everything I’ve discovered about avoidance in Wendell’s office. It even reads like a haiku: three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively.
You won’t believe who
I ran into today. Leigh!
She just joined the firm.
But Jen’s not amused; she’s furious. No matter what I’ve told her about my role in our breakup—that while Boyfriend could have been more upfront with himself and with me early on, I could have been more upfront with myself and with him about what I wanted, what I was hiding from, and whether we were really a match after all—she still thinks he’s an asshole. I remember trying to convince Wendell that Boyfriend was an asshole; nowadays I find myself trying to convince everyone else that he’s not.
“What does that even mean?” Jen asks about the email. “How about ‘How are you doing?’ Is he really that emotionally stunted?”
“It means nothing,” I say. “It’s meaningless.” There’s no point in trying to analyze it, to give it meaning. Jen is outraged, but I’m surprised to find that I’m not upset by this after all. Instead, I’m relieved. My gut unclenches.
“You’re not going to respond to this, I hope,” Jen says, but I almost want to—to thank Boyfriend for breaking up with me and not wasting even more of my time. Maybe his email did have meaning—or at least, my receiving it on this particular day had meaning for me.
I tell Jen I have to get back to writing my book, but after we hang up, that’s not what I do. Nor do I write Boyfriend back. Just as I don’t want a meaningless relationship, I don’t want to write a meaningless book, even though by now I’m three-fourths done. If death and meaninglessness are “ultimate concerns,” it makes sense that this book I care little about has plagued me—and also that I turned down the lucrative parenting book before that. Though I didn’t fully acknowledge my failing body back then, somewhere in my cells I must have become aware that my time was limited, so how I spent it would matter. I remember my conversation with Julie, and another thought occurs to me now: When I die, I don’t want to leave behind my equivalent of Boyfriend’s email.
For a while, I’ve thought that walking around those prison bars meant finishing the book so that I could keep my advance and have the opportunity to write another. But Boyfriend’s email makes me wonder if I’m still shaking those same bars. Wendell has helped me to let go of the story that everything would have worked out for me if I’d married Boyfriend, and there’s no point in holding on to the parallel story that the parenting book would have made everything work out for me too—both are fantasies. Certain things would have been different, sure. Ultimately, though, I’d still be itching for meaning, for something deeper. Just like I am now, with this stupid happiness book that my agent says I have to write for all kinds of practical reasons.
But what if that story’s wrong too? What if I don’t, in fact, have to write this book that my agent says I must or face disaster? On some level, I suspect I’ve known this answer for a while, and now, all of a sudden, I know it in a different way. I think about Charlotte and the stages of change. I’m ready, I decide, for “action.”
I place my fingers on the keyboard again, this time to type a letter to my editor at the publishing house: I want to cancel my contract.
After a brief hesitation, I take a deep breath then push Send, and off it goes—my truth, finally, hurtling through cyberspace.
45
Wendell’s Beard
It’s a sunny Los Angeles day and I’m in a good mood as I park my car across the street from Wendell’s office. I almost hate being in too good of a mood on therapy days—what’s there to talk about?
Actually, I know better. It turns out that sessions to which patients come with neither a crisis nor an agenda tend to be the most revelatory ones. When we give our minds space to wander, they take us to the most unexpected and interesting places. As I cross from the parking lot to Wendell’s building, I hear a song blasting from someone’s car: Imagine Dragons’ “On Top of the World.” Walking down the corridor to Wendell’s office, I start humming along—but as soon as I open the door to the waiting room, I go silent, confused.
Whoops—this isn’t