Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

by Lori Gottlieb

  As Julie goes through her list of things not to say, I think about other patients who’ve complained about comments people make at various difficult times: You can still have another child. At least he lived a long life. She’s in a better place now. When you’re ready, you can always get another dog. It’s been a year; maybe it’s time to move on.

  To be sure, these comments are meant to comfort, but they’re also a way of protecting the speakers from the uncomfortable feelings that somebody else’s bad situation stirs up. Platitudes like these make a terrible circumstance more palatable for the person saying the words but leave the person experiencing the adversity feeling angry and alone.

  “People think that if they talk about me dying, it’ll become a reality when it already is a reality,” Julie says, shaking her head. I’ve seen this to be true too, and not just about death. Not speaking about something doesn’t make it less real. It makes it scarier. For Julie, the worst thing is the silence, people who avoid her so that they don’t have to get into a conversation and say those awkward things in the first place. She’d choose awkward over ignored.

  “What do you wish people would say?” I ask.

  Julie thinks about this. “They can say, ‘I’m so sorry.’ They can say, ‘How can I be helpful?’ Or ‘I feel so helpless but I care about you.’”

  She shifts on the couch, her thinner frame not quite filling out her clothes. “They can be honest,” she continues. “One person blurted out, ‘I have no idea how to say the right thing here,’ and I was so relieved! I told her that before I got sick, I wouldn’t have known what to say either. At work when my grad students first heard, they all said, ‘What will we do without you?’ and that felt good, because it was an expression of how they feel about me. People have said, ‘Noooooo!’ and ‘I’m always a phone call away if you want to talk or just go do something fun.’ They remember that I’m still me—that I’m still their friend and not just a cancer patient, and they can talk to me about their relationships and work and the latest episode of Game of Thrones.”

  One thing that has surprised Julie about going through the process of watching herself die is how vivid her world has become. Everything that she used to take for granted produces a sense of revelation, as if she were a child again. Tastes—the sweetness of a strawberry, its juice dripping onto her chin; a buttery pastry melting in her mouth. Smells—flowers on a front lawn, a colleague’s perfume, seaweed washed up on the shore, Matt’s sweaty body in bed at night. Sounds—the strings on a cello, the screech of a car, her nephew’s laughter. Experiences—dancing at a birthday party, people-watching at Starbucks, buying a cute dress, opening the mail. All of this, no matter how mundane, delights her to no end. She’s become hyper-present. When people delude themselves into believing they have all the time in the world, she’s noticed, they get lazy.

  She hadn’t expected to experience this pleasure in her grief, to find it invigorating, in a way. But even as she’s dying, she’s realized, life goes on—even as the cancer invades her body, she still checks Twitter. At first she thought, Why would I waste even ten minutes of the time I have left checking Twitter? And then she thought, Why wouldn’t I? I like Twitter! She also tries not to dwell on what she’s losing. “I can breathe fine now,” Julie says, “but it’ll get harder, and I’ll grieve for that. Until then, I breathe.”

  Julie gives more examples of what helps when she tells people she’s dying. “A hug is great,” she says. “So is ‘I love you.’ My absolute favorite is just a plain ‘I love you.’”

  “Did anyone say that?” I ask. Matt did, she says. When they found out she had cancer, his first words weren’t “We’ll beat this!” or “Oh, fuck!” but “Jules, I love you so much.” That was all she needed to know.

  “Love wins,” I say, referencing a story Julie once told me about the time her parents went through a rough patch and separated for five days when Julie was twelve. By the weekend, they were back together, and when she and her sister asked why, her father looked at her mother with such affection and said, “Because at the end of the day, love wins. Always remember that, girls.”

  Julie nods. Love wins.

  “If I write this book,” she says, “maybe I’ll say that the best responses I’ve gotten have been from people who were genuine and didn’t edit themselves.” She looks at me. “Like you.”

  I try to remember what I’d said when Julie told me she was dying. I remember feeling uncomfortable the first time, devastated the second. I ask Julie what she remembers me saying.

  She smiles. “Both times you said the same thing, and I’ll never forget it, because I wasn’t expecting that from a therapist.”

  I shake my head. Expecting what?

  “You spontaneously said, in this quiet, sad voice, ‘Oh, Julie’—which was the perfect response, but it’s what you didn’t say that meant the most. You teared up, but I figured that you didn’t want me to see it, so I didn’t say anything.”

  The memory takes shape in my mind. “I’m glad that you saw my tears, and you could have said something. I hope from now on, you will.”

  “Well, now I would. I mean, now that we’ve done my obituary together, I think I’m pretty much an open book.”

  A few weeks ago, Julie finished writing her obituary. We were in the midst of some important conversations at the time, talking about how she wanted to die. Who did she want with her? Where did she want to be? What would she want for comfort? What was she afraid of? What kind of memorial service or funeral did she want? What did she want people to know and when?

  Even as she’d discovered hidden parts of herself since the cancer diagnosis—more spontaneity, more flexibility—she was still, at heart, a planner, and if she was going to have to contend with her early death sentence, she would do as much of it as she could the way she wanted.

