We Are the Light(58)

My wife used to look me dead in the eyes and say, “Since you started analysis, you’re so much lighter, so much more fun to be around. It’s like you’re a completely different person. Not that I didn’t love the old you. But it’s nice to see you finally enjoying your life for a change.”

And I really was starting to enjoy my life—maybe for the first time.

That’s quite a fact.

Just in case I never talk to you again, please know that you helped me. Even after you stopped allowing me direct access to your medicine, you still kept helping. Just the idea of you helps. Writing these words here tonight helps. I definitely wouldn’t have made it this far without you.

So thank you, thank you, thank you.

You’re a wonderful man, Karl Johnson.

Your most loyal analysand,

Lucas





THREE YEARS AND EIGHT MONTHS LATER





18.


Dear Karl,

It’s been quite some time.

Buckle up, because this will most likely be an extremely long letter written over multiple sittings.

It will also be the last batch of words I ever compose for you.

When I sign off again, it will be forever, although I will, of course, continue to honor our very important relationship in other less immediate ways.

I suppose we should begin by acknowledging the two massive purple elephants here with us in the metaphorical room—or whatever you want to name this container I’ve somehow created. I honestly have no idea what to call it. A trove of love letters? A diary? A painfully slow confession? The ramblings of a grieving madman? All I know is that writing you buoyed me through an incredibly dark period of my life. Without at least the idea of you reading or listening, I know my resolve would have eventually failed. I would have been pulled down into the murkier psychological depths below and surely drowned.

Gigantic Purple Elephant Number One:

It feels somewhat creepy—and maybe even unstable—to be writing you now that I’ve unequivocally accepted the fact that you are dead and were the whole time I was sending you letters. You were dead while I was walking past your home over and over—and even when I was knocking on what I thought was still the front door of your residence. I couldn’t accept what I had seen back then, mostly because I still so desperately needed you to be alive. I guess I made you into a psychological mirage of sorts, just to keep myself moving forward through whatever lonely desert I was in. My unquenchable thirst for you made my mind boil.

Thankfully, today I’m not as sick as I was back then. I’m no longer dissociating. I’ve reclaimed all of my ugliest memories and have been working very hard to bring them permanently to consciousness, integrating everything. And I’m also trying very hard to forgive myself, even though no one else thinks I did anything wrong.

I feel as though I’ve now processed both traumas—the Majestic Theater massacre as well as finding you the way I did after all the funerals ended. And maybe I’ve healed enough to write this last letter, concluding whatever I started when I was so ill. For many reasons, it feels important to bring that dark chapter to its natural conclusion. To honor it. Hold it up to the gods in appreciation, as you might have once said.

So, yes, I’ve accepted that both you and Darcy and all the others are really gone from this world forever.

I remember you saying once—and I’m surely going to misquote you here, so please forgive me in advance—that Jung believed neuroses are the psyche’s best response to the crisis at hand and, while we always want to work toward healing and stabilizing psyche, we should also honor, or at least acknowledge, its valiant attempts to protect us.

I’ve read through all the mad letters I sent to you. I still have them on my laptop. Initially, I was worried about who had the physical manifestations of all those rambling confessions. What would these unnamed people do with my ravings? Would someone be so cruel as to post the product of my illness on the internet? And if so, would I ever be allowed to continue my work at Majestic High School? I’m not sure I’d want even Isaiah or Jill to read the words my dissociated self wrote to you. I’ve lost sleep thinking about this.

A young couple with two small daughters lives in your house now. When I happened to walk by a year or so ago I saw carpenters converting your consulting room into what now looks like a cross between a greenhouse and an enclosed patio. Through the large glass plates, anyone wandering by can now see tall green plants and outdoor furniture, all of which I think you’d actually like. In a royal-blue bathrobe and white slippers, the mom often takes her morning coffee out there. The rising sun lights up her face as she does her emails on her tablet. I can tell she loves living in your house. Sometimes I see the girls playing on the front lawn and they look happy too, completely oblivious to the last thing you did inside their idyllic home.

I’ve worried that my letters were piled up on the floor behind the front door when this family purchased the property. Did the young mom and dad read through all my intimate thoughts? And if so, what did they think? Did they label me crazy? Did they even make it past the first letter? Would they have looked at the postmarks and read them in order or would they have read randomly? Or did they immediately throw all my letters in the trash? I’ve seen the young family in town. When I wave and say hello and smile, they always return my pleasantries without any hesitation, which seems like a good sign.