There is still an awkwardness to it all, and so for long stretches during the day, I find myself staring out the window at the Seattle skyline. Ian told me when I returned that I could ease myself back into the work, to take it one day at a time, but everything is so fast-paced, I find it hard to do so.
“We can cover the work,” he tells me. “We are a family here, and we will do whatever it takes to make sure you get what you need.”
The is an in-house therapist, and Ian convinces me to go, but my first time on the couch I spend most of the hour just kind of spacing out, so the tidy woman in glasses tells me to prepare for next time to discuss some things about my past that aren’t painful.
At first, I tell her there is nothing, that my whole life has been my fault and I shouldn’t be allowed to mourn my own situation. However, eventually the veil separates, and I spend the next few days digging back into my life, and a memory appears in my mind. It is untarnished by time or by my relationship with my mother or the other girls from my high school clique, and it seems meaningful enough for me to explore.
In this memory, I am with my father, and he’s carrying me through a playground. I’m too young to remember exact details, but I can feel the sunshine peeking through the trees in the distance. I slide the slides and glide up and down on the see-saw. I run freely through the grass, spongy and inviting beneath my feet. I can feel my father behind me, always in my presence but always just out of sight, the way that I used to think of God. He’s watching over me, and occasionally he laughs or compliments my physicality. My head practically buzzes with my father’s love.
In the end, the sun dips low in the sky and sends shadows streaming all over the park, and even though it’s getting too late for us, my father lets me have a few more minutes, just a few more minutes, before we have to go back home and face the first day at school. I play and play, trying to escape the shadows overtaking my surroundings. No matter how hard I play, the darkness persists, and eventually I am led, hand-in-hand, back to the parking lot.
When I am placed in the car, I peer through the back window at the playground, and even though I recognize the space as my own, it is now more sinister than before. The shadows cause my heart to skip, and I begin to cry, and even though my father eventually manages to mollify me by talking about how bright and beautiful tomorrow will be, once the sun comes up, I can’t help but dwell on a single thought.
The darkness is coming, and it’s always getting closer.
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Suicide Blondes Page 26
