Quill

~ 01 ~

Islands

QUESTIONS

The park benches were like little islands. I wasn’t quite lost—it’s hard to get yourself lost in a city park. No. If anything, I was lost in my thoughts; my aimless body mirroring my scattered mind by circling the same stretch of land over and over. The park benches, like islands, offered momentary points of rest where I could sit and stew in a singular moment. I stopped to reflect, and then I continued my paces, and then stopped, and then paced, and then stopped again. At each of my rusted island destinations, I looked for the illusive treasure of certainty, and with each futile search I found that I was certain of jackshit. I thought: I am Alan Quill. More or less. Was there much more to it than that? Was there anything else to say? I sat down again.

There must be, in the end. Looking back, there was a lot more to say, but then, I couldn’t go back to yesterday. Not really. But I could, if nothing else, reflect. I could at least do that much. Then again, everything had been so difficult lately. I paced again. I walked and I walked without knowing where I was or where I was going. I could’ve gone home, or I could’ve gone to my first home. I was lucky, at least, that I’d experienced few homes. Three or four that I would call a true home in any sense. There were temporary places in between, but nothing that lasted long. The first home was a nest I’d flown from after eighteen long years, and all the others were dots along the weaving line of time—a line that seemed to go on forever. Too long. But still, maybe the best place to go now was that first home and not the new home, the one I’d known for only eighteen months rather than eighteen years. A home for but one year in twenty-six.

Twenty-six years seemed like such a long time when it was everything. Yet today was perhaps the longest day among 9,528. Maybe the longest day of all days belonging to all lives. Definitely the longest of the last year. Today I experienced my whole life—past, present, and future. Along the way, I also stepped through the lives of those around me. It all began with a rare change in the otherwise unyielding monotony of my simple job. It began when the soul-shackling routine of arranging shelves of mislaid books and attending to careless customers was interrupted by a phone call. It began with the possibility to change from the latest version of myself—one that robotically fulfils the menial tasks of a retail worker—into a self not unlike my father. A version of myself ascending the ladder of mediocrity to manage those who are, somehow, even more unremarkable than myself. It was, more or less, a flattering chance at a future.

Yes. The day began with a job offer from an old friend. An offer that would mean more money, a big office, and a future both respectable and predictable. It was a future I could imagine plainly enough. I could see myself in a well-tailored suit, sitting in a lifelessly pallid office, and watching my bank account grow. I could see my heart hardening into a perfectly cut stone as I traded all that I once was for pennies on the dollar. I watched through an ethereal haze as I grew colder. I saw myself in a loveless marriage with a manicured wife I avoided by fucking my receptionist under a desk of Brazilian rosewood. I could see myself speeding towards death in a brand-new Porsche. Of course, I was still a respectable man, so I would pull over on a dark mountain road and draw a bottle of bourbon and a revolver from the glove compartment. It was, if there was such a thing, a gentlemanly end for a man of some repute. Sitting silently on the edge of a nameless cliff, I would watch as I took the bottle and the gun, placing each to my lips in their turn. What a life it could have been.

But I declined that future—the best future I could imagine at the time—and I thought of what else I may have become. My father was the business type, but I was a writer. I wrote the future of Alan Quill as a captain of industry, and it was a bleak tragedy at best. So, perhaps there was a better road? There were plenty of roads, after all. If I couldn’t follow my father, then who? What were my other models? My uncle served in the military, climbing up the ranks as far as he could before the shrapnel of a stray landmine destroyed his left knee. And that was a happy ending for a soldier, unless one was so jingoistic as to prefer a noble death in battle. Such grim outcomes, and yet I still found myself at a recruitment center, listening to an aging serviceman whose persona was a muted canvas of scars both physical and metaphysical. In service to your country for the good of yourself and others…a way to earn a life of meaning through a function…almost mechanized. But in the end, all it meant to me was death; widows, mothers, and children left without their beloved heroes. Heroes who were, invariably, dead or slowly dying. It was no life at all. At least, not for me.

What I longed for wasn’t a mystery. I wanted to follow my dreams rather than follow a plan. But that had never worked for me before, and now, time was fleeing from my grasp. It was slipping wantonly through the cracks in my resolve. I could feel myself falling into a familiar darkness, every bright light merely the caster of a greater shadow in my midst. There were so many roads to take, and yet, I wanted to take to the skies and leave them all behind. I wanted to fly. But I knew that was just a dream, and so, I was left without a path that suited me. How much further could I travel by pretending? How far had I come? It wasn’t something I could answer. So, I would have to turn again to the past, and to the other lives I’d tangled with—those other weaving lengths in the loom with whom I had become forever intertwined. It’s true, I couldn’t go back to yesterday, but I could touch its reflection through the looking glass and search for the path I might have missed. I sat again at one of my islands.

