Page 46 of Love and Other Mental Health Concerns
“This is an intervention.” Annie stares at me from across a table at Harolds.
“It’s not an intervention, it’s a check-in.” Stan corrects her.
“No, Stan, it is an intervention. I haven’t seen my friend in weeks except for the lunches I can steal with her at work. Are you being held captive? Does he let you leave your bedroom?”
“Do not answer the bedroom question with Stan and I still sitting here,” Gary Pipes in, “But we do miss you and want to hear about how things are going with your…boyfriend? Are we calling him that?” He has a little glimmer in his eye.
I stare back at my three interrogators, warmth spreading over me at their concern. I have missed them too, my little family. I owe them an explanation and some quality time, having been admittedly MIA from life outside of work and Nick, the latter occupying my time and mind more than I care to admit to this group.
My days consist of developing and increasing the services I can provide at the hospital. Thankfully, I have been able to add more volunteers and support groups than I ever thought would be possible. Seniors and college students alike have jumpedat the opportunities I offer, and have added several of their own, the two groups working together flawlessly to create and improve systems, all with my oversight and without charging for their time. In addition to the ideas I had, there are talks of meal delivery, planned social outings for the homebound, and information sessions on self-care and mental health topics at all stages of life.
The change has been so positive that Keith believed I earned an office space, placing me in a glorified closet near the emergency department. It is tiny but it has a door and a desk, and my back is thankful to be able to leave my mobile office days behind me. He has also acknowledged my title change to Director of Social Services, which comes with a bump to my salary. Nick insists that the money I am creating for the hospital by billing insurance companies for mental health services and decreasing the re-admission rates is more than covering that increase.
My evenings? Nick has all but moved into my apartment over the past few weeks. Despite one slip-up where I was on my knees for him in my new office, we are keeping things strictly professional at work. After work, we drive separately back to my apartment and into the bubble of bliss that is my home. The space that I obsessed over making my own, my haven for nearly a decade, has had a perimeter breach and in an unfathomable twist of events, it has now become difficult to imagine it going back to before. Honestly, it’s getting hard to imagine going back to anything before Nick.
Nick’s stuff is all over my place. His clothing is hanging in my closet, he’s putting groceries in my kitchen, jackets hanging in the hall, a bike of his own chained up next to mine downstairs. My fears of letting someone into my life have been coaxed into a quiet back corner of my mind, while Nick’s confident demeanor heals the little girl who thought she couldn’t be loved. Wehaven’t said those words to each other, both of us seemingly dancing around the inevitable weight of what that means and not wanting to jostle this delicate state of life we have created. We spend our evenings on runs, learning to cook for each other, reading, or watching terrible television and then fucking each other into absolute oblivion before we pass out to begin again the next day. We lose ourselves in each other, forgetting we own phones and that the world exists outside of our immediate enjoyment of one another. We laugh, we argue, we worry about work together and how to make a difference in this community.
It Is perfect. It Is everything I could have ever wanted for myself, and he shows me and tells me that he feels the same. I have never felt this level of compatibility and mutual affection.
And we are in absolute denial.
Nick will leave.
It’s the one thing we don’t discuss. We don’t discuss the looming deadline of his work at the hospital, the fact that after the holidays he will be flying off to whatever corner of the country he is called to, and I will be here. I will be in the apartment that became ours, running the mental health programming, we created together, and I will be alone in both. Coming back to that bleak realization in my mind as I sit before my family sobers me.
“I’m sorry, what exactly is the question?” I ask.
“This man you have been holed up with Marcy, what is happening?” Annie looks at me incredulously.
So much. “It’s hard to explain,” I fidget with my rings.
“Well try sweetie,” Gary requests.
“We spend all our time together, he’s so easy to be around and talk to. He’s brilliant and kind and makes me think that I can make a difference in the world. He’s gorgeous and loving, and accepts all of me, every flaw. In a crazy turn of events, he says he feels the same way about me, and despite it all, he willleave in a month.” I say the words to them as if to make it real. To stop fooling myself.
The brightness In their faces, the excitement they had upon first sitting at the table, falters. I don’t look at them, I just focus intently on the second cookie I am consuming in hopes it magically cures the dread in my stomach.
“What does he say about that?” Stan asks.
“I wouldn’t know. We don’t talk about it. We agreed to take our relationship day by day, and I’m afraid that if we talk about it, make it real, then the bubble we are vacationing in will pop. That if we talk about it, we have no choice but to acknowledge that despite the beautiful thing we have started, it has no real future.” I’m still staring down at my cookie, worried I may start to cry if I meet any pity in their eyes. “And you don’t need to say it, I know that I would tell my patients they have to suck it up and have the conversation.”
“Marcy, may I speak freely?” Gary asks. Always the voice of reason, I’m attentive. “Forget what you think you must tell your patients. This man hasn’t left your side in a month, since your first date. Even before that, he was offering you rides home, fixing your car, making connections in the town that you live in, engaging with your patients. These aren’t the doings of a man who is looking for a fleeting affair with a woman. Talk to him. I would bet you share some fears, and maybe the bubble does pop, or maybe the bubble grows, strengthens even.”
I love Gary.
“But to what end, Gary? I can’t be the girlfriend in a long-distance relationship. I have healed so much of my trauma, my fears of people never loving me, but the self-doubt I would experience to have my partner away for so long would be crippling, and unfair to him.”
“What if he stays?” Stan cuts in.
“I could never ask that of him. We haven’t been together long enough, and we haven’t even made our relationship official. I would be selfish to ask him to stay.”
“Marcy, no one cares if you call each other boyfriend and girlfriend anymore, you are practically living together.” Annie chimes in.
“Okay, well all the same. I can’t ask that of him, and I can’t leave North River. Despite the pain I have experienced here, this town has also healed me. You all are my family, and I don’t want to leave you. I am just getting the traction I have only dreamed of at the hospital, there’s no way to desert that mission now.”
“Okay,” Gary acquiesces. “Whatever you two decide to do, just know that we will be here for you. That never changes. We love you.” He says so with authority as he finishes his soup.
“I love you guys too.”
