This Is My Brain in Love - I. W. Gregorio Page 0,92
to, you know, get her to acknowledge her own feelings and maybe talk to someone, but it’s like the blind leading the blind. How can I help her if I can barely get my own issues under control? I feel so helpless.”
Dr. Rifkin hummed and nodded in the gentle low-key affirming way he always does, then asked, “Why do you feel responsible for Jocelyn’s happiness?”
“Isn’t that what the Little Prince said we should do?” I said, half joking, half not. Maybe “responsible” is the wrong word, but of course I want Jocelyn to be happy.
Dr. Rifkin took his own calming breath and shook his head. “You’re talking about the line where he says you’re responsible for the things you’ve tamed? That darn quote is the basis of more unhealthy relationships than I can count. It probably single-handedly paid off my graduate school debt.”
“So, what you’re saying is I’m being codependent?”
“I’m not the biggest believer of codependency as a negative trait, actually. As you know, I prefer to frame relationships in terms of attachment theory.”
I’ve been working with Dr. Rifkin long enough to know what he’s referring to. Essentially, attachment theory started with the study of the interactions between babies and their caretakers and then morphed into a way that psychologists can categorize relationships into four main styles of attachment: secure, anxious-preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant, and fearful-avoidant.
You can guess which one I tend toward the most.
I’ve always felt like it’s unfair that there are three insecure types of attachments and only one secure one. It’s as if the deck is stacked against us from the beginning.
Security is the anxious person’s Holy Grail, and I’m no exception. What Dr. Rifkin’s worked on with me for years is how to trick my brain so that I don’t automatically respond to insecurity by overthinking things. He’s taught me—well, if I’m honest, he’s still teaching me—ways to establish closeness in the face of panic.
The journalist in me understands the idea that most brains are really, really prone to confirmation bias. My head is a veritable fake news factory: Hyperbolic statements of distress. Unconfirmed catastrophes. Thinly based assumptions that things are all about me.
So, every once in a while, I need someone to help me with some fact-checking. Someone to give my brain a Pinocchio rating of five so I can laugh for a bit and see things more clearly. There’s only so much you can do in an hour, but yesterday Dr. Rifkin did help me sift out one central truth from the tangle of my emotions, which was that I can’t fix Jocelyn, but I can support her. For today, that means giving her space and helping her family’s restaurant.
It doesn’t mean I can’t miss her, though. As I go through Priya’s footage I keep forgetting myself and looking over to where Jocelyn usually sits to share each clip that grabs my attention. Without her, A-Plus is depressingly quiet except for her father’s incessant throat clearing and the occasional phone call.
The sensation that I’m missing a part of myself takes me by surprise. I’ve always been an introvert, confirmed by every stupid internet permutation of a personality test I’ve ever taken. I’m a Ravenclaw. C-3PO. Ned Stark. Vision. I like my friends, they keep me grounded, but I’ve never been lonely when I’m not with them.
What I feel now, though, is more than just loneliness—it’s a restlessness, an itchy desire to move from where I am, to find her, to be with her. I spend an hour looking through videos, and after each one, my default thought is to try to guess what Jocelyn would think about them.
It’s become impossible for me not to see the world, at least partially, through her filter, so my favorite clips are the ones I know would also resonate the most with her. One is a single shot of her grandmother deveining shrimp with knife work that would make an assassin proud. Another is time-lapse video of the checkout counter over the course of a day that animates the literal dinner rush, making me appreciate the number of people we feed on a daily basis in a whole new way. But maybe my favorite one is a single moving shot Priya did where she circled around the staff sitting down for their evening meal long after the doors were locked. The camera pans fast enough that you get an almost dynamic sense of how much food is made and shared family style, but slow enough that you can see the