caught me off guard the same.  He stepped in the shower, failing to close the curtain.  I waited a minute or two, the approached, and the water from the shower that was hitting against my lower leg was ice cold.  He looked to be in such pain.  Everything within me told me to step in and help him, regardless of the tshirt I was wearing, disregarding the ice cold temperature he was forcing himself to withstand.  Every fiber in my being went to a place of truly needing to help this man.

I stepped within, washing him.  My body trembled beneath the icy waters.  My teeth chattered against themselves.  I did all that I could to hide my discomfort for him.  All of this was not all that surprising to me, as I would always try to help this man the way he did for me.  I didn't need a badge of honor or a certificate of thanks for it.  I loved him.  He was in pain.  And it was my fault.  What was surprising about the entire thing was this... we had been fighting so bad the night before, and first thing the next morning, we were there together, doing all that we could in our own states to help one another, even though we were each in our own personal hells.  Silence wrapped around us, as no words were needed.  I washed every inch of that man in the freezing water, dressed, and I'd do it again in a heart beat.  We may fight, and oh can we fight, but in the very next breath, we are there, taking care of one another.  And this is how I know for sure that we're gonna make it.  We are going to be a family and if we can fight this hard with each other, let it be turned on someone from the outside.  Let someone attempt to take what is ours.  Let someone threaten this world that we live in and it will be over.  Aidan and I, side by side, are invincible.  If he knows that I have his back and I do know that he has mine?  Yeah, good fucking luck getting through that.

After the shower, we were laying on his bed.  His legs bent over the end of the bed, feet touching the floor.  My head on his lap, curled up adjacent to him.  Exhaustion enveloped us, a grand trickery scheme as I do so often tend to get rambly when faced with true exhaustion.  I started talking and before I knew it, it was there.  I was telling him that we were having a baby.  It was after six in the morning and I had now known for about twelve hours, but this was news to him.  His first question, of course, was by who.  It gave me great pleasure to reiterate to him that it was our baby.  He was the father.  And there was not a doubt to be had.  Aidan, however, had many doubts, and will continue to do so for about the next three weeks or so.  In two weeks time, we can have a test done that will answer that question and afford us the opportunity to truly enjoy the following thirty weeks before we meet our child.  Three weeks of uncertainty will result in thirty weeks of preparation and happiness.  As much as I hate that the doubt is even there, the light at the end of the tunnel is going to pull me through.

And in that early morning state, neither of us having slept as usual, both of us exhausted, we started to face what life would be looking like.  Aidan asked me to go forward with getting the tests arranged, and to find us a place.  He didn't even have the doubt erased from his mind, and yet he was still setting up a future with the baby and I.  

The moment I met Aidan Fisher, I knew he would be in my life forever.  

In May of the previous school year, one of my teachers approached my mother to ask if she would be willing to allow me to take a test that if passed would permit my skipping over 8th grade and entering 9th grade in the fall.  I was against it from the first moment it was mentioned to me over dinner, arguing that all of my friends were in 7th grade with me.  They would all be going into 8th and if I were to skip to 9th, I would be at a completely different school.  I would know no one.  I would be younger than all of my classmates.  It wasn’t something I wanted to do, not even for a moment.  

It was my father who first brought mention to how it could give me a jump start to my future.  He spoke about how it would look good on college applications.  By the end of the meal, it had been decided that I would take the test, against my own will.  Laying on the sofa bed that night, I wondered if I could get away with failing the test intentionally.  I considered botching enough answers to look as if I tried, but would not pass, and then I could enter 8th grade year with all of the same kids I had grown up with.  But the ‘good girl’ in me knew this wasn’t a legitimate plan.  I could never fully go through with it.  

In the fall, I began 9th grade, and on the first day of school took a seat in the back of the room.  I felt uncomfortable, as I was a full year younger than every other student that walked into the classroom.  I was placed in entry-level classes for the first time in my life.  There was no ADV listed after the subjects.  I would have to earn that placement.  The morning was spent in classrooms, moments of being lost between them as I attempted to navigate the halls of the school that was so much larger than what I had been accustomed to.  It wasn’t until lunch time that I felt complete relief, directly followed by stress.

