Beth...

“I don’t think you’re being open to him.” Beth tells me as I sit, wide-eyed across from her on a couch in her small comfortable office. Sunlight streams through the blinds that cover a large window next to her seated brightly colored form.
I nod. She’s prolly right but I don’t wanna see it, plus I don’t know how to, so I let her words go in one ear and out the other.
It’s the day after the half marathon. My joints are sore but nothing tremendous. This is my first appointment with my new therapist and I’m ecstatic to see what’s in store for my lil brain and all it’s many emotions.
I just told her that I broke up with Jeff. She’s thinking there is more there that needs to be looked at. Like me being open. What does that even mean though? I thought I was. Then again, I think about Dr. M. and her asking me if I feel I’m closed off when it comes to Jeff because of losing Rob. The answer to that question when she asked was an immediate yes. I felt that a part of me was but didn’t know how to unlock it and invite Jeff in. The whole thing felt very heavy and “too much”, so I left.
Being this is my first visit with Beth we gloss over the surface of my reasons for being there which mainly are Rob, my eating disorder, work, and stress management. She’s an art therapist and I talk to her about these collages I’ve been doing when writing gets tough. It started with a handmade journal I bought at a local bookstore in my neighborhood. I got the idea from my roommate at the time when I first moved to Chicago. I cut up magazines and paste images down in these pages and watch what I’m feeling come to a surface. These images are like looking into a mirror sometimes. I don’t usually know what I’m going to come up with before I start, I just do it and am always excited to see what’s reflected back at me. Currently these images have been expanding to canvas. I have three large canvases filled with images waiting for more additions to their already rather colorful surfaces.
“I’d like to see these.” Beth tells me.
“I’ll bring in my journal first as the canvases are tough to transport right now being they’re so big..”
Beth also tells me at the end of our session that she’d like me to create a timeline consisting of major events in my life.
“Start with birth and write down anything that stands out, particularly body image issues, like when they first started.”
I nod. This will be easy enough right?
“I’d like to meet with you once a week for now.”
“Ok.” I nod and we set up a month’s worth of appointments.
Minutes later I’m out the door and walking to the train. I decide to head downtown to get sushi and work on this timeline while things feel fresh in my mind.
Jeff and I are texting. He asks how everything went today. I say that I’ll email him. I wonder when this will stop. When will I stop letting him in on details of my life. I’m terrified of keeping in contact with him, yet I don’t necessarily want to stop. I don’t want to meet up with him some time down the road or get an email from him saying how good things are at work then telling me he just went on a date with someone.
I get off the train when it gets downtown and walk to the sushi place I frequented with Jeff when he’d finish a shift at dinner time. I pull out a pen and a notebook after ordering spicy tuna and a glass of wine. It’s beautiful outside and I’m having one of those moments where I can’t believe I’m here. I live here. I’m sitting in a sushi restaurant content with my own company across from a beautiful park in the middle of downtown Chicago, the world buzzing around outside and I’m a part of it. Never did I ever imagine this when I was sixteen looking ahead at what my late twenties would be like.
I begin my timeline. Everything is easy until age fourteen. That’s when the trouble started. I became painfully aware of my body then. It would take five more years though to begin the eating disorder. Five more years would go by before I acknowledged it and two more years before getting help for it. Meanwhile, I’d float around from boy to boy, travel from city to city, buy a car among other things, always trying to fill the void that threatened to swallow me whole if I didn’t fill it quickly enough with material things, with experiences, hobbies, people, anything really to distract me from myself. I quit a job, started a new one. I fell in love, lived through his death, and started a new life many miles from a place I called home.
Now…who the hell am I?