Deb

My therapist’s voice lives in my head and sometimes I think we wonder what the fuck I’m doing.

I can hear her soft tone asking me “well when is the first time you remember feeling like this” and I have to explain to myself that having the memory of a goldfish means my answer will always be 12 years old. The voice in my head that should already know that.

She asks me how things are working out for me, reminds me to breathe, tells me that humming is actually good for you and that I should do it more. I tell her that doing things that feel good is somehow a betrayal. That being sad is the state I need to be in and then I refuse to give her a reason. I tell her I can’t remember the last time I was happy and she brings me a rolodex of memories, each one that I have a secret explanation for why I was actually sad for it. We argue about if I’m being dramatic, if I rewrite each moment as I go so I can stay as small and as unimportant as possible. She tells me that there’s another one in here too, a happy Ashley who desperately wants to come out to play. That she’s locked behind my 12 year old self, older and younger, been here longer than both of us but somehow still 7 at heart. She asks if the pills I was taking helped that kid come out to play, I tell her I don’t remember. My internal clock tells me it’s been less than a year since I stopped, how can I not remember? I tell them I don’t know.

We’re all convinced that I’m lying. That I was happy most of the time, or at least a lot of it. The problem is, my internal editor is the only one that’s tremendous at her job. Before things can be encoded into my long term memory they have to run through the agent, the editor and the publishing house. The publishing team has been offline for a long time now, they just don’t see the point in sharing these depressing stories. My agent is still trying desperately to pitch me to myself. “The biopic is going to be so good,” she says, “gritty, moody, I can really see it drawing in an arthouse crowd.” But I can feel happy Ashley frown at that.

“No,” she argues, “that’s wrong. Our nickname was sunshine in high school. Everyone said we were perfect to work at Disney and teach preschool. That’s just not true.” The inner editor stands up on her desk to look over the wall from where she’s yelling.

“But what about those sad poems? What about staying up all night during the fires worried about people? And worried about what will happen if the fire doesn’t burn close enough to actually be sad about it? That seems pretty moody.” The little one doesn’t have anything to say to that. No one does. Except the agent who knows she’s complicit. Who knows she’s been trying to angle these stories for years. My therapist doesn’t like her.

Not Deb. Deb doesn’t know about her. Talking about my inner therapist voice.

The agent and the editor work well together. Agent tells her the spin and poof, my memories are unreliable. A dash of melancholia, an intense hyperawareness about everything I actually fucked up in each of those moments, and a keen resonance with the word actually. That’s editor’s favorite word. Sheldon in the third grade called me Actually Ashley. I didn’t realize I’d use it against myself to tear apart moments.

“He loves you.” Actually you’re just convenient for him right now and you make his life easier. You’re not really a girlfriend, you’re more like a sidekick butler.

“She’s your best friend.” Actually she doesn’t like you very much. She has a lot of other friends, those are her best friends. You’re just someone she keeps around because it would mess up the group dynamic to cut you loose. But really, you bum her our and irritate her, so best to just not call.

“They’re proud of you.” Actually they’re disappointed in themselves for you not turning out right. They don’t know what they did. They tried their hardest. But somehow you still ended up….odd. A little too distant, a little too angry, a little too unreliable.

I can keep going. I can keep providing a counterpoint to everyone who loves me on why they shouldn’t. I can keep crying at my desk, in my car, on the train, in the bathroom, on the kitchen floor. I can find a way to prove it to them that I’m right. That I’m unlovable and too much. That I would make for a really good art house film.

A fucking boring one, but the lighting would be good.

People (Deb) call it an inner critic. But she’s not. Editing is neutral. Editing just finds the story and heightens that and lowers the rest. Editing cuts out the unnecessary things, like peace and joy. There’s no story in happy. That’s why little Ashley doesn’t typically get a say in the editing process. It’s boring.

All of it is boring. That’s why the publishing team quit.

You can see how this would be frustrating for the inner therapist. This is a lot. Just reading it back to myself after typing it, I know it’s a lot. But this is my head, all the time. It’s either circus music, a void, or this. This thing where I would think I was schizophrenic if I didn’t know myself so well. If all of the voices weren’t just thoughts stuck behind the 4 levels of tempered glass it takes to hear my thoughts. If they were ever this clear any time other than writing. So I know they’re not real. And I consciously know that this is just the monkey mind and with time and discipline I could fire the agent and the therapist and the inner kid and the publishing team too.

But I feel like the editor is sticky. Like she’s the only one that knows the filing system of my brain. Like maybe she’s the only one who is actually me, and that’s why I hate her so much.