I stood in the line, carrying my tray.  I gave my student i.d. number to pay for my meal, then stepped into the chaos of the lunchroom and scanned the area.  Open seating.  I let out a deep breath and walked through the center of the cafeteria, immediately hearing my name called out by a girl who had been in my second period class.  I turned and offered a nervous smile, nodding my head as she asked me to join her.  I had been accepted by someone and brought into their group at the lunch table in the center of the cafeteria.

As lunch concluded, I had made a few friends, girls who I did not know a half hour before, but would remain my group of friends through senior year.  I walked out of the lunch room a different girl.  I wasn’t the ‘year younger new girl who skipped 8th grade.’  I walked out as a freshman, chatting with new friends.  And then I saw him.  I asked the girl beside me who he was.  She snickered, telling me his name was Aidan Fisher and that he wasn’t ‘our type.’  How she knew in a half hour lunch period what my type could be was a mystery, but it was clear that he wasn’t the one that I should be looking at.  She directed my attention to a cleaner cut boy who was looking in our direction, but my eyes drifted back to those of the forbidden.

Aidan Fisher.  I had yet to officially meet him, but I would spend the next few days of school stealing glances of him from a distance.  The next several weeks was the same.  The new group I had been brought into would turn my head each time they caught me staring, directing me to someone a little more socially acceptable, but the more they did, the more I was drawn to him, even though I still had not met him.

Ultimately, our paths would officially cross and the boy who had caught my attention on my first day of school stole my attention permanently.  I guess we began as friends, but there was a draw between us from day one.  Ultimately, the girls I had met in the lunch room that first day would become more accepting of the bond that had developed between Aidan and I, though they held their whispers between one another of critique.

Aidan was my first everything.  He was the first boy who I would ever hold hands with.  He was the first boy that ever looked at me as if I meant something.  He was the first boy who kissed me.  He was the first boy I would ever love.  He would be my first in absolutely every way possible.  He was the first to set my heart afire.  

The summer before senior year, I was working on local college applications, focusing on all of the schools within an hour’s drive.  My mother had passed away two years earlier.  Boston had Aidan and my father.  I needed to be close to both of them.  As I sat at the kitchen table of the one-room apartment my father and I lived in, he slipped an application overtop of the one I was already working on.  Stanford.  I looked up at him in complete disbelief as I lifted it and passed it back to him, refusing to bother entering.  He slipped it back to me again, encouraging me to give it a try.

In hindsight, I now know why my father wanted me to apply to Stanford.  As much as it pained him to think that I could leave him behind, he wanted me to leave Aidan behind.  I didn’t realize it then.  I didn’t realize it when I was sitting in California, alone in my dorm room.  I didn’t realize it eight years later when I met Nole and saw the way my father fell over Nole, approving instantly, almost too easily.  I didn’t put it all together until after Nole left.  Sure, there was a part of it all where my father wanted best for me and knew that Stanford was just that, but in hindsight, I now know that Stanford served two purposes.  One: A great education.  Two: To create distance between myself and Aidan Fisher.

In the end, the decision was my own.  I cannot fault a man for wanting what was best for his daughter.  I cannot begin to know what it feels like to be a parent and to want more for your children than you had yourself.  I cannot hold it against him when I know his intentions were good.  The final decision to go was mine.  The decision to end things with Aidan was mine.  The decision to push past the first four year degree was mine.  The decision to stay gone, and eventually to move on from the childish dreams I had once held, was mine.  And then the decision to return was mine.  The decision to stay after my father’s death, mine.  The decision to turn to Aidan every time things went wrong, mine.  I own my decisions, and I recognize the mistakes in them all.  

If I could go back and change it all, I would.  If I could turn time back to that summer between 11th and 12th grade, I would do it.  I may be facing a bit of nostalgia here, but leaving Aidan was the single biggest mistake in my life.  I’m not saying this because I lost Nole.  I’m saying this because it is true.  Now, I know there is an opportunity here.  I know that Aidan is still here, and we still are very much so in tune to one another.  I’d even like to think that Aidan would want things back with me, the way they were always meant to be.  But I have enough respect for him not to allow him to feel like a rebound.  Nole left seven weeks ago.  I have told patients before that they would need to allow themselves at least half of the length of the relationship to truly get past the relationship.  I know, professionally, that I would not be doing either of us any favors to venture out of our current relationship and into something more.  I also know that I am mentally a hot mess, or I wouldn’t be writing in this fucking journal in the first place.  I can’t give him all that he deserves right now, but maybe it is me that is supposed to give it all to him in the end.  Maybe it is just going to take time.

