Chapter 8 Thinking Clearly

• "I wasn't thinking clearly. I mean, I'd like to think if I'd actually been allowed to get to her, I wouldn't have- I mean, I would've kept myself from hitting her."
• "What does that tell you, Nadia, when you admit you weren't thinking clearly?" She didn't reply. "As I began saying," Samantha said soothingly, "I'm aware that what you experienced was both heartbreaking and infuriating on so many levels, but perhaps, as angry as you were and still are, and with due justification." Samantha added though she shouldn’t have, "You know deep inside that losing your patience so completely wasn't the right way to handle things."
• Nadia swallowed, her eyes glassy, and Samantha clearly saw her struggle not to cry. Samantha wished she would. Samantha wished Nadia would scream and cry just like one of her frames suggested.
• Let it out.
• Her police records said she screamed her head off in that lobby, screamed and screamed until someone calmed her down. Didn't say who. Had she kept it at screaming, they wouldn't be there right then.
• Then, all at once, Nadia's expression went blank, and she just lay back limply – emptily. "I know what your quotes say," she snorted. "But Doctor, sometimes it does feel like this was my entire story. Sometimes… I don't want to scream or cry. I just want to give up."
• For a few minutes, Samantha allowed Nadia to lay there quietly, with the scent of lavender and the white noise machine comforting her while she thought through her words. She thanked the lord that her partner was not an asshole.
• No, Samantha didn't believe they needed someone else to complete them, but it sure was good when people have someone to share themselves with. Maybe someday, Nadia will learn the difference and find someone to share herself with.
• "Listen to me, Nadia Ryan. Are you listening?"
• She nodded hesitantly.
• "I'm not saying you were wrong to feel what you felt. I'm saying the way you expressed it isn't acceptable in today's society."
• "All my life, I did everything right, the way it was expected of me. By all accounts, I was a good baby." She chuckled, and Samantha chuckled along with her. But then, Nadia sobered. "When I was five, and my parents divorced, I took it well. Their separation was friendly, so it's not even as if there was any tension for me to contend with. My mom remarried right away; I was the flower girl at her wedding, my dad gave her away. We all lived in the same city and remained one, big, happy family."
• "Go on, Nadia," Samantha prompt after another few minutes of silence. "What else did you do right… or at least, in the generally accepted definition of 'right?'"
• "I got good grades, made good friends, never rebelled as a teenager. While other kids my age were off getting high and having sex in the back of their cars, I was studying for the next day's tests. My senior year of high school, I fell in love with the… right type of guy." Another snort. "A boy I'd known since fifth grade," she continued. "We were one another's firsts, went off to college together, got married, moved to the city; did everything in the generally accepted order."
• She turned and scowled at Samantha. "I did everything by the playbook, the way society expects it, and then I got fucked over royally. So please don't speak to me about doing things right."
• And right there, in that little speech, Nadia had already dug into one of the roots of her issues, though she didn't even see it. A lifetime of pleasing others, in combination with selfish people and expectations, and all of it magnified by a clinical predisposition to depression. Lots of people think therapy takes so long because it takes a while to get to the root of a person's issues.
• The truth is, we all have issues; and for all but the most fucked, those issues are pretty obvious within the first meeting or two. What takes so many sessions is learning how to deal with them. And really, therapy should be a life-long endeavor, not something mandated by courts when our issues become too much to bear.
• "Ah, but you're not listening, Nadia. I didn't speak about doing things right." She sighed. "Nadia, in this room, I don't divide things into categories of right and wrong, normal or abnormal. In this room, I want to discuss you, what you feel and how to deal with those feelings and emotions in ways which will keep you healthy, both emotionally and physically, without categorizing you into wrong or right, normal or abnormal because you're not, Nadia. Like most of us in this world, you fall somewhere in between."
• "People are assholes," she said. However, she looked at Samantha with less wariness… less distrust.
• "Some are." Samantha agreed. "However, not everyone is an asshole. It's our reactions to those assholes, our reactions to our emotions which are judged and scrutinized, and it's those reactions which we must learn to deal with in a socially acceptable manner. People are sieves, Nadia. The events in our lives are like sand constantly running through us and shaping us. Sometimes, we're filled with sand from many different beaches all at once, and especially we women tend to get focused on how well we can sift all that sand rather on whether sand from that particular beach even belongs there.”
• “And just like sand, it sieves so gradually that we barely notice the blockage until that sieve is blocked so tightly nothing can get through. That's when our issues rise to the surface. What we have to do is learn what kind of sand, what triggers block our sieve, and then learn how to sift through that sand to keep the blockage from happening. Does that make sense, Nadia?"
• For a long while, Nadia held Samantha’s gaze. “Can I call you Samantha?”
• Samantha smiled, relieved. “Sure, you can.”