Dear Rudy,
I saw Dr Lim today, and it’s Halloween. Those two things don’t really have anything to do with each other so I don’t know why I wrote them like that. This letter isn’t off to a good start. I would start it again but I’m down to my last piece of paper in this notebook and I’m in a comfortable position on my bed. So deal with it, Rudy. You’re dead, anyway.
Mum mentioned you today, but not in a sad way. It was maybe the first time I’ve heard her do that. She thought some actor on a new television show looked just like you. He didn’t—he was much better looking. I guess that’s her love-heart eyes filtering things for her. It was nice.
I got the feeling today Dr Lim thinks I’m a bad person, which I don’t think a psychologist is even allowed to think about a client, but she hasn’t said it directly so she’s probably not officially out of line. We talked a lot about the Byron Bay incident, which is what I’m calling it now, even though we were supposed to be talking about grief, and change, and Schoolies, and graduation. But the incident was more urgent.
She asked me why I wanted to ‘hurt my friends’. See what I mean? I explained I didn’t plan to hurt them, obviously, I just got mad and said that hurtful thing. She wasn’t buying it. ‘You need to take more responsibility for turning your thoughts into words, you thought them AND you said them,’ she said.
And she’s not wrong about that. She also said I need to apologise, which I said I will do, because I am actually planning to, I just don’t know how to start. Instead of helping me to figure that out, she did this whole thing with a plate.
She picked up a floral china plate from her desk, it had crumbs on it so she must have used it for a sandwich. Then she threw it on the floor like she was completely nuts. It shattered into a dozen pieces and probably dinted the floorboards.
‘If I picked up all these pieces and glued them back together, would the plate be the same as before?’ she asked.
It took me a few seconds to realise she was teaching me a thing. I wonder how many plates she has broken over the years to make this point. It was all very dramatic.
So yes, I told her I understood, apologising is not the same as not having broken the plate in the first place. I think she could have made the same point without breaking the plate, but I guess I’ll remember it more this way. And in the psychology world, I’ve broken a lot of plates.
Did you ever worry about metaphorical plate-breaking, Rudy? You did kind of break a few plates in your time. But you were always kind, so you probably were well ahead on balance. My account is in the red, it seems.
Love, Erin