Page 200 of Spicy Ever After
“Panic!” I nearly shout. And before she can prompt me, I say, “It’s a fucking difficult emotion.”
Gwen nods again. I might even see a spark of pride in her eyes. “What do we do with difficult emotions?”
I inhale a shaky breath. Because this question gives me distance. Not much. But a little distance to observe the panic. To remember that it’s an emotion that will pass, not an emergency I have to escape.
I keep rocking, but I press my feet more firmly to the floor, gaining evidence of where I am. I’m in Gwen’s office at Summit House. Sitting on her couch where I’ve sat practically every other day since I got here last month.
“Observe them,” I finally answer. And as I observe the panic, the color fades from fire-engine red to the burnt orange of alarm.
“What if Beck can’t forgive me? What if it’s over between us?”
“How does that make you feel?” Gwen asks the question like she already knows the answer, and dammit, so do I.
I burst into tears. “H-heartbroken.”
She nods as I sob. “Grief,” she whispers gently.
I go through three and a half tissues observing this grief, realizing it's been there all along. Even the day after Margaret’s wedding when I decided not to tell Beck where I was going. I did it to avoid losing him.
To avoid feeling this bone-deep grief.
And it sucks that this decision may actually lead to me losing him anyway.
“He’s right. I didn’t trust that he’d still love me if he knew where I was going. If he suddenly saw me as someone who needed special help. As someone… incapable.”
I know from our group sessions that I’m not the only one who’s dealt with feelings of inadequacy. Of inferiority. Of feeling like I don’t belong.
And it’s funny, but when you’re in a room full of people who feel the way you have always felt, suddenly—I don’t know—those feelings of inferiority and of not belonging sort of… lose their edge.
Because there are a lot of people like me. And we may be different from the normies, but we aren’t less than.
And on a whole lot of days, we are more than.
More sensitive. More creative. More original.
And a lot funnier.
But that’s beside the point.
Gwen leans forward in her chair, resting her elbows on her knees. “Hattie… I want you to consider something for a moment. You’ve spent a lot of time worrying about what Beck thinks—and I’m not saying what he thinks doesn’t matter. How the people close to us feel and how they see us definitely matters. But what I want you to focus on right now is what you think.”
I blink my wet lashes. “What do you mean?”
“You were worried about Beck not seeing you the same way—not loving you—if you were someone who, as you said, needed special help.”
I sniffle. “And?”
She pauses for a moment, and I get the sense that she’s about to hit me with a truth bomb.
“Do you love yourself less because you need special help?”
And just like that?—
KABOOM!
I shatter into about a million pieces.
Tears. Snot. Mangled tissues. My lungs heave like I’m running an 800-meter dash. I’m sweating and crying at the same time.
