Page 98 of Not the Plan

“I shouldn’t have?”

“No, I’m glad you did. More than glad. I’m not even sure how to describe how I feel about it. For a couple of seconds, I felt like I was sliding into some other dimension.”

“Why?”

“No one gets it. Literally no one. Except maybe RJ, and it took him a year to understand the level of crazy. You’re the very first person in my entire life who got it so quickly and refused to act like it was normal or pretend it wasn’t there.”

He looked down, a little shy because of the way she was looking at him, a little proud that she felt the way she did.

“You know,” he said, “it may not be my place and I’m not a specialist or anything, but I think your mother is more than just difficult.”

Isadora’s response was a relief. Instead of balking, she waited for him to continue, her expression calm and open.

“Last night, did you notice how she kept trying to separate us at dinner?” he asked.

“Yeah. But I didn’t really think anything of it. She’s always done that, anytime I’ve brought someone around. She tries to physically get between us. It’s weird, but I feel like she’s trying to keep me to herself. Unless it’s one of the guys she’s tried to set me up with. Then she can’t do enough to shove us together.”

He nodded, about to speak, but was cut off by the blare of a siren coming from her purse.

“Ah,” Isadora said. “Speak of the devil.”

“That’s her ringtone?”

“Yep.”

Isadora rejected the call, continuing the conversation.

“Even before you said anything today, I got the impression that she saw you as a threat. You get in the way of doing what she wants with the thing she owns.” Isadora pointed at herself.

He nodded. “Do you remember what I said about Laila? How she saw me as her property? Personality disorders are supposed to be rare, so of course I’m not diagnosing your mother or excusing her behavior. It’s just that she reminds me so much of my ex. So much. Maybe look into it? If that’s what’s wrong, it might help you deal with the aftermath of life with a person like that. It’s taken me two years to mostly recover from being married to a toxic person. It sounds like you’ve been dealing with one your whole life.”

“I’ve been wondering about it. Since you told me about Laila,” she said. “The idea that it could be a real thing, that I’m not the source of the problem, or just too weak or broken to handle being loved the way my mother wants to love me seems like too much to hope for.”

“It’s freeing to discover it’s a real thing.”

“But what is it? What causes it?”

“I don’t remember why some people develop them, but they’re beyond needy, clingy. For my ex, she had this massive fear of abandonment that ironically made her do everything possible to push me away. While expecting me to accept what amounted toemotional abuse. And in her case sometimes physical. It’s taken time and a lot of therapy for me to understand why she behaved the way that she did, and that in spite of her problems, she was still responsible for her behavior.”

Isadora looked out the window. He didn’t know if he’d explained things well, if he should say more. But it had taken him a long time to understand what Laila’s issues meant; he doubted that those few words would be enough to explain things to Isadora, if he was reading the situation correctly at all.

“It’s hard to think of it as abuse,” Isadora said, her voice wavering. “Like I said, RJ’s been the only person to say it wasn’t normal. Deep down, I already knew that it wasn’t, but when the feedback from everyone else is that it’s just tough love, or worse, ‘Your mom is such a great person,’ it’s…it’s easy to think there’s something wrong with me.” The slight sob he heard her swallow broke his heart. He reached out to put an arm around her and hugged her as much as their seat belts would allow.

“That’s exactly how it was for me with my ex,” he said. “She is intensely charming with other people. Her life looks perfect from the outside. And according to her, it was part of my job to maintain that image. A couple weeks after she left, I heard that her official line was that I’d been cheating on her, abusing her. It stung that our mutual friends cut me out of their lives too, because Laila is very persuasive. And why wouldn’t they believe her? She’d had them sure that she was the perfect wife as long as they’d known her. I was the one who worked too much, who didn’t pay enough attention to her. But back to your mom. It might be time to get some help.”

“She’ll never agree to that.”

“I meant for you.”

“So you think I’m broken too?”

He squeezed her tighter. “Not at all. I think you’ve been through years of traumatic experiences and anyone would need help to begin addressing that. You might even have CPTSD.”

“CPTSD?”

“Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It’s common—” The siren started again. She rejected it again, keeping the phone in her lap.

“Didn’t you tell her you wouldn’t answer if she called?”

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