“No problem,” I said quickly. “Realizing what you feel you need is one of the first steps to healing anything,” I said. “But if you need someone to deliver food, help you around the house, or even just listen to you process some of your feelings and fears, I’m a phone call away.”
“Big tough men aren’t supposed to have fears,” he said, leaning in to kiss my lips for barely a second. “I’ll call you as soon as I can, baby.”
He disappeared into the house, and I drove away feeling completely uneasy.
James definitely needed a therapist to talk to, to express his emotions and tell the stories that he didn’t feel he could tell anyone else.
But I remember someone once telling me that military men hardly ever went to therapy. It was a point of pride, but also an acknowledgment of being broken. Tough guys did not confess when they experienced pain or discomfort. They powered through. It was part of the culture. The mindset of being a big, strong man.
Instead of turning left to go home, I suddenly turned right, heading to a local bookstore.
I knew that I was being pushy, and that James was feeling fragile. All I could do was hope that one more positive, hopeful push wouldn’t frighten him off entirely.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
* James *
I’d never felt like more of an asshole in my life. Canceling the date with Molly wasn’t something I would have ever imagined I’d do. But today, I just couldn’t be near her anymore. Not her personally. Anyone.
When she had found that lump on my leg, every terrifying moment I had gone through during the entire traumatic surgery process came flooding back. If they had to open me up again, I honestly didn’t know whether I would allow it or not.
But Molly’s persuasive sweetness got me the answer I needed immediately.
I knew that I owed her a wonderful night, but she was far too perceptive to see through my mask if I tried to fake it. My grumpiness had stepped aside to make room for full-on uncomfortable brooding.
After around twenty minutes or so on the couch, staring at the ceiling as I became one with my inner asshole, I heard a tap at the front door
. Grumbling, I grabbed my cane and shuffled to answer it.
Molly’s car was already leaving the driveway and turning onto the street. Looking down, she had left a bright white gift bag.
I took it in, setting it on the coffee table to look inside. There were two notebooks. One was matte black, with unlined pages, the other had a leafy green cover and pages with lines for writing. There were also three rather nice pens in the bottom of the bag, in green, blue, and black.
A piece of light yellow paper held her flowing handwriting.
“James, you need to vent your stress. If you don’t want to go to a therapist, that’s okay, as long as you vent somewhere. I don’t mean to be pushy, but I bet if you spent an hour a day downloading your thoughts, fears, and anger onto the page, you’d feel lighter. Please, could you try it for a few days, then text me?”
Sitting down heavily on the couch, I shocked myself by laughing loudly. My sweet, darling girl must have noticed that I didn’t deal with my inner demons very well.
I didn’t have any drinking buddies to share my innermost secrets with. I didn’t have any close family. My best friend was...gone. And I certainly wasn’t going to go to some shrink who had no idea about the things I’d been through, and the importance of blanking things out of my mind in order to function.
But if Molly wanted me to write in a journal, and go through all of my problems and crappy memories to clean them out of my brain, she must have thought it was important.
The thought of it filled me with cold, eerie dread. There were so many things I kept locked away.
Staring down at the notebooks, part of me wanted to take another painkiller and numb myself with old movies for the rest of the day. But I’d been doing that for the past few months.
It was time to change. I wanted to be better, for her.
Then I realized the truth. I needed Molly in my life. If I had to straighten out my mind to do that, it was just something that needed to be done.
One of the most important mottos I’d ever learned was, “Embrace the suck.” It was a military expression, but it was also a stoic philosophy.
Whether it was scrubbing toilets, digging ditches, or doing a hundred more push-ups, there were things in this life that just had to be done. And it was going to suck. You could gripe about it, or you could put your head down and get through it like a man.
And if you could see the finish line, you could find a way to get there.
If I were to write down all of the horrible, absolutely shitty experiences I’d had, and every single wretched feeling that had taken hold of me along the way, maybe I could let it all go. Or at least, turn down the intensity of how much energy and space it was taking up in my mind.