Notes:
1. I'm not a tease.
2. I decided that the therapist couldn't be named "Dr. Falkner". It was too similar to "Faulkner". I'm not comfortable having a character named after such a major Southern writer. (Even though I just picked the name at random out of an infomercial.) So he's now named Dr. O'Connor1. I have updated the previous entry.2
3. I shouldn't have posted the first part here. I should have kept it in my personal blog or one of my writing sites. I had previously resolved to keep these two parts of my life separate. I just wanted to acknowledge that. It's too late to go back now, I guess. (See #1.)
4. I'm concerned that this part is boring, and that it's necessity to the planned narrative arc is a sign of that arc's weakness.
Footnotes:
[1] Yes, this is an oblique attempt at humor. Seriously, though, the name just seemed more fitting.
[2] I made some other changes too, but they're not really important.
"I don't think that they were consciously using me. I don't think that they realized what I was either."
Dr. O'Connor had posed one of his frequent questions: "How is it, do you think, that it took so long for you to discover that you are a psink?" I had swiftly rambled off topic.
"Stop defending them", he said. Then, "Start again at the beginning." His method seemed to be to prompt me to tell him stories from my life, initially at my own direction but now in sequences guided by his prompting, until I picked out common threads and gained some new insight.
The first time he asked me about my childhood friendships, I told him, "I have always been a magnet for the weird." And by weird I meant the most reviled of the outcasts. After working with Dr. O'Connor for a time, I now knew better.
I have always been a magnet for the egotistical. And not the sort whose flights of ego are condoned by their peers; I drew those who were titans only in their own minds, and who railed against the world for refusing to recognize their worth.
On the first day of first grade, shy and quiet, I managed to throw my lot in with Patrick, the least popular boy in the class. I met him on the playground, loud and brash, demanding that sticks be brought to the large, half-buried tire.
"We have to build a wall to secure this region!", he barked.
As opposed to all of the other recess activities, which required taking some initiative, following orders was simple and unterrifying. I dropped an armful of sticks at his feet and was rewarded with a "Good soldier!"
Both of Patrick's parents were retired military. He was shocked at our unfamiliarity with old war films and drill sergeant tactics. He regarded everyone but me with suspicion; they regarded us with derision. I used to wonder if my social life would have been different, had its nascent blossoming not been marked by Patrick. Now I wonder if his would have been different, if he would have stopped playing at soldier and integrated with the others had I not been there to play along.
###
We moved the summer before third grade. I thought it was my chance to start fresh. The first day of school, Peter decided that we were best friends. Peter was loud, obnoxious, smarter than the rest of us, and knew it. And he wanted everyone else to know it. Peter got beaten up a lot. At first I thought it was normal bullying but, no, on top of being an obnoxious weakling, he was also prone to physically violent outbursts; he always started the fights, if something so lopsided could be called that.
His mother thought that I was a good influence on him. I heard her tell my mother that he didn't seem so angry when I was around. That was news to me. When he got made at me, which happened occasionally, he would clench his fists and wind up; I'd turn and let him punch me in the back.
"Why did you let him punch you?", asked Dr. O'Connor.
"It was the simplest solution," I said. "After he punched me, he wasn't mad anymore."
"So he would be full of rage, and then he would touch you, and all of the rage was gone?"
"That's one way to put it, I suppose."
"And you never realized that you are a pain sink?"