Page 17 of Dream with Me

I glance over at my passenger seat, glad I didn’t take the gift for Shannon’s first day on the job into the house. What would I have said when I gave it to her?“Here’s a dorky gift that may help your first-day nerves.”Nah, I chickened out. But seeing the bag with its bright colors takes me back to when I first met her.

When we were in high school and Shannon first started tutoring me, she was initially frustrated because I was quiet. Too often, when she would be trying to teach me about a topic and asked me something that she thought required a response, I’d be speechless, not by choice. It was like my brain and my mouth were paralyzed. My communication skills were even worse than usual.

Shannon was the first and only person I ever shared my reasoning for why I’m so “quiet” with. She questioned me several times when she first started tutoring me. I became aware one day that she was about to give up on me, thinking I was disinterested. In a near panic, I stopped her as she gathered up her books, and I found the words I needed.

I was first diagnosed with ADHD at thirteen years old. My junior high counselor recommended that I get tested after an astute teacher figured out it wasn’t that I didn’t care about school but that there may have been something else going on. Something that made it difficult to focus on my studies. So, the good thing, I guess, is that my mom went forward with the testing, and I got the diagnosis. It explained a lot to me about why I felt like things were always racing through my head. The bad thing was we couldn’t afford the treatments beyond the initial trial. Even though medications did help me and enabled me to slow down everything that was firing in my brain, I was only on them for about six months. Then, we stopped going back to the specialist. The money just wasn’t there for it. After that, I think Mom was embarrassed that she hadn’t been getting me treatment, so my mom brushed off any future visits whenever someone would mention it had been on my medication history.

That’s when I got a name for what felt wrong with me, but it wasn’t in time to save me from the ramifications of going with an untreated condition. I’m the reason that my mom couldn’t afford the medication because I’m the reason my dad left us. Maybe if the diagnosis had come sooner, he would have stayed. That familiar tightness I get in my chest whenever I think back to him leaving starts creeping up my rib cage, heading to my throat.

Mom and Dad are in the living room with the TV on low, probably to prevent me from hearing their conversation. I’ve only been in bed for maybe twenty minutes, sent there early tonight because my parents were clearly in the middle of a fight.

When I think my parents would assume I’m asleep, I climb down a couple of steps, still hidden from sight, and crouch to listen to the argument. A few more steps down, and my parents would be able to see me, but here they can’t. So, unless one of them comes upstairs quickly, I should be able to escape back to my room without anybody the wiser I’m listening.

“I can’t stand it! The boy is all over the place. He’s constantly bouncing off the walls, and there’s never a moment of calm in our house because of him.” My dad’s voice is harsh, angry even.

I know he’s talking about me. He’s describing me to a T. Plus, I’m the only kid they’ve got.

“Phil, he’s just a boy. He’ll grow out of it. We have to give him more time. You know this isn’t just about?—”

“No. I can’t live around this constant chaos. My brother’s kids aren’t like that. Why the hell can’t the kid chill out? He puts me on edge constantly. When I’m thinking about having a glass of whiskey at 1 p.m. ‘cause the kid is wild and I can’t relax, there’s a problem. It has to stop.”

“What do you want me to do? He talks a lot, but that’s because he’s curious, and that’s how he is. There are things he wants to say, and I’d rather him do that than not talk to us at all.”

I hear the recliner creaking like it does when my dad climbs out of it, so I hurry and tiptoe back to my room, climbing under the blankets. I feel bad that my dad is aggravated with me all the time. I don’t want to make him even more mad at me if he finds me out of bed.

The next morning, when I woke up, something was different in the house. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not good.

When I get downstairs, Mom pours me a bowl of cereal and she’s smiling, but her eyes appear vacant, blank. They’re swollen around the edges, and her nose is red. I worry she’s been crying.

“Mom? What time is Dad taking me to play basketball today?” I watch my mother closely as she takes a deep breath and closes her eyes for a second.

“He’s not able to take you today. Daddy had some things he needed to do, so he’s gonna be away for a little bit.”

We never saw my father again. All because of me.

Over the next few years, I tried to figure out ways to clear the noise in my head, afraid if I didn’t, my mom would leave me, too. But it was tough. I couldn’t talk to Mom about it, so I kept it to myself and learned to suppress the words trying to escape me. Not to say too much. At first, I did this thing to focus my attention. I would pinch the skin on my palm, at the base of my thumb, really tight, so it would hurt and remind me to stop talking so much. I could hide that I was doing it, and it didn’t leave marks. Therefore, I didn’t get in trouble.

As an adult, I know that it was an unhealthy coping mechanism, but, as a ten-year-old boy whose dad had just left, it was the best I could come up with. Unfortunately, it became a habit I wasn’t able to break until I was fifteen. Even today, I’ll find myself rubbing that same area when I’m stressed.

In time, I morphed into a young man of few words, and people thought I was just quiet. I trained my mind not to say the first thing that came into my head. Hell, I was trying not to sayeverythingthat came into my brain because, most days, it’s like a tornado in there.

Over the years with Shannon, I got comfortable taking my time, sifting through the words vying for attention in my brain, and finding the ones I wanted to convey. I thought that I was doing things right. I thought I was preserving our marriage by avoiding blurting out the things that were flying through my head. But somehow, along the way, I didn’t recognize that my lack of communication, my inability to share with her what was in my heart, hurt her.

Maybe that’s why I missed how deeply unhappy my wife was. I thought the sadness would eventually pass, or maybe it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. I didn’t see it for what it was, or worse, maybe deep down, I did and ignored it because I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t make her feel safe enough to tell me about it in a way that would enable me to help her. To protect her from what she was going through. I let her down.

So, our marriage is ending. It’s been three weeks, and as time goes on, I understand more every day that perhaps she was right. Possibly I do need to communicate better. Maybe I had forgotten some of the crucial things for keeping the intimacy in our marriage. I don’t mean physical intimacy or sex. We were great at that, even at our worst. But having that one person you know better than everyone else and you see every side of them, even the side they hide from others. Still, you love them not in spite of it but because of it. Because of who they are and what it’s done to shape their heart.

I miss my wife. Desperately. I love her with everything in me. I want nothing more than to stay married to her, but if I’m no longer her dream—ifwearen’t—then I have to find a way to let her go. If anyone deserves to have their dreams come true, it’s her.

CHAPTER11

SHANNON

When I made the plan to get to work this early—forty minutes, to be exact—I neglected to think about how I might look like a creep sitting in my car in the parking lot. No one knows me yet. What if someone calls the police? God, that would be my luck.

The bigger issue is that having this time alone with my thoughts gives me time to think about everything going on with Troy and me. I received a letter Friday from the courts notifying me that in sixty-four days, our divorce delay will be over... my marriage of twelve years will be over. Eighteen years of belonging to each other will end. Sixty-four days.

I’m not as relieved as I thought I would be. It’s been almost a week since Troy listened to me and stopped his nightly calls. But I’m still waiting for something good to come over me. I’m waiting for relief.

---