Unwifeable(87)

“What’s there to be afraid of?”

I think for a minute.

“I don’t know. My past, maybe.”

“Your past is what makes you you, Mandy. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

When he comes back to my place in Chelsea, I go into autopilot, switching into a character I can do on cue: The Slut. I try not to do it anymore, but sometimes old habits kick in without my even realizing my defense mechanisms are at play.

“Do you want me to touch myself?” I ask Pat, in a caricature of seduction.

“I want you to cut it out,” he says, looking me right in my eyes. “What’s this thing you do, where it’s like you’re doing a show?”

“It’s just easier,” I say hesitantly. “Sometimes just pretending to be someone else feels safer.”

“The only thing that turns me on is seeing who you actually are,” Pat says, moving his hand up my body. “Tell me, do you need me?”

“Yes,” I say, answering what I know to be true. “I do.”

“Why, baby?”

“Because I love you,” I say without thinking.

Good God in heaven above.

Did I just say that aloud?

So much for my “Mandy’s Relationship Expectations” where the guy must say “I love you” first. Besides, it’s only been about six weeks. I try to reel it back in. “I didn’t mean it, like, you know . . . it was just . . .”

“It’s okay,” he stops me. “I love you, too.”

Panic creeps in goose-bump inches up my body. This guy is different.

“I know you, Mandy,” he says. “You were bad, weren’t you?”

I nod, eyes squeezed shut tight.

“Nothing is wrong,” Pat says, “unless it’s untrue.

“Did you fuck a lot of guys?” Pat asks. “You love sex, don’t you?”

“I have,” I say. “I do,” I say.

“Tell me everything,” Pat whispers to me.

My eyes flutter open.

“Okay.”

With every story I tell Pat, he relays to me one of his own.

“Mandy,” he says. “I have a feeling about you and me. That we are worthy of each other.”

On his way out the door, he hesitates. I’m smiling at him, drunk on closeness. He looks at me, eyes shining, taking me in.

“Will you marry me someday?” he asks.

My heart is pounding. I wonder if I am dreaming right now.

“Yes,” I say.

“Good,” he says with a nonchalant smile, and walks out the door.



* * *




THE HARDEST PART about sobriety is realizing that when you open that black box inside of you, the secrets and addictions don’t stop their revelations after the first one.

I am a drug and alcohol addict. I am a sex addict. I am a food addict. And the most difficult one: I am a rage addict, too.

“Do you really not care if you lose me?” I scream at Pat one day. This is based on, honestly, no reason at all besides a small disagreement that has now spiraled ridiculously out of control. “You disgust me! You’re disgusting!”

“Why are you saying all of this, Mandy?” he asks. “Because I’m not getting upset? I figure you’re just saying all of this to get a reaction.”

“Well . . . I am,” I say, surprised at him calling bullshit on my bullshit.

“Well, okay then,” he says.

I sit there, stunned. I’ve never met someone who knows how to deal with me like Pat does and cut through my defenses. And then he surprises me again, as he always does. Instead of wanting to continue to fight, he has just one request.

“When was the last time you saw your therapist?” he asks.

“I don’t have time,” I say, looking away. “I saw her after we fought that one time. I did, I swear.”

“If you don’t have time for that, then we likely won’t have a relationship either,” he says. “This is that important.”

Therapy is, as anyone who takes it seriously knows, not like, say, getting your high school diploma. It’s not a “Congratulations, you’ve graduated” kind of situation. You have to keep going. A lifetime of conditioning doesn’t just magically disappear.

When I see my therapist again and tell her some of the cruel things I’ve been hurtling at Pat, she suggests it’s time for me to consider group therapy.

“Will that make me less defensive?” I ask.

“That’s the idea,” she says.

After a few group sessions, we are asked to do psychodrama and role-playing just like when I went to the Caron Institute in Pennsylvania. In one of the most intense sessions, I am told to role-play my ex-husband while I speak to a chair who is “me.” I really get into it. I am cruel. I am scathing. I am relentless. I summon up the worst things my ex ever said to me, and I scream at the chair.

“You’re pathetic,” I say, pretending to be my ex-husband and spitting the words at “myself” like venom. “You’re pathetic!”

I am crying near the end. Because I can hear myself . . . in the way I talk to Pat.

“You disgust me! You’re disgusting!”

How many times have I said cruel things—including to my ex-husband—that I may not even remember because I was in a rage blackout? I need to turn everything around. I cannot continue this cycle of victimization.