Letters to My Therapist

05/01

Dear April,

In an effort to be more creative with my therapeutic activities, I've decided to try journaling in letter-form. You're the only person I like to talk to, so I'm addressing them to you.

I use the word like loosely, by the way.

It's a Wednesday afternoon, and much to my delight it is pouring rain. You know that I love the rain, so you've repeatedly encouraged me to find solace in the sound of it. But April, the sound of fake rain through a speaker just does not compare.

I need the real thing. I need the smell of it. I know I've told you before how much I love the smell of rain. On the pavement. Falling from trees. Through the small crack in my window. One deep breath of rain-filled air and I'm a new person, April. My soul feels clean, fresh. I can taste it even.

But nothing compares to the sensation of standing in the rain, April. The way the water washes over every part of you, head to toe. I love it even when it makes my vision blurry and gets in the edges of my nose. When my clothes are stuck to my cold skin. My soaked hair sticking to my face.

I am a new person in the rain.

I can do anything.

So, April, I need you to understand why your repeated "solution" of using my headphones to blast the sound of fake rain into my ears is not, in fact, a solution at all. Only the real thing is my cure.

I grew up an only child in a small townhome. My parents worked a lot. Our neighborhood was quiet, especially when it rained. I loved those quiet days. I think there was maybe a time where I was a typical sunshine-loving kid, but it would have been before age ten.

At ten, I had a new neighbor in the townhouse next to me. I don't want to even want to think about his name, April, much less write it down.

Neighbor Boy was handsome and overly confident. He was twelve, a middle-schooler. The way he looked at me made my stomach feel nervous, and not in a good way April. I didn't have butterflies when he'd wink at me from his front porch and curl up his lips in mischievous smile; I had rocks. Heavy and debilitating.

Neighbor Boy, accompanied by the whoever else in the neighborhood was available, knocked on my door everyday to ask if I could come outside to play. I woke up dreading this. Hiding in my room as much as possible. My parents didn't see it, April. They didn't catch on to the way I was terrified of going outside with the neighborhood kids. They told me I was being impolite. Anti-social. It was unhealthy.

I cried a lot at age ten, fighting my parents and that sinking feeling that never left my gut when Neighbor Boy was around. I tried so hard to avoid him. I faked sick a lot, although I wasn't faking with how many knots lived in my stomach. The only dependable excuse for hiding in the safety of my bedroom all day long was rain.

April, I longed for it to rain. Pour. Flood. I'd sit and stare at it with graciousness and hope it never stopped. My best childhood memories are the days during summer when I stayed home while my parents worked and it poured rain. No one would bother me. I could sit all day and just breathe. Relax. Be free.

My worst childhood memories surround Neighbor Boy. Because he didn't just wink at me and give sinister smiles, April. His sweaty, calloused hands found me in every crevice of alone time we had-- which I aimed to be never, but he was quick and would take any advantage of the rare opportunity.

Yes, April, before you ask- I did try to tell my parents. They chalked it up to Neighbor Boy having a "typical" crush and me needing to be nicer.

He's only mean to you because he likes you.

Try smiling at him.

I wanted to reply that I dreamt about Neighbor Boy choking to death on that very rain I loved so much, but they surely would've lost it over that. Instead I would nod, and check the weather forecast.

I was twelve when every bad feeling that ever pulsed through my body about Neighbor Boy came true. It was dusk and I was taking out the trash. A new chore since I was now a middle schooler. I heard his repulsive voice come through the bushes.

Don't make a f-----g sound.

I'll spare you most of the details on what happened next, April. I've been over them myself more than enough. The important part is how it ended.

At the very moment I was convinced I'd rather die than live one second longer of my present moment with Neighbor Boy, the sky just bottomed out. It wasn't even predicted.

Rain poured in a hard sheet. Cold and mean, the kind that stings your skin. Thunder roared as Neighbor Boy vanished, but I just laid there. I loved the way the sharp rain made my skin feel raw, like it was brand new and had never been touched before. The rain saved my life that night, I am sure of it.

When my parents found me later that night, they thought I was throwing a tantrum over having to take out the trash. They grounded me for an entire week, because as a middle schooler I should be devastated over an entire week of confinement to my bedroom. So I pretended to be, April, and that was when I learned a new trick.

My parents' go-to punishment was to ground me, take away the phone. Cut off all means of communication with the outside world. They had never picked up on my desperation for isolation, so I quit trying to tell them. I started acting out so they'd unknowingly give me exactly what I wanted without holding me to any social expectations. Is that reverse psychology, April? Whatever, it worked.

Until it didn't. I overestimated my parents' ability to care about me, or maybe I just really did wear them down to nothing with my behavior. I played the part so well, April. Too well. I was out of control.

By sixteen, my parents were done keeping up with me. I had never forgiven them for not noticing Neighbor Boy, so our relationship was doomed anyway. I had developed quite the reputation over my years of trying to play mind games with my parents in order to avoid the general public. I had become the kid other kid's parents warned them to stay away from. I was bad news.

