The Trouble Is

Chapter 43: Not a Shrink (Again)

The next week I go to see Laura, my not-a-shrink-just-a-therapist. East gives me a ride and pretends that he's going to run errands while I'm talking to Laura. It's no problem, he says. He's going that way anyway. I can see East's truck sitting there the whole time when I glance through the wooden blinds in Laura's office. He never leaves. He just sits there, waiting.

I Googled all of this last night: death of a friend, grief, sorrow . . . all those "losing" kind of words. I want to get through this quickly. I'm already armed with knowledge of the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I think that whole thing is pretty stupid, anyway. Who could possibly deny death? You can't quite deny a dead body or the empty seat beside you or the silence of a cell phone. And who is there to bargain with? God? I can't think of a single person ever who managed a bargain with God. I did spend some time thinking about the whole acceptance thing but couldn't wrap my head around it. People make it sound like we get a choice here. We don't. Dead is dead.

So that leaves us with anger and depression. Now I think we have something to discuss.

The thing that I like about Laura is that she is practical, if not ironic. She will give me three things to practice to control my OCD or five things to consider when starting a new school year. You see the irony here, don't you? She gives me a list. I guess she doesn't consider my list-making much of a problem. I prefer not to open this door with her, with so many other doors swinging, so I never ask.

Laura also doesn't mess around. I'm barely sitting on the soft leather sofa beside the table with the tissue box and the little scented candle on it before she jumps in.

"What's the worst part about losing your best friend?" she asks, seemingly unaware that it's like shooting an arrow through my heart. I'm bleeding out, I think, and right off the bat you're stabbing me with these questions?

I don't answer her for a long time. Laura is good at many things, and waiting is definitely one of those things. I try not to think about it at all most of the time. When I do let myself go there, it's as if it has happened to someone else, not me and not Katie. It just can't be true. I remember the Google results and know that's just temporary denial. I don't even bother Laura with that, rather jump right into what is really annoying me.

"People keep telling me it's going to be OK," I say. "But I just don't see how. It is abso-freaking-lutely not ever again going to be OK. What does that even mean?"

"Is that the worst part, Anne?" she asks. "That people want to reassure you that you are going to get through this? They're not negating your grief or your loss. They just don't know what else to say.

"What do you feel first, before the anger?" she asks.

"It's like I've been ghosted," I say, hitting closer to my heart's core than planned. It just spills out of me and feels like the truth.

She lets her confusion show a bit and asks if I mean Katie's a ghost. I shake my head in response. That's not what I mean at all. It's not even in the same solar system.

"It's like an absence of someone, but more permanent and confusing," I explain. "Ghosting is when someone just walks away from your life without a single word. There's no texts, no tags on Instagram or Facebook, no Happy Birthdays or likes, or anything. It's just nothing, a void. It's the ultimate insult, the ultimate silent treatment. So you know the person is out there, somewhere. You can still see them online. But they won't text or respond to you in any way. You become the ghost, I think. You are unseen, unknown, forgotten. You are diminished."

She takes a minute before responding.

"Wow," she says as she shakes her head a little. She has shoulder-length brown hair that falls in nice beachy waves. The light shines through it when she shakes her head like that. "I didn't know that was something people did."