We’ve had more than ten years apart.  We both know that we technically  c a n  live without the other one, and we can function rather normally in doing so.  We have both built up our lives to be what we wanted them to be or look like.  Only, here I am, looking at it all and realizing it is absolutely nothing like what I wanted it to be like.

What I wanted was to go to college.  I wanted to make my father proud and to do my mother’s memory justice.  I wanted to stay near Boston, where Aidan and I could continue on the paths we had discussed previously.  I wanted to get an apartment with him.  I wanted to go to school, get a degree and then figure out what to do with it later.  I wanted to marry that boy, if we get completely honest here.  If I could go back and do it all again, I would have attended Boston University and been able to get the same fucking degree from there and it would have cost a helluva lot less.  If I could change it all, from that application to Stanford on, I would.  But I guess it is what it is and the mistakes that I made cannot be undone.  

This brings me to now.  

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Right now, I am sitting in a doctor’s office.  I’ve written on and off while I’ve been here.  They had to work me into the schedule, which has left me alone in this stark white room for long periods of time.  About the time I finished writing about what it was that I would change, the nurse finally came in.  She asked me if there was any chance I could be pregnant.  I told her there wasn’t, but I just returned to this room from taking a pregnancy test, to which I have no idea what the results are.  I think it’s pretty pointless to take a test when I’ve been on birth control for the last twelve years, but she seemed to think that my symptoms may fall in line with pregnancy instead of the flu.

What if I am?  What if I am actually pregnant?  Okay, if I am more than 8 weeks along, then it is Nole’s child.  If I am 6-7 weeks along, then it is Aidan’s child.  If I am 2-4 weeks along, then it is a long shot and I may have to go on Maury Povich’s talk show to find out who the child’s father is!  If I’m actually pregnant, I pray first and foremost that it is Aidan’s.  There is absolutely no one else that I can imagine having permanent ties to.  Aidan is the one in my entire life that I can say I loved with all of me, and loved me in return.  If it is Nole’s baby, I’ll never tell him.  He walked out on me, and that was the way he wanted it to be, so be it.  And if I’m only 2-3 weeks pregnant… then I will just never know and I’ll do this on my own.

Solitude.  The state or quality of being alone or remote from others.

I’ve been in this place, solitude, for months now.  There may be moments where the stillness isn’t quite so loud.  There may be frames where others venture into my personal hell.  There may even be times that I find alone not to be so bad.  

But what happens when the silence fails and you are left with only yourself?  What happens when you realize the person you were striving to be wasn’t actually you at all?  What happens when you look back on the last twelve years and see mistake after mistake that cannot be rectified and you are left with the pieces?  What happens when you recognize that you built a life that you cannot continue on?    What happens when the walls close in tightly, at your own creation, and you separate yourself from the life you had and the life you wanted, only to see that you want absolutely nothing?  This is where you become self-destructive and shatter everything in your way.

My actions two weeks removed were just that.  I shattered everything in the time of five days.  I allowed myself to be a person I was never meant to be.  Perhaps Aidan said it best.  “Leave the partying to someone that’s better at it, Rem.”  I was never that person.  But is the person who I was the person that I was meant to be, or is the person I am now the person I was meant to be?  Was I meant to be that ‘good girl’ who did what was right?  Was I meant to be the psychologist with hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans?  Was I meant to open a practice and seek to help others, or was I always destined to be this person that I am now?

Actually, I don’t know.

What I do know is that my body is revolting against me.  I’m never sick.  Ever.  And yet for the last several mornings, I’ve been terribly ill.  I’ve left Aidan’s bed, faced the illness, then returned to him each night.  But tonight, I won’t return to him.  Tonight, I’m sitting on the sofa, writing in this fucking journal that I know is for the best.  I almost gathered my things and went home.  I almost woke Aidan up, just so I wouldn’t be alone.  But I want to be alone.  And then five minutes later, I want noise.  How can I get what I want when I don’t even know what the fuck that is?  

