Liam in My Head, Chapter 2: The Therapist Wants Me to Get Out More

Liam in My Head: A Novel-in-Progress. Sometimes the only thing keeping you from losing your mind is a voice only you can hear.

Chapter 2: The Therapist Wants Me to Get Out More

“It’s good to get painful memories out in the open. So, there’s a lot there to unpack, not 
the least of which is Liam,” said the therapist.

I can’t take him seriously because he copies the models in the Lands End catalogue. He 
wore page 34 when he told me Liam is not real. He tugged down the edge of his Zip-Front 
Drifter Cardigan over the waistband of his Traditional Pleated No Iron Chinos, crossed one leg 
over the other (Over The Calf Smart Rib Dress Socks and Driving Moccasins), and said, “Liam 
is not real. Liam is an imaginary friend.” He gave me that encouraging look people give when 
they want you to parrot back to them what they just said. 

But Liam is not an imaginary friend. He’s alive and breathing. He’s alive and breathing 
in my head, and I said so.

Today the therapist wore an azure Supima Polo and Fair Water 5-Pocket Pants. He said, 
“We’ll talk more about Liam another day. Today I’d like to talk about two small healthy changes 
we can start working on.” Immediately, I felt myself clenching up. We means me. Change is 
code for leaving the house more. Healthy is code for leaving the house more. 
“The documentaries about Hitler you watch. Now, I’m not suggesting you give them up 
entirely,” he said, holding up a hand to stop me talking. “But I want you to consider cutting 
down on the number of Hitler documentaries you watch at night.” 

That’s so unfair of him. The average American watches four hours 51 minutes of 
televison every day. I only watch three hours of Hitler documentaries, and I knit dish rags at the 
same time. That’s multi-tasking! How am I the one with the problem? Besides, they are 
documentaries. Documentaries broaden the mind, everyone knows that.

For instance, I didn’t know that Hitler’s engineers dug so many bunkers. To this day Germany is riddled with deserted bunkers where this group and that group of Nazi scientists worked on secret super weapons. Those bunkers are death traps, even today. Picture it, there you are on vacation, in long shorts, walking along in the woods, your knapsack on your back, val-de-ri, val-de-ra-ing, and you step onto what looks like solid ground but isn’t and you fall into one of these deserted bunkers and break every bone in your body. You call for help but no one hears you because all the other hikers who come along in long shorts are val-de-ri, val-de-ra-ing too loud to hear your weak cries for help. You die a slow death and no one knows what happened to you until documentary filmmakers looking for Hitler’s secret bunkers find your bones and identify you as a 21st century victim of the Third Reich. We never studied things like that in school. It’s not true that I’m obsessing on dark things. I’m learning things about history. And when you watch “Goebbels: The Truth About the Secret Diaries” multiple times you catch nuances you missed the first nine times through.

“Give my suggestion some thought, and we’ll talk about it again next week," said the 
therapist, who always seems to get tired halfway through our sessions. "Let’s move on to the 
second change we need to work on - getting back into the grocery store,” he said. I hate shopping for groceries. It’s so pointless. You shop for groceries and then a few days later you have to shop for groceries all over again. This goes on until you’ve spent years of your life shopping for groceries. 

“What did you do to benefit humankind?” asks St. Peter at the gates of Paradise, and you 
reply, “Well, you see, I kept meaning to save natural habitats, but I had to get some groceries 
first. It took time to circle the parking lot for a parking space. Then when I did finally get home 
with the groceries I still had to put them away in the cupboard….”

Besides, groceries are expensive. I can get two Johnsonville brats off the roller bar at the Fleet Farm Gas Mart for $2. If I get there before 9 a.m. and the truckers haven’t bought them all, there are egg and bacon ones. If I squeeze two packets of mixed fruit jelly over the brats and put lots of half and half in my coffee, there’s a complete breakfast. Who needs grocery shopping? And Fleet Farm Gas Mart is only three blocks from my house. I can drive there, get my brats and coffee, the cashiers never say anything so you don’t have to say anything to them, and I’m back in my house seven minutes and 43 seconds later. It’s almost like not leaving the house at all.

The therapist took a big breath. “Let’s talk about you getting back to the grocery store,” 
he repeated. He told me about salt and inflammation and then about inflammation and mood and then about mood and gut flora.

He was probably right. I used to eat better. Poor gut flora. They start out with breast mik 
and go on to expect quinoa with steamed broccoli florets and then one day everything goes to hell and they get nothing that doesn’t come off the roller bar at Fleet Farm Gas Mart. The closest thing to a vegetable for sale in that place is Wasabi-Coated Crunchy Green Pea Snack.