  In considering her obituary, we talked about what meant the most to her. There was her professional success and her passion for her research and her students. There was her Saturday-morning “home” at Trader Joe’s and the sense of freedom she found there. There was Emma, who, with Julie’s help in the financial-aid application process, was able to cut down her hours at Trader Joe’s so that she could attend college. There were the friends she had run marathons with and the ones she did book club with. At the top of the list was her husband (“The best person in the world to go through life with,” she said, “but also the best to go through death with”), her sister, and her nephew and newborn niece (Julie was their godmother). There were her parents and four grandparents—all of whom couldn’t understand how in a family with such longevity, Julie was dying so young.

  “It’s like we’ve done therapy on steroids,” Julie said of everything that had happened since we met. “Like the way Matt and I say that we’re doing our marriage on steroids. We have to cram it all in as quickly as possible.” Julie realized, when she talked about cramming it all in, that if she was pissed off about having such a short life, it was only because it had been such a good one.

  Which is why, in the end, after several drafts and revisions, Julie decided to keep her obituary simple: “For every single day of her thirty-five years,” she wanted it to read, “Julie Callahan Blue was loved.”

  Love wins.

  44

  Boyfriend’s Email

  I’m at my desk, working on my happiness book, slogging through another chapter. I motivate myself with this thought: If I turn in this book, next time I’ll get to write something that matters (whatever that is). The sooner I finish this, the sooner I can get myself back on fresh ground (wherever that is). I’m embracing uncertainty. And I’m actually writing the book.

  My friend Jen calls, but I don’t pick up. Recently I’ve filled her in on the missing parts of my health situation, and she’s been helpful in the way Wendell has—not by finding a diagnosis but by helping me cope with a lack of one. I’ve been learning how to be okay with not being totally okay while also arranging consults with specialists who might take m
y condition more seriously. No more wandering-uterus doctors for me.

  Right now, though, I have to finish this chapter—I’ve blocked out two hours to write. I type words and they appear on my screen, filling up page after page. I knock out the chapter the way my son does the occasional busywork at school—workmanlike, as the means to an end. I keep going until I get to the chapter’s last line, then give myself a reward: I can check email and call Jen! I’ll take a fifteen-minute break before moving ahead to the next chapter. The end is in sight—just one final section to go.

  I’m chatting with Jen and scanning my emails when suddenly I gasp. In bold letters, Boyfriend’s name appears in my box. I’m amazed; I haven’t heard from Boyfriend in eight months, ever since I tried to get answers and brought pages of notes from those calls to Wendell’s office.

  “Open it!” Jen says when I tell her, but I just stare at Boyfriend’s name. My stomach tightens, though in a different way than it did when I kept hoping he’d change his mind. It tightens because even if he were to say he’s had some sort of epiphany and wants to be together after all, I would, without question, say no. My gut is telling me two things—that I don’t want to be with him anymore and that, even so, the memory of what happened still stings. Whatever he has to say, it might upset me, and I don’t want to get sidetracked by this right now. I have to finish this book I care nothing about so I can write something I do care about. Maybe, I tell Jen, I’ll read Boyfriend’s email after I crank out another chapter.

  “Then send it to me and I’ll read it,” she says. “You can’t make me wait like this!”

  I laugh. “Fine. For you, I’ll open it.”

  The email is shocking and predictable at the same time.

  You won’t believe who I ran into today. Leigh! She just joined the firm.

  I read it to Jen. Leigh is someone that Boyfriend and I both know independently and secretly find irritating; if we were still dating, of course he’d share this juicy piece of news. But now? It’s so out of context, so devoid of acknowledgment of what happened between us and where our conversations left off. It feels as though Boyfriend still has his head in the sand—and I’m poking mine out.

  “That’s it?” Jen asks. “That’s all the Kid Hater has to say?”

  She goes silent, waiting for my reaction. I can’t help it; I’m thrilled. To me, his email is reassuringly poetic, a beautiful summary of everything I’ve discovered about avoidance in Wendell’s office. It even reads like a haiku: three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively.

  You won’t believe who

  I ran into today. Leigh!

  She just joined the firm.

  But Jen’s not amused; she’s furious. No matter what I’ve told her about my role in our breakup—that while Boyfriend could have been more upfront with himself and with me early on, I could have been more upfront with myself and with him about what I wanted, what I was hiding from, and whether we were really a match after all—she still thinks he’s an asshole. I remember trying to convince Wendell that Boyfriend was an asshole; nowadays I find myself trying to convince everyone else that he’s not.

  “What does that even mean?” Jen asks about the email. “How about ‘How are you doing?’ Is he really that emotionally stunted?”

  “It means nothing,” I say. “It’s meaningless.” There’s no point in trying to analyze it, to give it meaning. Jen is outraged, but I’m surprised to find that I’m not upset by this after all. Instead, I’m relieved. My gut unclenches.

  “You’re not going to respond to this, I hope,” Jen says, but I almost want to—to thank Boyfriend for breaking up with me and not wasting even more of my time. Maybe his email did have meaning—or at least, my receiving it on this particular day had meaning for me.