The man lying in the bedroom is all I have left now.  And he isn’t mine to have.  I set him free, years ago, yet here I sit, holding onto him in a way that I gave up the right to do.  I’m not allowed to hold onto him.  I can’t hold onto him.  Yet, I do it.  I hold on so tightly, declaring an ownership over him.  You see, I know how Aidan feels about me.  He doesn’t have to say it.  I know it.  I’ve always known it.  Perhaps because I feel the exact same way about him.  There really is not another person alive who understands who I am and who I am not.  There is no one else in the world that could see me at my worst, and still want to be so close.  But what are we doing?

Are we meant for one another?  Maybe we are.  If this question had been posed to me at 17 years old, the answer would have been incredibly simple.  Yes.  Aidan Fisher was absolutely the person I was meant for.  It made no sense.  Maybe that’s why it worked so well.  He was hot headed, and I was even keeled.  We had a balance about us that worked.  He never tried to change me, to bring me over to the type of girls that fell at his feet.  He never wanted me to be like them.  He wanted me to be me.  I never tried to change him.  He was who he was and I loved him for it.  I still do.  He’s unchangeable, completely himself, unwaveringly.  It is cut and dry who he is.  He doesn’t feel the need to apologize for who he is.  He is secure.  He is security to me.  He is a reminder of who I really am.  And we may very well be meant to be together.  But so much time has passed.  Aidan has been there for me over the last eight weeks, more than he ever had to be.  He was there the night Nole didn’t come home.  He stayed with me in the days after, making sure I was okay.  I sought comfort in his arms time and time again.  He kept me from falling off the edge, until he was gone again.  Aidan has a life that has nothing to do with me.  When I left, he grew up, just as I did.  We did this independent of one another, yet somehow ended up right back in the middle of it all of these years later.  When I think of whether or not Aidan and I were meant to be now… in the places that we are in our lives right this minute, I have to just say I don’t know.  I don’t know that I’m looking for that with him.  I don’t know that I’m not.  What I know when it comes to him is that there is absolutely no one else on earth that loves me the way that man does and always will.  There is almost a feeling there that I can’t let him down.  I even feel, at times, that I might be enough for him.

Are we playing pretend?  Absolutely.  We crawl into bed at night together.  We wake up in the morning to one another.  We eat together.  When he leaves for work, I manage to bid him a good night at work.  We share intimate moments together.  In the last week, it is as if he has put his life on hold for me.  He still goes to work, but he comes back home, hovering over me.  There are these moments where I catch him looking in my direction.  I can smile back at him, he can do almost the same, and no words are even needed.  Aidan and I get one another.  But while I’ve been staying with him, there have been multiple times that I’ve almost left.  This, he and I, it isn’t the life he built for himself.  Is it fair to hold him down from all that is normal to him?  It’s not.  Is it fair that the very thought of him being with another makes me angry enough to lash out?  No.  But it is what it is.  We might be playing pretend, but for me, it is soundly based in reality.  Aidan is mine.  I don’t have to fight for him.  I don’t have to beg him.  I only have to look at him and he’s mine again.  Maybe playing pretend is all we can do right now.  I can’t give him more than that, and honestly, I don’t know that he’d want more.  What is more anyways?  It ends in heartache and pain.  It ends in realizing that you aren’t enough and then the whole cycle starts again.  If we keep playing pretend, no one gets hurt.

Are we each other’s destiny? I cannot even begin to answer this question.  I think Aidan and I will always have something between us that is more than what anyone would probably prefer us to have.  The idea that he could be with someone else and not be with me, that’s something I can’t even imagine.  The idea that I will be with another and not be with him, also insane to me.  It’s foreign.  We’ve done it before, but when it falls apart, we are together.  I loved Nole.  I know that I loved Nole.  I loved who Nole was.  I loved the life I was building with Nole.  But the second, and I am talking almost  s e c o n d  that Nole was gone, I was with Aidan again.  There is this magnetism between us, drawing us together constantly.  We can fight it, going in different directions, denying it all, but in the end, we are weak to the draw between us.  Does this make us destiny or completely unable to see how unhealthy for one another that we are?