It was the sin of my generation to find ourselves lost amongst the muddled rubble of our many failures. Our failures were no more numerous than those of our parents, and theirs no more than those of their own parents. Yet ours were somehow harder to suffer. People struggle—always. The question was never whether or not we would suffer, but rather, what (if anything) could give us the strength to endure? Maybe that’s what was different for us. What was once, not easy but manageable, has become an almost insurmountable challenge of will over suffering. We fight every day to become beautiful things—to become the anythings we were always told we could be. But anything diminishes into something important and then erodes further into something sensible. That’s what hollows us out; the fact that we are so often left fighting for the decayed remains of what our dreams once were. And there I was. What did it all mean? Where did it all change?

I’d already been through it all so many times. Today and on other days—countless times in therapy sessions with Doctor Adams. But I couldn’t see beyond my own limits. Was I supposed to just wander around a deserted park and contemplate my life from beginning to end? Lingering at but more islands manifested in memory. Was a story which, by all accounts, began with wandering doomed to end with yet more wandering? It might, and then, it might not. I could return home—my new home, because I didn’t need what new stresses might arise from that original nest. But later. Not now. With so many old ghosts haunting my mind, I needed more time to think. To isolate a certainty within my history of sorrow. I believed once that there was no certainty at all, even if Doctor Adams didn’t believe it. He was always keen to find whatever truth he could. He never understood that most truths were little more than believable lies. Still, he was a man I thought of often.

I wondered how Doctor Adams saw me. How does a therapist see his patients? How does an aging man see a young man? He was, after all, so often a lens through which I was forced to view my life. But I never asked him for his deeper thoughts. I always believed I understood myself perfectly. I didn’t question Doctor Adams when he analyzed every facet of my being, nor did I fight him when he tried so hard to make me fit into the world around me. I appreciated all the help he had to offer, and yet, I think what I wanted was for him—for someone—to understand. I don’t think we ever got there. He cared about me and my well-being. But I don’t believe he ever saw who I was, and maybe that’s why his advice didn’t work in the end. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t value in other points-of-view. Sometimes you can only see the whole picture from different angles.

ANSWERS?

Rehabilitation Progress Form

Patient Name: Alan Quill

Case #: 7-2521

Staff Name: Dr. Stewart Fine

Staff ID: HCE-451

Session Date: 02-11-2013

Session #: 42

Patient Evaluation:

Alan’s status has improved greatly over the past few months. Though withdrawn, he seems to have put his troubles in perspective. Although he is sometimes secretive, this is only with the particularities of his travels in New York—about which he has expressed unflinching indifference. This insistence on his part suggests to me that the specific details of his time there were largely inconsequential beyond what role they played in the development of his habits. It was in New York that Alan began his heavy consumption of alcohol and illegal stimulants. It should be noted that he also admits to indulging in numerous other substances recreationally, while not forming dependencies. However, his heroin use did not begin until several months after he returned to Colorado.

This detail, paired with Alan’s general disdain for the conventional realities of daily life, suggests that the root of his addictive and destructive behavior is clinical depression. Alan seemed open to this notion, though he insisted that if he was in fact depressed, it was reasonable considering the quality of his experiences. This outlook, though somewhat naïve and unrealistic, is one which Alan came to with an apparently clear head, and with no evident desire to resume his aggressive self-medication. I see this as great progress. With time, it is likely that Alan will adapt fully to the normal expectations of his adult life.

My lingering concern comes from Alan’s vehement refusal of all chemical treatment. While his turning away from methadone treatments can be considered admirable, his subsequent refusal of anti-depressants is mildly unsettling. That said, I do not believe Alan is likely to recommence his substance abuse, only that he may not be doing everything in his power to address the underlying depression. Alan is a bright young man who will do well for himself once he finds direction. It is my belief that with continued sessions his state could be improved further, but even without additional treatment, his mental health is stabilizing more by the day.

It is possible that I possess no appropriate lens for empathizing with Alan’s plight, but I feel more than capable of analyzing it objectively. His depressive triggers can be attributed as much to his age as to any other logical catalyst. These millennials often struggle with conventional expectations. If Alan can connect with the value of these responsibilities, he can likely develop a more leveled personality. In this way, he might better meet the adult demands expected of him in society. At least, this is my hope.