  I tell Jen I have to get back to writing my book, but after we hang up, that’s not what I do. Nor do I write Boyfriend back. Just as I don’t want a meaningless relationship, I don’t want to write a meaningless book, even though by now I’m three-fourths done. If death and meaninglessness are “ultimate concerns,” it makes sense that this book I care little about has plagued me—and also that I turned down the lucrative parenting book before that. Though I didn’t fully acknowledge my failing body back then, somewhere in my cells I must have become aware that my time was limited, so how I spent it would matter. I remember my conversation with Julie, and another thought occurs to me now: When I die, I don’t want to leave behind my equivalent of Boyfriend’s email.

  For a while, I’ve thought that walking around those prison bars meant finishing the book so that I could keep my advance and have the opportunity to write another. But Boyfriend’s email makes me wonder if I’m still shaking those same bars. Wendell has helped me to let go of the story that everything would have worked out for me if I’d married Boyfriend, and there’s no point in holding on to the parallel story that the parenting book would have made everything work out for me too—both are fantasies. Certain things would have been different, sure. Ultimately, though, I’d still be itching for meaning, for something deeper. Just like I am now, with this stupid happiness book that my agent says I have to write for all kinds of practical reasons.

  But what if that story’s wrong too? What if I don’t, in fact, have to write this book that my agent says I must or face disaster? On some level, I suspect I’ve known this answer for a while, and now, all of a sudden, I know it in a different way. I think about Charlotte and the stages of change. I’m ready, I decide, for “action.”

  I place my fingers on the keyboard again, this time to type a letter to my editor at the publishing house: I want to cancel my contract.

  After a brief hesitation, I take a deep breath then push Send, and off it goes—my truth, finally, hurtling through cyberspace.

  45

  Wendell’s Beard

  It’s a sunny Los Angeles day and I’m in a good mood as I park my car across the street from Wendell’s office. I almost hate being in too good of a mood on therapy days—what’s there to talk about?

  Actually, I know better. It turns out that sessions to which patients come with neither a crisis nor an agenda tend to be the most revelatory ones. When we give our minds space to wander, they take us to the most unexpected and interesting places. As I cross from the parking lot to Wendell’s building, I hear a song blasting from someone’s car: Imagine Dragons’ “On Top of the World.” Walking down the corridor to Wendell’s office, I start humming along—but as soon as I open the door to the waiting room, I go silent, confused.

  Whoops—this isn’t Wendell’s waiting room. Caught up in the song, I’d opened the wrong door! I laugh at my mistake.

  I walk out and shut the door, then look around to get my bearings. I check the nameplate on the door, which confirms that I am, indeed, in the right place. Once more, I open the door, but what I see looks nothing like the room I know. For a moment, I panic, as if in a dream: Where am I?

  Wendell’s waiting room has been completely transformed. There’s new paint, new flooring, new furniture, and new art—striking black-and-white photos. Gone are what I assumed to be the hand-me-downs from his parents’ house. Gone is the vase with the cheesy fake flowers and in its place is a ceramic pitcher and cups for water. The only thing that remains is the noise machine that ensures no one can hear what’s being said on the other side of the wall. It feels like I’ve walked into the finished product on one of those home-improvement shows where a space becomes unrecognizable from its original unfortunate state. I want to Ooh and Aah the way the owners do on these shows. It looks beautiful—simple and uncluttered and also a bit quirky, like Wendell.

  My usual chair is gone, so I take a seat in one of the new ones with funky steel legs and a leather back. I haven’t seen Wendell for two weeks—I’d assumed his being out of the office meant that he was on vacation, maybe even at the cabin from his childhood with his large extended family. I had imagined all of his siblings and nieces and nephews I’d discovered online and tried to pi
cture Wendell with them, goofing around with his kids or kicking back with a beer by the lake.

  But now I realize that this renovation was also taking place. My good mood is dissipating and I start to question if my contentment was real or if I was experiencing a “flight to health” in Wendell’s absence. A flight to health is a phenomenon in which patients convince themselves that they’re suddenly over their issues because, unbeknownst to them, they can’t tolerate the anxiety that working through these issues is bringing up.

  Typically, a patient might have a difficult session about a childhood trauma, then come in the next week and announce that therapy is no longer needed. I feel great! That session was cathartic! A flight to health is especially common when the therapist or patient has been away and in that break, the person’s unconscious defenses take hold. I did so well the past few weeks. I don’t think I need therapy anymore! Sometimes this change is genuine. Other times, patients abruptly leave—only to come back.

  Flight to health or not, I’m feeling disoriented. Despite the room’s vast improvement, I sort of miss the old crappy furniture—much the way I’ve felt about the inner transformations I’ve been going through. Wendell was the makeover show that came in and launched my internal renovation, and while I feel so much better now—in the “during,” because unlike décor makeovers, there’s no such thing as “after” until we’re dead—sometimes I think of the “before” with a weird kind of nostalgia.

  I wouldn’t want it back, but I’m glad I remember it.

  I hear the click of Wendell’s office door and then his footsteps on the new maple floors as he walks out to greet me. I look up and do another double take. Before I didn’t recognize his waiting room, and now I almost don’t recognize Wendell. It’s like somebody’s playing a prank on me. Surprise! Just kidding!