Are we in love?  There is a love between Aidan and I.  There is a love there like no other.  When we are apart from one another, we can find things that look like it, but in the end, it’s not the same.  I’ve loved Aidan since I was a teenage girl.  Loving Aidan is easy.  He’s loved me just as long.  It’s simple really.  We accept one another where we are.  There are no standards to meet.  We can simply just… be.  But are we ‘in’ love?  I’d have to say no.  There is love between us, yes.  There are times when we know that there is no one else in the world that was made for us.  There are moments where we are enough for one another and that is all that matters.  But is that being in love, or is that two people trying to find comfort in the only place that ever felt truly comfortable?  Yeah, I think so.  I think that when the world is cruel and one of us feels lost, the only place that feels like home is together.  Being in love means pulling out all stops to be together.  Being in love means never feeling the need to look outside of that.  Being in love means holding on to one another and refusing to let go.  Yet, I was the one that let go.  I know that Aidan still harbors such deep hatred for what I did.  He will never understand why I did what I did.  And if he could understand that, and see why I did what I did for my education, Nole was the point that it crossed the line.  Maybe it is justice to him that Nole left me.  Maybe he finds some sick comfort in the fact that the only other person, aside from him, that I ever loved would not love me enough to stay.  Maybe when he looks at me, he finds humor in it.  Maybe I don’t want to know those things.  Maybe I’d rather just pretend, for just a little while longer, before it all goes still again and I have to face the reality that I left the only person who would never leave me.

In a few hours, he will wake up and we will play pretend until he goes to work.  In a few hours, I will go to the doctor, find out what the hell it is that has me ill.  I will get a prescription that will have me better in a few days and then I will face the situation between us for what it is.  Maybe if I can keep my head on straight, I will finally let this man go in the way that he deserves.  Aidan deserves better than this.  I know I reached out to him.  I know I turned to him.  I know that he saved me from a night that I would never forget.  I know that he risked so much for me that night.  But he deserves a girl who knows who the hell she is.  He deserves someone who is completely confident in their life.  He deserves a girl that loves him and only him.  He deserves so much more than what I can offer him.  He deserves the world and I’m just a completely fucked up mess of a girl who once described herself as all of those things that he deserves.  Aidan deserves the best and what I have right now is so much less than the best.  What I have right now is a mind that I can’t control.  A body that I have given away too freely.  A heart that has been shattered.  A realization that I am never going to actually be enough for anyone in this world.  A life that is in shambles.  All I can offer him is this game of pretend that is stamped with an expiration date.  The only question that truly remains for me now is this:

Will it be me or Aidan that realizes first that this is all a love game that neither of us can win?

Abnormal psychology was my favorite to study.  I thrived in the perspectives, captivated in the reasoning for each application, using my ability to draw a truth from each one.  Perhaps that is what drew me to psychology in the first place.  The answers are not always cut and dry.  In order to find the answer, personal attention had to be given to each case, finding a theory or perspective that would fit the individual.  No two case studies were exactly the same, though the answer may lie in the same theory.  In college, I would read overviews of patients, but would not read the results.  I wrote my own conclusions, referencing them to perspectives without looking at the professional opinions until I had formulated my own.  I would lie in bed at night, thinking them through, turning them, spinning them around and changing the end result aside with the theory I would use to answer them.  Treatments were individual, based on the needs of the individual.  

My favorite to lean to and spin from laid in a Freud adaptation of the psychoanalytic theory that anxiety is the root of abnormal behavior.  In my opinion, the anxiety was the root, not the actual situation.  Within ourselves, we can create anxiety where there is none, and often without conscious decision to do so.  What I found so interesting in this matter was the treatment plans.  If the root is the anxiety, would it not make sense to treat the anxiety and not the situation?  This was the question I posed to my professor, to which he swayed my thought process.  Though the anxiety is the root, the fixation of the anxiety, or the situation at hand, was the actual root of the anxiety and would have to be isolated, one at a time, and addressed in an attempt to solve the anxiety that was the actual root of the behavior.