“I call them baby steps.” The therapist’s smile invited me to appreciate his catchy new phrase. “Wouldn’t you like to eat some healthy food again? What do you say we make a plan for 
you to go to the grocery store this week and buy some broccoli to steam. Just broccoli. Only one item. Just the produce aisle. In and out. Baby steps. What do you say?” 

“No,” I said. “I can’t go back to the grocery store. I can’t. I can’t go there. I can’t go in. I 
can’t get just one item. I can’t buy broccoli. I can’t go in there. I can’t!”

The therapist I can’t take seriously looked at the little clock hung on the wall behind my 
head at a specific height so he can see it but his patients won’t realize it’s there. “Well, we’ll talk 
about this again next week. Baby steps. But we’ve got to get you back to buying groceries.” 

While I was waiting for the elevator, Liam said: “Your man’s got a point. That condiment 
bar at Fleet Farm – looks like dogs have been there first.” I hate it when Liam takes the therapist’s side. “I don’t need to go to the stupid grocery store and nobody’s going to tell me what I can watch on TV,” I said. “Could it be – and I’m just asking here, girl – could it be the subject matter he’s talking about and not the number of hours?” said Liam. “I’m not saying it’s not important to understand World War II, but it’s a wee bit dark of a subject, don’t you think? Maybe he thinks you’ll feel a bit better if you watch, I don’t know, nice shows. Gardening shows. Or ‘The Great British Baking Show’ and the like.” 

I had a really good rebuttal to toss at Liam, but I didn’t get to say it because the elevator 
arrived. I can’t talk in elevators. I’m afraid the elevator will suddenly start and then suddenly stop and the shock wave will send me and any other passengers hurtling to the floor. Then just as some of us get to our feet and start to assess the situation, the elevator will start up again and shoot super fast up to the top of the shaft where it will collide with some kind of metal support beam structure thing and that second shock wave will send me and all the other passengers hurtling to the floor again where we will lie moaning and damaged and bleeding and it will take rescue workers many hours to cut through the elevator doors with a blow torch. Meanwhile, several of us will die of our injuries. The survivors eventually will need to answer calls of nature, and there will be no choice but to urinate and defecate directly on the floor like untrained dogs. The air in the elevator will smell like the old South St. Paul stockyards on a summer day: thick with blood, shit, and fear. My heart will be thumping in my chest and the cilia in my windpipe will be engorged, letting no air in. I’ll dig in my pocket for my albuterol inhaler and find that the plastic case is smashed and the canister is crushed. I’ll be gasping for breath so hard I’ll die of a heart attack in that elevator and my last conscious thought will be the fear that if the rescue workers don’t cut through the elevator doors soon the remaining survivors will eat me.

There was a time when I couldn’t get in elevators at all. I would freeze in the open 
doorway while people tried to get on or get off. Finally, Liam would say to me, “Girl, step back 
now, and let this elevator go. You’ll try again tomorrow.” Then I got this social worker and I can 
go in elevators now, but I can’t talk to anyone because I have to focus on talking to myself in my 
head. The social worker told me to do this. She wears t-shirts with motivational sayings by Helen Keller printed on the bust in difficult to read, twirly-whirly fonts, but she occasionally says 
things of practical sense, She said I should say motivational things to myself to get over my 
elevator phobia. I told her I’d already had been saying motivational things to myself and they’d 
only got me as far as creating traffic jams in elevator doorways. I had been motivating myself by saying. “Shut up and get in the elevator, you stupid, stupid excuse for a person. The elevator is not going to go out of control. Get in the elevator, you freak, you Bride of Frankenstein freak. You are not going to be eaten. Who the hell would eat you?”

But the social worker, wearing a t-shirt that I eventually figured out said “Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light – Helen Keller,” suggested I amend what I was saying. Something like, “It’s okay that I’m afraid of the elevator going out of control” in a calm voice to myself would be better. Telling yourself to shut up and get in the elevator raises your blood pressure, she said. Comparing yourself to an ugly entity cobbled together of stolen human parts raises your blood pressure, she said. On the other hand, admitting your fear lowers your blood pressure, makes you calmer, she said. Despite her love of hard-to-read fonts, I decided to try her method. So, I can’t talk to Liam or anyone else in the elevator because I’m busy saying, “It’s okay that I’m afraid of the elevator going out of control...It’s okay that I’m afraid of the elevator going out of control...It’s okay that I’m afraid of the elevator going out of control” over and over until the doors open at my destination.

Sometimes other passsengers talk to me: “Cute purse,” or “Whew! Hot in here, isn’t it?” I stare straight ahead and don’t let them interrupt the motivational thoughts in my head. Most of the talkers just shrug and pay no more attention to me. Some people say  “Well, excuse me” in that way people do and then roll their eyeballs. If the elevator did crash, you know those eyeball rollers are the ones who would eat me.

Image: Wikimedia Commons