Sixteen

“Despite wanting to believe otherwise, I suspected my mom knew I was full of shit,” I said, focusing on the beige carpet rather than the woman sitting across from me scribbling notes as I spoke. “I mean, she had to of known.”

The psychologist looked at me and I answered the question that was on her face. “I’m a crappy liar,” I said. She smiled and wrote something down.

“I think it was just a cry for help.”
Again her face asked the question.
“I mean if I was serious wouldn’t I have used something that afforded a bit more certainty?”
“Maybe.” she said.
We stared at each other for a few seconds until I had to break eye contact.
“Then again maybe not,” she added.
“It’s not like I couldn’t of,” I protested. “I had a shotgun sitting in my closet.”
She nodded thoughtfully.
“I would have used it if I really wanted to.”
I sound like a five year old.
“But you didn’t because…?”
“I don’t know.”
The disappointment on her face said, I don’t believe you. “Why do you think of yourself as being a bad liar?”
“Cause I am.”
She looked at me.
“You think I’m lying now, don’t you?” I asked.
“Are you?”
“Look,” I said, “to this point my life has been one ambivalent screw up after another. I’d say a botched suicide is par for the course.”
“So it wasn’t a cry for help?”
Shit.
“You mentioned you were ambivalent,” she said, changing subjects. “Where do you think that comes from?”
I laughed. “You tell me.”
But she didn’t. She just looked at me again.
“I think it’s a defense mechanism.”
She nodded again. I was beginning to think that was all she did.
“It’s like, if I don’t care I won’t be let down.”
“You don’t like being disappointed,” she said.
“Does anyone?”
“You don’t like being disappointed yet you put yourself into situations where that is the only outcome.”
“I wouldn’t say I deliberately do so.”
“Perhaps,” she replied. “But don’t you think your inaction sets you up for failure?”
“Maybe.”
Her face asked another question.
“So why do I continue to sabotage myself,” I asked.
“Bingo,” she replied, smiling like we just unlocked life’s greatest mystery.
Fuck if I know, I thought as I shrugged my shoulders.
“Tell me about Jennifer,” she said, changing subjects yet again.
“Jen,” I replied, somewhat surprised. “What do you want to know?”
She flipped back to some notes she took earlier. “You said that she’s changed you.”
“Yeah.”
“How so?”
“She’s made me happier.”
“Why?”
“She accepts me for who I am. She’s my biggest fan.”
“So she believes in you?”
I nodded.
“She gives you confidence?”
I shook my head. “She’s helped me realize what it’s like to have confidence again.”
“You don’t strike me as the kind of person who lacks confidence.”
“Right,” I said, smiling, “trick me into admitting that I overcompensate.”
“Where do you think this insecurity originated from,” she asked.
“I thought you guys were supposed to answer those questions.”
“Once we’ve gathered all the evidence,” she replied, smiling back.
“I don’t know where it comes from. Self-deprecation taken too far?”
She wrote that down.
“I’m my own harshest critic.”
“Why,” she asked.
“Preemption,” I replied, my answer more readily available than I expected. “I criticize myself before anyone else has a chance.”
“Why?”
“Because I know it’s coming.”
She was writing a whole lot faster now.
“How do you know,” she asked again, not bothering to look up from her notes.
“Cause everything I’ve ever done has been fucking criticized.”
The swearing made her stop. She looked at me thoughtfully. “And Jen doesn’t criticize you?”
“No,” I replied, “but that’s not the reason why I love her.”
The psychologist smiled. “It doesn’t have to be.”
“Not the only reason anyway.”
She glanced at the clock behind me and closed her notebook. “Tell me about that day.”
“What day,” I asked, even though I knew what day she was talking about.
“Will,” she said, “you’re a terrible liar, remember?”
“Oh yeah,” I conceded. “You want to hear everything or just the important parts?”
“It’s all important, Will.”
I looked at her notebook. “Aren’t you going to take notes?”
She shook her head.
I sat forward in the chair and rested my head on my hands.
“Do we really need to talk about this,” I asked.
Her face hardened.
“I didn’t plan anything.”
She just stared at me.
“I mean, I didn’t wake up thinking ‘hey, I should kill myself today.’”
“But,” she said.
I started to speak but stopped myself.
“Will?”
I looked at the psychologist. “I wrote a note. I thought I threw it away, but Liz found it. She was on top of me punching and screaming and crying and she had the note. She threw it at me.”
“What’d it say?”
I smiled. Embarrassed. “My last words will not be lies.”
“Cryptic,” she said – a question barely hidden in her observation
I thought about this for a minute. “I didn’t want to tell the truth.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’d be too easy.”

It’s my fault for writing the note. I shouldn’t have done that. Had I been smart I would have just popped the pills and fallen asleep on my back. Maybe I’d have died from the combination of pills and alcohol. Or maybe I would have choked on my vomit. Either way, without a note, my death would’ve been an accident.

But I didn’t die.

And I forgot about that stupid note.

The psychologist said that often times people who die under ambiguous circumstances like ODing on prescription pills or slamming their Miatas into a telephone poles at 70 mph are often suicides. But because they never leave notes, their intentions are never known, so their deaths are ruled accidental. It saves a lot of hurt feelings.

But she said by leaving a note like that I must not have been too concerned about hurting Liz. Then she said that by purposely and explicitly making it known that I was excluding the truth I communicated a profound hatred towards the note’s intended audience.

“Just Liz,” I clarified.
She looked at me thoughtfully. “And your parents?”
“I was going to write them a separate letter.”
“But you didn’t.”
I shut my eyes and slouched back into the chair. “By then I was too drunk.”
“Not a very nice thing to do to a person, is it?”
“Nope,” I agreed. “But then that’s kind of the point if you don’t like them.”
“How would you feel if it was Liz who did this to you,” the shrink asked.
“Killed herself or left a stupid note?”
“Both,” she replied.
I made a show of deep thought. “I suppose I’d be upset. Then I’d over-analyze the situation and try to find some meaning in her words.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d probably have convinced myself that her death was brought about by something I did.”
“And how would that make you feel?”
“Like shit,” I conceded. “But then I’d realize this was just her trying to get the last word.”
“Is that what you were trying to do?”
I nodded. “And fuck with her head.”