I can go on and on when it comes to the psychodynamic perspective and how it applies to so many different situations.  Or I could go on to focus on social-cultural perspective that is fixed in the idea that abnormal behaviors are simply a reflection of the presentation from peers and family groups.  Cultural values are established in society and inflicted on us daily such as appearance, earnings, status, profession, religion, etc.  These behaviors are learned and some of the hardest to undo.  To take a woman suffering from appearance based abnormal behaviors and convince her that she does not have to look a certain way, does not have to resort to extremes to fit the mold, and to turn her around into a person who can accept weighing more than a hundred pounds, to show her that she does not in fact need more plastic surgery sounds as if they would be the hardest parts of this.  In fact, they are not.  To convince the very same woman that she is absolutely who she is meant to be without alterations, without the extreme weight control, and bring her through her journey to a place where she can actually find happiness within herself, without the mirror, that is where the true work lies.

Abnormal behavior is one of the broadest subjects within abnormal psychology.  It can be approached from a cognitive, medical or behavioral stance, each of which is independent and highly preferred depending on the doctor handling a case.  At the same time, a preference is simply that, as there will be a time when a behavioral favoring psychologist, such as myself, may have to take the approach of another perspective.  

In hindsight, my own behavior is brought into question.  I could try to explain that I did not have a problem.  I was simply feeling emptiness.  I have the intellect to explain it away, but instead, I’m stepping outside of myself and going to attempt something I’ve never done before.  A brief case study of myself with a straight answer.  A psychologist cannot treat herself, but if it is not me?  Then could it be done?  

----------------

2014.11 Subject is a 28-year old, single female.  She grew up in Boston, MA, lived in California for eleven years, and returned to Massachusetts to be with her father until the time of his death.  She recently suffered abandonment by her fiancé who was unhappy in Boston with her.  She admits that in their last month’s together, the signs were there.  Since the former-fiancé’s departure from Boston, she has displayed a multitude of abnormal behaviors.  These include, yet are not limited to, alcohol and drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, assumed identities; tardiness, changes in dress, change in reaction to situations, carelessness, keeping odd hours, limited suicidal thoughts.

In the past seven weeks, the subject has denied having a problem, assured that she was just going through a rough patch, but has had the help of a former boyfriend to keep her from such extremes.  The subject is currently unable to stay in her own home, for fear that she will return to the abnormal behaviors.  Despite her best efforts, she cannot trust herself at this time.  Her darkest hour occurred in a drug induced state that she very little recollection of and closed up the instant she was asked to discuss it.  She claims it is not the root of her problems, and neither is the exit of her fiancé from her life.  She claims the root of the anxiety she has been experiencing is in the realization of inadequacy.

It is my professional opinion that the subject is suffering from maladaptive abnormal behavioral issues, focused in what she believed her life to look like and then being forced to suddenly face the deviation from the plan.  I agree with her root of anxiety being founded in insufficiency, brought forth by the exit of her fiancé without explanation.  It is apparent that she is seeing this in all aspects of her life, unable to measure up.  What she is not seeing is that she is not measuring up to her own standards, not someone else’s.  Her maladaptive behaviors are self-inflicted as well as defeating.  The subject is suffering from a manifestation of psychopathology, permitting the overwhelming feeling of inadequacy.

The proposed treatment plan will consist of using a person-centered approach, based in behavioral perspective, instead of an outcome-driven approach.  The subject needs to feel as if she is enough to see that the inadequacy is within her mind, created as a coping mechanism to the underlying feeling of abandonment by her former-fiancé and the parental exit from her life by choice (fiancé) and by death (parents).  It is clear that her dignity and choice must be held in tact or her spiral will continue.  The subject has agreed to keep journals for self-reflection purposes.  Her inability to separate herself from the actions of others and develop a sense of self-worth will be the center of rebuilding her psyche.  Simple tasks will be key to the reconstruction of her sense of adequacy.  

Suggestions to begin with are as follows: starting a task such as cleaning and seeing it through to completion; abstaining from substance use for a period of seven days, looking at each day individually and not functioning on failures that may occur; abstaining from sex with multiple partners; using only her actual name in sexual relations instead of hiding under assumed names for her own protection; sleeping a minimum of eight hours per night during the same time frame each night without interruption; communication with the Massachusetts Coalition for Suicide Prevention.