It had turned out that being isolated for an extended period of time made me lonely. I got bored. There were only so many books to read and internet forums to explore, April. It was the internet that gave me the idea to try something a little mind-altering in the first place. I didn't know I'd love it, April. I didn't mean to love it, but it's impossible to describe how amazing it felt to escape my real life for just a little bit. I started to crave that feeling all the time, by whatever means.

I knew this was wrong, April, I really did. I wanted to scream it at myself, but I couldn't find the voice to say the word stop.

At eighteen, just days after I had moved out of my parents house and into a shoebox dorm room at the local state college, was the loudest I ever tried screaming at myself. I had been at my first college party. I was on cloud nine that night just with the excitement of finally moving out and starting a new life. At least, at first.

When a Cute Guy with pretty teeth and a bright colored fraternity t-shirt handed me a drink, I was thrilled. I got real butterflies. I drank it quickly just so I could ask him for another. And another. And then I was sitting on the floor, playing a drinking game with Cute Guy and his college friends. But then the butterflies Cute Guy was giving me every time he smiled at me with his pretty teeth started to swirl. And so did my head. And my vision.

My spinning brain flashed back to Neighbor Boy in that moment, April, and suddenly I was kicking myself for not catching the signs. How could I be so stupid? As if to mock me in that very thought, Cute Guy squeezed my hand. He was slurring something about his dorm room in my ear but I was pushing through my blurry vision to locate the door.

And I did it, April, I found it in me to get up and leave. Cute Guy didn't care much since as soon as I stood up, I vomited all over myself anyway. I made it just barely out of the building before I crashed in the grass, somewhere near an academic building. I was laying there in my own vomit, my whole system swirling with whatever mysteries were in that cup. I feared for my life, April. I knew there was an excessive amount of something consuming me. I was losing the battle to it and everything was going black.

But, then it started to rain. It was cold for September, and the rain was even colder. I was laying face up and I just barely remember that feeling of the rain hitting my face. Like hundreds of tiny slaps back to reality, pleading with me to stay with it. Filling my nose and mouth, forcing me to cough. To move. To scream.

The campus police found me. The health center asked me all the right questions when I woke up, but I faltered with answers since I didn't even remember Cute Guy's name. My parents didn't visit me. They didn't even call. They thought it was my usual antics. The rain was all I could rely on to save me, April.

I got it together after that night. It was easier now, living on my own. I kept my head down and focused on my studies. I made a few friends, though I don't know if I'd consider any of them close friends. It wasn't until after college, when I had moved to the city to work as a teacher, that I finally made my first real friend.

We did all the typical best friend things together. We even got tiny, matching "besties" tattoos. Bestie was the first person I think I ever really loved. We spent hours in my apartment just watching television together, which was of course best on days when it rained. I lived on a busy street, but it was quieter in the rain. It made me feel safer.

It was raining on the day that Bestie decided we should go out for lunch. Just to the market across the street. It was our favorite. She was giddy in anticipation of a new date, she giggled about her the entire walk there. It was why she didn't bother to even look before skipping into the street in the same second that the walk sign had turned on.

I screamed. She screamed. The driver who sped up at the flash of yellow instead of slowing down, screamed. But the ground was wet. I was looking at the deep puddle along the edge of the road when it hit me. Literally, the puddle hit me, April. Hard enough to knock me back farther on the sidewalk. Clearly out of the way of the car.

The car that had spun out in the puddle, inches before it made contact with Bestie. Bestie who stood in the center of the crosswalk. Stiff. Screaming. Alive.

We were all alive, April! We danced in the rain, in the puddle. The medics who responded to the accident must have thought we were insane. I didn't care, April. The rain had saved us.

Bestie went on her date, and it worked out. I smiled on their wedding day and meant it. I smiled on the day she told me they were moving halfway around the world and did not mean it (between us, April).

I was alone again. I was alone all the time. I was alone on the night, just a few weeks ago, that a man climbed up to my fifth floor balcony.

We made eye contact just as he reached the railing. But I'll never know what Robber Man's intentions were because, guess what, April... it was raining!

In that split second we made eye contact, I thought back to Neighbor Boy. The sinister look he always had on his face. The thought of him made my stomach hurt. When I watched the news footage of Robber Man's crumpled body under my balcony, I told myself he was Neighbor Boy. Coming for me at last and getting what he deserved. Maybe that's dark, April, but it was my closure.

The local news requested to do an interview, but I denied it. I told them I was in shock. Traumatized. I could barely even speak on the phone.

And that landed me a visit to the doctor. The doctor who has referred me to you, April, because he did not believe me when I said my mental health was truly fine after this incident. He did not believe that I have spent my entire life alone, depending on the nothing but the weather to save me.

So I need you to understand, April, to read this letter and understand that I am really fine now. Just fine. All I need is a good rain.

But I do enjoy our conversations. You've inspired me to bloom, April.

Thank you,

M