Page 17 of Slanting Towards the Sea

SIXTEEN

THE SECOND TIME I went to therapy was when my world was collapsing in full force, a year before Vlaho and I got divorced. The panic attacks had gotten bad, and I felt unhinged, like a train in the midst of derailing, suspended in the air in those few moments before it hits the ravine.

Sometimes, I’d curl up next to Vlaho at night and beg him to help me.

“Please,” I pleaded. “Please. I don’t know what to do.

” What I was really asking for was a solution.

To show me a way out. To undo the diagnosis that had slipped between us, split us in two like a merciless chisel.

Vlaho held me close and stroked my hair, and kissed my temples, but he couldn’t do anything for me, not really, and that hurt even worse.

My therapist, Astrid, was an older woman with a bony face, sharp nose, and even sharper observations.

She seemed judgmental but kept her judgments to herself, which disconcerted me, because all my life I’d depended on my ability to read people, and she was giving me nothing to decipher.

She was a cognitive-behavioral therapist, so she was trying to teach me about the connection between thoughts and emotions and actions, and how I could use rationalizations to stop the vicious cycle of panic.

But it wasn’t helping, the part of me that was negative always had more arguments to offer than my positive side.

And time after time, I asked her—pleaded with her—to tell me why. Why was this happening to me? Why was I so fragile? I knew many people who’d gone through worse things, but who were still functioning. I was nowhere near functioning.

Astrid didn’t like this question. She’d deflect it by saying that we can’t know what’s going on in other people’s lives, that many of them might think I was doing okay if they saw me out and about, and that it doesn’t matter how other people deal with problems, what matters is how I deal with problems. But one time, I might’ve pushed the question too far, because Astrid folded her notebook, looked at me, and said, “Do you know what a color wheel is?”

I said yes.

“Not everyone has the ability to see all the nuances,” she said.

“Some people, those with Daltonism, see only shades of gray. Some people, the majority, see the basic colors. But a few have this incredible gift,” she leaned in, and for the first time I felt warmth emanating from this woman, “and see all the glorious hues and gradations of gold, teal, turquoise, peach. You, Ivona, are one of those lucky few who see the whole spectrum.”

She said it as if it were a perk, but I couldn’t see any benefits if it caused me this much pain. “Is there any way I can change that?”

She sat back, shaking her head. “It’s like the color of your eyes. You’re just born this way.” Then she smirked. “Tell me, though. If you could change it, would you really want to?”

I sunk into the couch, considering this.

What came to me weren’t exactly images of Vlaho, but a palette of emotions tied to otherwise invisible moments we’d shared.

The way something opened in my chest when he’d sink his fingers into a tangerine, offering a part of it to me.

The suede feeling of hearing him whisper in the dark.

The slight tug I always felt when I was around him, a sense of centering, of my world getting aligned.

These moments rushed through me like paint exploding on canvas.

I looked at Astrid, and God help me, I said no.