----------------

When it is all spelled out, it’s easy to imagine the subject as someone else entirely.  If I look at it as if it is someone else, it is really very simple for me to lay out the reasoning’s, the treatment plan, and look at it from a distance, based in knowledge and logic.  It’s in the moment that I try to imagine replacing ‘subject’ with my name that it gets messy and I want to completely rewrite the entire thing.  

Now that I’ve reread it all, there is no way that it accurately describes me.  I will admit, it is a fascinating case study, one that I would like to delve further into, but not in regards to me.  It’s not me.  Fuck this journal.  Fuck this prison.  Fuck this life.

Returning to Boston had been the easiest decision, yet the hardest thing to face in all of the time I had spent on this earth.  I was leaving my fiancé behind, going to a place that was always hard to leave, and making the journey to be with my father.  My father had suffered a heart attack and this was what made it the easiest decision of my life.  I had to be with him.  My mother had passed when I was much younger and my father was literally the only true family I had at all.  My intentions were to stay with him until either he was back to health or until the end, to which I hoped would not be the latter.  Alas, in a week's time, he passed on and I was left to feel it had been far too soon.  I regretted the ten years I had spent in California away from him, even if I was chasing his dreams for a better life for me.  I remember sitting in the one-room apartment that I had grown up in with my parents, sitting on the pull out sofa that had once served as my bed.  I remember staring at the portrait on the wall of my parents on their wedding day, the only portrait they would ever have done together, and sobbing.  The loss was deeper than anything I had ever felt, though I had some comfort in the idea that now, they were together once again.

There were never two people more in love than my parents.  For the first twelve years of my life, I saw what genuine love was.  They worked hard, coming home exhausted in the evenings, doing all in their power to keep food in my mouth, but never uttered a cross word in the other's direction.  I remember very clearly in my mind the night the heat went out in our apartment.  My father called the super and was told the landlord was refusing to fix it.  I was eight years old at the time, sitting on my sofa bed, smothered in blankets.  My father took the woven hat from his own head, tucking it to my mother's, caring for her first and foremost.  He then pulled the gloves from his hands, placing them on hers.  My mother had already bundled me up with all of her own items, tucking me into the corner of the sofa bed, blankets, scarves, a hat to my head, putting me first as her husband put her first.  My father's hands were ice cold, his ears turning red in the coldness as the two of them huddled against once another without a single blanket left in the room.  I laid there that night watching the two of them together and in my young mind, I feared that my father would surely freeze to death in the darkness of night.  Their arms were wrapped around one another, using their body heat to warm each other as I watched them until my eyes closed and I fell asleep.

They had been married surely for eternity, and yet they still liked one another.  They would cook together in the room-for-one sized kitchen.  They would hold hands while they walked.  They would read in bed, side by side, my mother's head against my father's shoulder.  I may have lost my mother far too soon, but the example of love that she and my father set for me would be etched forever in my mind.  Life wasn't about the money.  It wasn't about the clothes or the cars.  It wasn't about a flashy home, or even a home with isolated bedrooms.  Their love was legitimately more than enough to live on.  Though I was unable to have friends over, and constantly ashamed of our lives, hiding it from all that knew me, I was taught at an early age that love conquered all circumstance and that as long as there was love between them, they felt rich.

Flash forward to now.  Both of my parents are gone, and truthfully, for the first time in my life, I'm glad.  If they could see me now, they would be so ashamed of who I have become.  When my father passed, I had my life straight.  I was engaged to a man who thought the world of me.  I had a promising career and a life with someone who had the same.  My father's last words to me were clear, giving me permission to go on in the direction I had worked for.  "I'm so proud of you, Remington."  In this moment, right now, laying in Aidan's bed, I can almost hear his voice in my head saying clearly, "How did you mess it all up, Remington?"  Truth is, I don't know.  I don't know how I got to where I am right now.  I don't know how I ended up back with Aidan, though not with Aidan.  I don't know why I am still in Boston.  I don't know why Nole despised it so.  I don't know why I allowed my life to spiral so far out of control that I would have to shut the doors to my practice.  I don't know why losing Nole has affected me the way it has.  I don't know why I turn to Aidan, knowing it isn't fair to either of us.  I don't know how I ended up in a place that my parents would be so disappointed in me if they found me like this.