Document: 42/42

Forwarded to: Dr. Daryl Adams

“Daryl! Are you home?” My wife called to me from somewhere downstairs. Maybe she was just getting home. I called back to let her know I was in the office upstairs. She could have guessed, because that’s where I almost always was. I looked back down at Stew’s notes. Part of me always wondered how clinic therapists like him toed the line between objectivity and their many obvious biases. Stew and I were friendly enough in a professional sense, but I never had much in the way of personal respect for him. I mean, he was effective enough as a rehab therapist, but just because he was effective doesn’t mean he was all that helpful. He seemed to see in his patients only what he expected rather than what was there. They were his little projects. Not that he didn’t care about them, but nearly all of them were a challenge for him to overcome. They were a case for him to solve as quickly as possible. That’s what you get when you spend your time navigating the consciousnesses of an endless stream of addicts deprived of their greatest comforts.

“What’re you doing?” Jen asked. She strolled into the room and set down several bags, which undoubtedly contained books. So many books. I looked around the room. Every wall covered in books. On the smallest wall were a conservative hundred or so books on sociology and psychology from Freud’s essays to the latest DSM edition. These were mine. The other three walls were filled with Jen’s extensive collection of novels, linguistics texts, and books on literary theory. My wife was a literature professor, and her only addiction was words. It was one which, whether I liked it or not, she shared with me every chance she got. We met in a literature class. Her interest became her passion, while mine remained more passive, overwhelmed by a mixture of practical choices and what I liked to believe were the most virtuous of intentions. I wanted to help people, which was simple enough. Simpler was the fact that I didn’t have the right head for literature—too many abstractions.

“Just looking over a patient’s file. We have an appointment tomorrow. Any good finds?”

I addressed the numerous bags at her feet.

“Aren’t there always?” She began emptying the books onto the desk.

“Another copy of The Sound and the Fury?” I asked, noticing a somewhat tattered volume, which must’ve been the seventh or eighth of its name in her collection.

“That’s a vintage edition. Be careful. And, yes, you can never have enough copies of a good book. They’re all a different experience,” she said.

“How’s that?” I asked.

“Well, for starters, they smell different,” she noted. I laughed. She always talked about her books with an appreciation for details others just didn’t see.

“Do they?” I asked.

“Well, yeah. Every copy has its own personality; the feel of the pages, the marks left by former readers, the tinge of age on the paper, and like I said, the smell. Each one triggers the memory in its own unique way—like a different book,” she finished. All I could do was beam at her. I started flipping through a beaten-up copy of Great Expectations in which the previous owner had written a remarkable amount of profanity.

“What’s so special about this one?” I asked.

“The annotations are amusing,” she said simply, without looking up from the task of unloading her bags. On the first page, next to Pip’s introduction, the esteemed annotator scribbled the word “fag,” and included a cartoonish sketch of an erect penis personified with a smiling face right on the tip. I let out a slight snort of laughter.

“Yeah, I thought you might like that one. What do you think Freud would think of those little embellishments?” Jen asked.

“I could probably write a book of my own about that.” I set the book down and walked around the desk to help with the rest of them.

“Do you want me to pick Lizzy up from school?” I asked, placing a fresh batch of Asimov volumes on the desk.

“If you wouldn’t mind. But you’d better get moving. She’ll be expecting you soon.” And with that I kissed her in farewell and left. I drove the half-mile to my daughter’s school and waited for her to be escorted out with the rest of the fourth-grade class. She was as excited to see me as ever she was, which was something I would enjoy for only another few years. On the way home, Jen texted and asked if I could pick up some takeout for dinner. A half-hour later, Lizzy and I arrived home with more KFC than could possibly be healthy. We enjoyed our dinner at almost exactly 7:00 PM and put Lizzy to bed at precisely 9:00 PM. Life has its happy formulas.

Jen and I went to bed ourselves just after 10:00 PM, but didn’t sleep until roughly an hour later. It was Friday night, which meant the final chunk of our day was spent making love by the flickering light of the candles we lit, mostly, only once each week. It was one of the things which routine didn’t necessarily help, but which it also didn’t much hurt. Life gets so complicated and overfilled, sometimes a good schedule is the only thing that helps you survive it. It was just a fact that as time passed, the thrill of spontaneity became more anxiety-inducing than exciting. It was a comforting thing to lose with age.

Comfortable, Jen and I drifted off to sleep by no later than 11:15 PM and were awake by 6:00 AM the following morning. While Jen made breakfast, I showered and readied myself for the day. At 7:00 AM, I sat down to eat a breakfast of egg whites and wheat toast, obviously meant to offset the cholesterol of the previous evening. By 7:30 AM I was out the door, before 8:00 AM I was at the office, by 10:45 AM I’d finished my first appointment, and by 11:30 AM I was finishing the Subway sandwich I’d hastily secured for my lunch, awaiting my final appointment of the day.

