Page 27 of Dream with Me

Over the next couple minutes, Marissa explains how our first visit will go and what subsequent visits might look like. I work hard to focus on what she’s saying so I don’t miss anything important.

“Would you tell me, in your own words, what made you seek therapy at this time in your life, Troy?”

My heart starts pounding in my chest. A very big part of me wants to leave, telling her this was a mistake. I’m too uncomfortable. Then, I remember Shannon’s face and her words the afternoon she told me she wanted a divorce.

“You don’t listen to me.”

“I’m invisible to you. You don’t even know me anymore...You don’t see me.”

“If you’re honest with yourself, I think you know you don’t love me anymore…”

I clear my throat. “I’m going through a divorce.” My voice is hushed.

I wait for her to say something in response, but she doesn’t. She watches me expectantly.

“I had ADHD as a kid and... and probably still do. I let it mess up my communication with my wife and made her leave me, too.”

I noticed her write something down on her notepad and wondered what it was.

Over the rest of the session, Marissa asks me questions and helps me dig deeper into a few of my answers. She asks if I’ve ever taken medication for ADHD. I explained that I did as a kid and why I stopped them—finances. When I re-tried them as a young adult, I didn’t like how they made me feel.

“But I don’t want to try medications again. I want to try managing it without.”

“Tell me more about that. What would it look like if you could better manage it? What would you like to see change as a result of therapy?”

I hesitate. “Um, I guess I’d like to be able to focus more when my... when someone is talking to me, so I remember important things.” I pause and watch her face, searching for a clue that this is enough for her. She watches me, her expression not giving anything away about her thoughts. “I-I need to learn how to pay better attention in certain situations. At work, it’s never been a problem, oddly. Put me on a medical call or even in a raging fire, and my focus is unwavering, all the non-essential things in the periphery of my mind quiet. But that’s harder everywhere else. Depending on the setting and how much is happening around me, I can usually sort my thoughts okay, but it may take longer than other people. I do best one-on-one or with only a couple of people. When you add in a lot of activity—like, say, a kid’s birthday party or an all-family dinner like we used to have at my in-laws—I struggle there. Honestly, we have four kids, so even an evening at home can be hard to focus, and I... I...”

I need a minute to get myself together, to ease the tightness in my lungs. To get my words past the overwhelming sadness that fills my heart and clouds my mind. I lean forward, resting my forearms on my knees and my head in my hands, staring down at the navy blue carpeting. As I force myself to take a few slow, deep breaths, my head clears a little, and after a few moments, I glance at Marissa.

“It can be hard to focus at home sometimes, and because I didn’t find ways to deal with that, I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have. I missed that my wife was unhappy until it was too late. I missed that she doesn’t see herself like she should. Worse, I didn’t do my part to assure she knows howIsee her.” My eyes blur at the thought of Shannon having such a low opinion of herself. “I-I saw she was sad... depressed maybe, but I didn’t do the right things to take care of her. I didn’t see she had regrets, and I made her feel invisible. I let her sink deeper into her depression.” The first tear that drops onto my cheek seems as if it’s the size of a boulder. I don’t bother to wipe it away.

Marissa waits a few long seconds and then leans toward me. “That’s a lot of blame to assign yourself, Troy. A good place for us to start on our next visit is by sorting out what is yours to own—especially things we can do something about—and what isn’t. I’d also like to get you scheduled for comprehensive testing for ADHD. It could help us individualize your therapy. Are you willing to do that?”

I nod. We spend the next few minutes getting the ADHD evaluation set up and then scheduling a few more appointments. Marissa offers the option of holding our appointments at the Elladine office she works out of since this one, in River’s Run, is further for me, but I decline. I want to keep this private, and distancing myself from Elladine when I see her is exactly what I want.

As she walks me out, Marissa tells me, “I’m glad you’re getting help, Troy. You should be proud that you took this first step.”

“I had to. I can’t keep driving people away.”

CHAPTER17

SHANNON

“I’m bored, Scrappy. Bored and sick of studying.” Scrappy barely lifts his head and glances at me, probably thinking I’ve finally lost it. The house is so quiet, and even though the kids have only been at Troy’s for a couple of hours, I don’t have it in me to study anymore tonight.

It’s only six p.m., I’ll find something useful to do. Ah, laundry. Yep, I can catch up on laundry. It’s deeply satisfying to spend my Friday night doing the mundane task of getting ahead. That should probably be concerning, but it isn’t.

I grab a clothes basket from the laundry room and head upstairs. After gathering the clothes from the younger three kids’ rooms, I’m shocked when I enter Olivia’s room and, instead of her clothes all over the floor like usual, they’re actually in the hamper. It’s a small win in the life of a mom, but I’ll take it. After getting her clothes, I head to my walk-in closet and empty the hamper. The basket’s overflowing at this point, and I stuff it down as I walk to the other side of the bed to get Troy’s?—

I don’t know how long I stand there staring at the sock-free floor before I drop the basket and slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the hardwood.

“Troy doesn’t live here anymore, Shannon. Get it together. First, you’re talking to the dog. Then you forget your husband hasn’t lived here for over a month. Jesus.”

As I sit there, I wonder why the socks on the floor bothered me so much. I’m not even sure I ever told Troy it annoyed me. Instead, I let it frustrate me until every time I saw a stupid sock on the floor, I filed it away in my brain as another way he was slighting me. It seems so stupid now. It was such a trivial thing to be annoyed over. If I had told him, he probably would have tried to stop doing it. He might have needed reminding once in a while, but he’s not a man who does things maliciously. We may have grown apart, but I know that about him.

I heave my tired body off the floor and pick up the laundry basket. It only takes me five minutes to have the first load in the washing machine. Now what? I go to the kitchen, and nothing needs doing there.

Maybe I’ll have a snack and binge-watch something on television. The idea of it doesn’t really light my fire, but I need to find something to do. When I pull open the refrigerator, my gaze is immediately drawn to the bright pink liquid in the plastic medicine bottle.

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