Page 142 of Woman on the Verge

“We’ll come back to this—the communication breakdown,” she says. “But I also want to talk about the other half of what you said, Kyle, which is you questioning how your wife’s mind could do this.”

“I’ve never heard of anything like this,” he says. “This can’t be common.”

Crystal squints at him again.

“Common? Maybe not. We would classify this as a dissociative disorder. From a psychological perspective, considering all the factors, it’s understandable.”

“Understandable?” He nearly spits the word.

“Hear me out,” Crystal says, showing him her palms again. “Grief is an incredibly powerful force. Your wife was grieving the impending loss of her father—we call that anticipatory grief. She was grieving a loss of self in her role as mother and wife.”

I glance at him to confirm that, yes, he is rolling his eyes.

“I think she was grieving the marriage, the ideals she harbored about how two people should support and be with each other.”

I don’t have to look at him to know that his eyes are still rolling.

“Then there’s the grief related to her mother. I see that as directly contributing to the accident,” Crystal says. “It’s a lot of grief, Kyle. And the human mind is amazingly self-protective. It will do fascinating things to protect us, to shield us from pain.”

“Okay,” Kyle says. He presses fingertips into his temples. “I get that she was going through a lot. I’m not really sure what to say.”

Crystal turns to me, begging me with her eyes to chime in: “I know you’ve talked to me about the shame you feel from this.”

“Shame, yeah,” I say. “I mean, I’m basically reaffirming the stereotype of the batshit-crazy woman. That’s how he sees me now.”

I glance at Kyle, and his face saysPretty much.

“I think it’s important for us to push through this stereotype,” Crystal says. “In my opinion, society doesn’t exactly support maternal mental health or maternal ... anything. Women, particularly mothers, have the deck stacked against them. And we can get into all the reasons for that another time, but I just want to reiterate that your wife’s experience is, like I said, understandable. The way things have ... manifested ... is unique, but your wife is not crazy. If we are going to make any progress, we need to start there.”

I expect Kyle to scoff, but he is silent.

“For what it’s worth, I think both of you see this as this terrible thing that’s happened, but I don’t,” Crystal says. “I think this has broken open your lives in a very necessary way. If it hadn’t been this, specifically, it would have been something else. Things wouldn’t have continued as they were, not with all that was going on.”

When Kyle is silent, Crystal says, “Does any of that resonate with you?”

He sighs, again. “I guess. But I still maintain that I’ve never heard of anything like this. People go through all kinds of stress andthisdoesn’t happen.”

“Okay, what’s beneath that disbelief?”

“Beneath?” he says. He does not know therapy-speak.

“Meaning we can’t just stay stuck in disbelief. There’s something beneath that, something deeper that’s gnawing at you. For example, do these events make you worry that this will happen again? Are you fearful? Angry?”

“Yes,” Kyle says. “All of that.”

Crystal nods and turns to me. “You’re fearful, too, right?”

I clear my throat. “Yes. I don’t trust myself. I’m just as perplexed as he is at how this happened. It’s not like I’ve ever had something like this happen before.”

“So you’re both afraid. You’re both having a hard time trusting the future.”

I nod, and Kyle nods too.

“Good, that’s an honest admission. You don’t have to know the future right now. Trust of self and others can take time to rebuild. WhatItrust is that you two will figure it out.”

I look at Kyle just as he looks at me. His eyes look doubtful, and I do not blame him.

At the end of the session, we hug awkwardly, his hand patting my back twice, as if I’m a buddy on his softball team. Crystal says we will schedule another joint session soon. I walk him to the reception area and ask him how the girls are doing. He says they are doing fine but they miss me.