Page 54 of Breathe Again

When he finished reading, he laid the papers down, squeezed me, and looked down into my worried eyes, his own soft but slightly impatient.

“I don’t understand why you’re so worried. We know this. At least I do. This is not new information.”

Maybe this should have comforted me, but it did not. I didn’t have the insight into my behavior that I thought I’d had. I was shocked, my thoughts scattered.

“It’s not that it’s new exactly, it’s that it’s a disorder. All these years I thought if you could just listen, and we could just work things out, I’d feel better.”

He pointed to himself, his eyebrows raised. “You thought I was the problem?”

I blinked. “Well, yeah.”

He laughed, not unkindly, and hugged me. “Baby.”

Tears sprung to my eyes. “What do you mean, ‘baby’?”

“I know, and I’ve known for a long, long time, that some of your thoughts and behaviors are not logical. I didn’t know it was a diagnosis, but none of the symptoms are new for me. I can see that it is for you, but should it be? Think about it. I can see that it’s hard for you to take in, but Mara, I can’t emphasize enough, there is nothing here that is a surprise. With the possible exclusion of the depth of emotional pain you suffer,” he allowed. “That isdisturbing, but even that, with the way you think, is not unexpected.”

We sat in silence. I didn’t know how to proceed. This was not what I expected.

“Do you still want to be with me?”

There was no missing the surprise on his face, and you didn’t need an expertise in Zaleology to read it. He pulled me tighter against him.

“Of course, I still want to be with you. I love you, Mara. It hurts me that you don’t believe it, and this is also not new knowledge for me, but I do love you and I’ll always love you. Of course, I want to be with you.”

I slipped my arm around his waist; he rested his head on top of mine. He sighed and muttered, “Complicated little molecule.”

I laughed. He’d first said that to me weeks before. I laughed then, too, more in disbelief.

Disbelief.

He was right, I did not believe he loved me, not really. I could only feel it when we were making love. There was too much mental static interfering, the buzzing of all those thoughts, berating me, cutting me down, making it difficult for any other messages to get through. Sex cut through the noise, took me to another space. A space where I could hear him, a space where I was open to receiving his words.

“So, what happens now?” he murmured.

“Therapy. And lots of it,” I uttered drily.

He squeezed his hand at my hip.

“We’ll do whatever we can, Mara. I don’t want you to suffer. Especially if there’s something we can do about it.”

He was quiet for a few moments then he continued, his tone hardening.

“Do not tell Bea.”

“What?” Why was he talking about my mother?

“Do not tell Bea. I don’t trust her with the information. Also, I don’t want Olivia to hear anything about it. She has enough difficulty processing the everyday stuff. Let’s shield her from the worry and confusion this might bring her.”

“That makes sense.”

“As for Willa and Bex, I think you should tell them.”

“You think?”

The idea had me physically cringing. They’d know I was a psycho. They might pull away from me. Especially Willa. Borderline is right up there with Narcissism. My diagnosis kind of made me believe in Willa’s theory about my mother being an actual narcissist. It seemed the apple didn’t fall too far from the fucking tree.

He squeezed me closer. “Definitely.”

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