The education that I received at Stanford has afforded me the knowledge of just what it is I have been doing.  I couldn't see it when I was actually partaking in it all, but now that I've been clean for a full week or more, I know what I was doing and why.  It isn't about Nole.  It isn't about my father.  It isn't about my career.  It's about loss.  It's about imperfection.  It's about the fact that I know I will never be enough for anyone in this entire world.  I was enough for my parents, but they are now gone, and I am forced to realize that I have absolutely no one else that will look at me and say "I'm so proud of you, Remington."  Actually, no one else calls me that.  Only my father.  What I would give to hear it one more time.  "I am so proud of you, Remington.  I love you, Remington.  Goodnight, Remington.  Remington, you are my world."  The phrasing different always, but the name always the same.  A name that made me feel, for him, I was enough.  I was perfect.  And I could never let him down.  Only, I have.  Completely.

The bruises to my face have faded.  Aidan has had me under lock and key for days.  I have not felt the sun against my features.  I have not breathed in unfiltered air.  I have not stepped foot out of his apartment in days.  He stays so close to me when he is home, almost to the point of hovering.  We play this game, living as if we are together, sharing a bed, sharing intimate moments between us that are uncompared to any other I've ever shared with another.  There is something between us that has always been and perhaps always will be.  Aidan is home for me, and I guess he always has been.  I feel a draw to him, but I'm just unsure as to what it is.  Am I here because he forced me to be?  He did.  Am I here because he looks at me as if there is no other?  He does.  Am I here because he knows everything about me?  He does.  Am I here because I can feel his love for me?  I can.  Am I here because he is safe?  He is.  Am I here because I'm afraid to be on my own?  I am.  Am I here because I turned to a lifestyle that was never meant for me and ended up in a situation that I couldn't find my way out of?  I did and I couldn't.  Am I here because Aidan is all I have left?  He is.  Will I ever be enough for him or any other?  I won't.

Admitting the truth is half the battle, they say.  Professionally, I know this not to be true.  The truth of it is that admitting the truth is only the first step.  I recommend journaling to my patients, and I must admit, I feel pretty stupid doing it.  Why do the words need to be written, by hand, in a journal?  I'd much rather do this on my computer, where it can be password protected, hidden away from Aidan or anyone else, ensuring they will never ever read my deepest thoughts.  Though, I know well that I learned in college why it must be hand written.  It's more personal.  It means more.  And it allows me to put down my walls and just write.  The thoughts will be uninhibited by my need to control the situation.  My words may come out raw at times.  They may make sense to absolutely no one.  But they have to come out.  If they don't, I will be out of this door, back on my own, repeating the same thing that led me to this place all over again.  

The only thing left in my mind at this moment is that this isn't fair to Aidan.  I'm not the same person I was before.  I'm not the girl he fell in love with a million years ago.  I'm broken.  I'm falling apart.  And although I've done my best to hide it from him while I've been staying with him, masking my pain as 'Nole moments' that shake me up for a time, I'm starting to wonder if he knows more.  It isn't about Nole anymore.  And it isn't about Aidan.  It's about being completely inadequate in my personal life and in my professional life.  It's about feeling as if I'm half the person I once was, and although this came to light after Nole returned to California, that was only a trigger point that sent me on a spiral to the literal bottom of the barrel.  From down here, everything is out of reach.  I can't return to work.  I can't return to my father's apartment.  I can't return to what I built.  I can't return to normal.  Instead, I am here, playing house with Aidan and putting on the fakest brave face in the world that I can only keep up for so long.  Before Stanford, I was enough for Aidan.  He didn't need me to have a printed diploma.  He didn't need me to become professional on him.  He did not hold high expectations for me.  He took me for who I was.  Yet now, I lay here in his bed, pen in hand, and I'm ready to write the words that I cannot speak.  

At this point in my life, I'm simply not enough and maybe I never was to begin with.