He was late, though that much was to be expected. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but shift my gaze from the clock on the well-lit wall to my left to the oak door in front of me. Even after all this time, expectations couldn’t change, and neither could old habits. I didn’t need to wonder where my patient was, because Alan Quill was always late. It would almost be more worrisome if Alan had arrived on time for once. In either case, I was prepared for all possibilities, and so I continued reading the medical journal spread below my tapping fingers. Noon came and went as expected. At 12:05 PM, I turned to look at the faces of my wife and daughter surrounded by a rosy wood frame; at 12:15 PM I looked again at the clock and closed the journal in front of me; and at last, at 12:18 PM I heard the knock at my office door.

“Alan, please, come in,” I called out. As he entered the room, he nodded with cordial familiarity.

“It’s good to see you again. How have you been?” Alan’s voice echoed with the same faux conviviality I’d become well-acquainted with through our various meetings since he was a teenager. With every word, Alan was defending himself, and with every act, he was building new walls between his façade and his real feelings.

“Just fine, Alan. Glad you made it in good time today—or at least close enough. It’s been a long while since our last session.”

Alan smiled weakly. Aside from the odd short phone call, it had been just over five years since we’d been face-to-face. No appointments—or at least, Alan hadn’t had an appointment with me since then, but he’d had his share with other doctors and therapists. He looked so different from when we’d last met. When Alan was a teenager, his blond hair was kept short and lazily neat, and his face looked easy and young. Now his green eyes stood against dark circles beneath wire-frame glasses, and his hair hung to his shoulders in feathery curtains. Reflexively, I smiled at him and then looked past him to the mirror hanging beside the door. I hadn’t changed so much; a thicker beard to emphasize what my wife liked to call a fatherly face, and my hair flecked with a slight grey to show that time had not forgotten me completely. I turned back to Alan, now sitting opposite me. After a pause, he spoke at last.

“It’s been too long. I don’t really know where to start.” He laughed, paused, and continued. “Sorry, I guess it has been too long. I’m a little nervous.” There was no need to say it. His nerves were clear despite his usual composure. When he was younger, I’d been able to get through many of his masks, but he always held pieces of himself back with resolve. Maybe he was so on edge now because he was ready to open up. Maybe I could finally help him.

“It’s alright, Alan. We can start however you’d like. You can tell me how the program has been going for you, or you can tell me how you’ve been doing in general. Doctor Fine sent me your records from his sessions with you. Three times every week, all through your rehabilitation. Your mandated therapy ended with him about a month ago. When you were younger, our sessions were at the request of your parents. You’ve come to me on your own this time, so, I suppose the floor is yours. You’ve always been good about sharing your thoughts and feelings in our sessions, though I’ve always suspected it was only to a point. Beyond that point, I feel you’ve held a lot back. Now that you’re making your own decisions and choosing to be here, I hope you can be more candid than you once were. Where would you like to begin?” I was forced to speak with tact—afraid that any misstep might force him to retreat behind his walls again. He sighed.

“I think the last time I had a session with you was just before I left for New York, after I graduated. I also called you when I first got back home and…well, that was before things got worse. I came to you then like I am now. But then, I guess I didn’t tell you much at the time. I don’t even remember everything I said. I don’t remember if what I said was even true. I’m not sure if I knew then what was true. I guess it would be best to begin at the beginning.” He paused. “Not the absolute beginning, but the beginning that matters.”

“Let’s start wherever you’d like. What is the beginning that matters?”

He paused with a pensive look that suggested he may not have known precisely what mattered—as if he was suddenly unsure if anything mattered. At last, he spoke.

“When I left home. When I began life on my own. You remember as much. Our sessions stopped just a couple months before. What was it…almost five years ago now? When I decided to leave for New York with Dick. When I met—when I decided to come back home, that’s when everything started falling apart.” He let the words slip from somewhere inside, and for just a moment there was a clear lapse in finesse. It was plain that Alan was torn between sharing something vital and hiding beneath defensive superficial details as he usually would. He needed to slip further.

“Sounds more like a summary than a story. We need to get at the details. You’ve told me at least some of what comes next. But I also believe that you’ve never told me the whole story. Don’t leave anything out—or at least don’t leave out anything important. Let’s get beneath these layers and find where we stand,” I finished.

“From the beginning?” he asked.

“From the beginning.”