I am a room, full of my selves.
We sit here occasionally, in a circle, across from all of us.
Most of the time, I am not at a loss for words. But as I sit with myselves, I have nothing to say. There isn’t much we want to say to each other. There isn’t much we don’t already know.
I wonder why people don’t attend group therapy. It strikes me it would feel much like this. The stories are familiar, the tales sounding like they’re something I could have lied about, too.
I wish I knew why I was like that, so I turn to the version of myself who knows the answer. She doesn’t look kind, she looks smug, an expression I wish I felt I earned more. She won’t say anything, her lower red lip disappearing beneath what becomes a toothy smile, enjoying that I can’t get the answer I want.
Getting what I want is the most important thing to me, sometimes. I punish myself with a never-ending merry go round in my mind, the kind that spins and spins and spins and spins and spins until an adult comes over to grab the handrail at the playground. It stops spinning, but only because someone made it. Leaning off as it spun, flinging myself to the ground would have been uncomfortable. It might have hurt. At least someone stopped it before it spun faster.
The lights in this room are fluorescent. They’re too bright, and I know we all have a headache from sitting here with things unsaid at the tip of our tongues, staring at a tan tile floor illuminated by the too-bright lights. I would rather be sitting here in the dark, I know the rest of my selves would too.
I have something to say to all of them, but I don’t have the words to say it out loud. I wish they just knew. It’s a grief support group, where we’ve all lost someone in the past. For the most part, it was probably just an earlier version gone with the time passed even though that, too, is still a significant loss.
Every time you lose a past self, it is somewhat bitter sweet. At least you bring the memories forward, right?
Sometimes it’s the memories that keep sending the merry-go-round around and around. The little things that send it spinning, like the color of his car, or the taste of smoke after bourbon.
Other times it isn’t the little things. It is the arrival of a certain date that sends you spinning, or the ice in your body when the temperature dips below a certain degree. While you’re shaking and cold, memories make themselves known and reach out with long arms, spinning the wheel more and more.
We’re all here because we’ve lost someone. I’m running the group, sitting with the open book in my lap of lessons learned, ways parted, deeds done and otherwise. And yet I still have nothing to say, just things I wish they knew.
I wish they knew they wouldn’t have to sacrifice their dignity for respect. It wasn’t really respect, anyway.
I wish they knew they might not be for everyone, but those who they were for would be waiting at the finish line.
I’m here for who I’ve lost, too. She’s sitting closest to me, her ash-brown hair long and messy, her shoes proudly unmatched, her knees dirty. She’s who we’ve all lost, really. She’s the first one of us, the first version.
I think about her often, thinking about what she might think about a certain situation or experience. Thinking about how excited she’d be to see the lights come on at the holidays, how she never fell asleep easily and worried it was wrong — and how others have fallen asleep with their hands held by some kind of intoxication. I think about how everything felt light, and not in the same way the overhead fluorescents make my head hurt.
I’m running this group because I’m the one who has most recently lost someone. It isn’t my group, really — the one of my selves running it is silver haired. She has deep laugh lines with even deeper soft brown eyes. You can get lost in them, a warm feeling rising from the tips of your toes to the top of your head. She smells like an old perfume you can’t place, even if it smells like home, and her arms are always open when she’s there.
She doesn’t come if they aren’t open.
She speaks kindly, a wry, all-knowing accent removing the endings of most words as she tells you what will happen next, how to handle something, or how it will work out. When she cries with us, the tears are fresh and vulnerable as if she’s experiencing it with us. And yet each and every tear somehow washes away the dirt, muddying our perspective.
When she isn’t here, I like to think I’m running the show. But when she is here, everything finally feels like it’s stable ground and I remember to offer my hand to the one beside me. She takes it with a smile, starting to kick her legs back and forth.
We don’t say anything, no one really needs to for now. I guess we will when we’re ready.
They leave together, shutting the lights as I sit here and it feels like I’m alone in the dark. Sometimes I like it that way. And someday, I would like to look in the mirror and be prepared to tell myself the truth. As for now, I’ll sit quietly, across from myself as I watch her sit speechless, too.
