Maame(86)

“Who do you say it to?”

“Oh, not everyone. Friends and family. People I love.”

“And maybe people you want to love you back?”

I don’t answer.

“Do they verbally reciprocate?” she asks. “Actually, do they ever say it first?”

“I’m sure they do. I just remember it always being a response.”

“What about your parents?” Angelina asks. “Did they say it often?”

“I never heard them say it to each other. Is that weird?”

Angelina slowly closes her notebook and gently says, “There is no weird, Maddie. Every individual’s experience is unique. Did they ever say it to you?”

I shift in my seat. “Say what? That they love me?” I nod. “Of course. Well, my dad did twice. Once when he was drunk and another when he was … unwell. I think his brain had forgotten itself. A little loose and addled with medication at the time, you know? But I know he loved me; you can’t not love your children, especially the unproblematic ones.”

“And your mother?”

“Yes, she must have.” I think of all the compliments Mum’s given me; she calls me darling, her baby, and a blessing. They’re all the same thing as love. “I tend to end our phone calls with ‘I love you.’”

“So, again, you initiate?”

I begin tapping my foot because my stomach feels like it has no lining. “I’m sure she has said it first on multiple occasions, I just can’t remember. She’s not a bad mother.”

“I didn’t say she was.”

I close my eyes and shake my head. “I’m sorry. I thought these sessions were going to be about my dad passing away and the grieving process.”

“They are,” Angelina says. “But you cannot hope to understand an end without starting at the beginning.”

“My mum does love me.”

“I didn’t say she did not,” Angelina replies. “I’m saying the opposite, rather.”

Bringing my hands together, I feel my pulse jump.

“I think you know your mother loves you,” Angelina begins, “but your uncertainty may stem from a lack of convention, of the typical. How someone shows you they love you has less to do with you and all to do with them. There are healthy and unhealthy expressions of love and not all of them should be accepted.”

This is meant to be about my mum, but I think about Dad and how I used to believe that if someone loved you, they had to say it, otherwise it wasn’t real, it wasn’t known, but I understand now that’s not the case. My dad rarely said those special three words, whether due to his upbringing, his stoic generation, whatever, but I always knew, inexplicably, that he did.

“Many assume love is straightforward,” Angelina continues, “when really it is the most complicated of things. There is a right way, a preferred way, for each individual, to love and be loved by someone—but there isn’t only one way. I believe the difficulty of life has much to do with understanding and then navigating how the people you love both express and receive love themselves. It cannot be your responsibility, your burden, to reshape people into someone you’d like them to be. Ultimately, you must either accept a person for who they are, how they behave, how they express themselves emotionally, and find a healthy way to live with them, or let them go entirely. Either way, you must release yourself from that responsibility.” She pauses. “What don’t you want to talk about, Maddie?”

“I don’t understand.”

“These questions of yours, whilst insightful, I think are intended to waste time.”

“Are they?”

“Maddie. You are splitting at the seam.”

My eyes are watering. My chest is tightening and my fingers are twitching. “I just don’t want to think too hard or too much today.”

“Why?”

I breathe out. “It’s exhausting, everything is exhausting. Talking, moving, feeling, thinking, living. I could use a break.” I catch her frown. “That’s not what I … I don’t need an eternal break. I just … I’m fine.”

“Are you?”

“Yes! I know everyone must think I’m depressed—”

“You are suffering from depression, Maddie,” Angelina says. “That much is simple to see.”

I look up from my lap and Angelina’s face is still, but her eyebrows are joining in the middle. I hear my heartbeat and want to stick my fingers in my ears.

“Why? Because my dad died? By that reasoning, almost everyone should be depressed. So many people have lost someone.”

“Comparing yourself to others and deeming yourself better off is no remedy for mental illness. The remedy is internal work—lots of it. But acknowledging the issue at hand must come first. You are suffering from depression, Maddie.”

I push my bottom lip into the top one and tears pool in the corners of my eyes. “But I’m carrying on, so I’m also fine.”

“You cannot be both.”

“I disagree.”

“All right,” she says calmly. “For argument’s sake, in what ways are you both fine and depressed?”

“I’m fine because I’m still living, I’m still going to work, returning home and waking up the next morning. I’m not so fine because my dad died right after I moved out, my mum is too difficult to comprehend and attempting to manage her drains me of everything but tears. I don’t know what the fuck my brother is doing. The person keeping me momentarily sane broke up with me, but in his defense, I was lying to him—about everything. I think my flatmate hates me, so I stay in my room most of the time. I think I now hate that room, because I gave up my dad for that room.”