American Outlaw - Jesse James [141]
They’re all dealing with their own shit, I realized. I have problems, but so do they.
“How are things developing for you, Jesse?” Dr. Thomas asked, during our private session later that day.
“Not that bad,” I said. “I’m starting to feel a little bit more at home here, I think.”
“And what do you think of the group meetings?”
“I was a little resistant at first,” I admitted. “But today, I kind of opened up and talked.”
“How’d that feel?”
“Not too bad. In fact, it was sort of amazing.” I laughed. “So that’s what therapy is, huh? You unload all your baggage, get it out into the air?”
“I think that’s probably part of it,” Dr. Thomas said, smiling. “Actually, it’s a big part. Our theory is that it’s helpful for you to tell your story. Your job is to put it all together into some kind of narrative that makes sense to you and the people around you.”
I nodded, absorbing that. “I talked about my dad today,” I said, after a moment.
“What’d you get into?”
“Oh, I just talked about what a loser he was.”
“Tell me about him.”
“Oh, hell,” I said, exhaling. “He was a beatnik, I think. But not the fun kind. My dad bought unclaimed storage units at auction and then tried to sell all the shit inside them. He got his kicks fucking people over for a living. That’s my dad.”
My therapist laughed gently. “Well, was there anything that you liked about him?”
“Well, sure, I guess,” I said, considering. “He knew how to work hard. He taught me that, at least. My function on this planet was to be a worker for his business. If he had a bunch of trucks to load, he had no problem with keeping me out of school. I don’t care if it was a test day or anything: I was going with him to work.”
“Did you ever feel taken advantage of?” Dr. Thomas asked.
“I think I was too young to really know how it worked,” I said, after considering for a second. “I wanted his approval, and work was the way to get it. So I got real good at it. After a few years, it even got to the point where my dad would sit on his ass in the truck and watch me do all the work, and I was thrilled. Like, ‘Dad! Check me out! I did it!’”
“And did you get his approval, then?”
“Sometimes,” I said. “But there was always more work to do. I didn’t care. I was a strong kid. I was like six feet tall by the time I was thirteen. Sometimes I worked twenty hours in a weekend for him.”
“It sounds to me,” Dr. Thomas said, “like you had to grow up pretty quickly.”
I sat there, looking at her, thinking, yes, I guess I had.
——
As those first days passed, I settled into a routine. Group in the morning, private sessions in the afternoon, then the large communal meeting after dinner. In between, there was strange hippie bullshit I never thought I’d do in my entire life, like yoga and meditation. But I tried everything, and the peace that I’d felt at moments here and there over my first days began to come a little more often.
I was safe here. That was the big realization for me in the first week: once I understood that I was actually freed from the media vultures outside, who had pecked at me until I thought I’d go crazy, the relief was impossibly sweet. Essentially, I felt like I was among people who, for once, actually sympathized with me. The other residents were ordinary folks who had gone through some pretty hard problems, and they had undertaken the same challenging unwinding process that I had. In a way, we were all in this together.
“Yo, Jesse,” Tim said, nodding at me. “What’s up, man?”
I smiled at him. “Hey, Tim, what’s happening.”
He shrugged. “Just another day in paradise. You?”
“Same here,” I replied.
It wasn’t like everyone was my best friend right away. But somehow, it totally gave me strength to know that other people were fighting some sort of battle to make themselves better, too.
It was probably on the fourth or fifth day that I decided I was going to work as hard at Sierra