“Breathe. Breathe. Check in with yourself,” she said calmly. Check in with myself? I didn’t know what that meant.
Sensing my resistance, she said, “Go to a place where you feel safe.”
Nothing.
“Do you have a place where you feel safe, Mariah? Go there. It can be from your childhood.”
Nothing.
“Imagine you’re little, you’re six. Go there.”
I was in the deli house. Not safe.
“Maybe you’re a little older. Go there.”
I was back in the shack. Not safe.
She kept pushing, thinking certainly there had to be a place. “It could be sometime more recent. Just go to a safe place.”
I was feeling nothing in nowhere. I could only feel the hard floor flat against my back as I searched around in my own emptiness. I was looking for a space in my mind and waiting for a comforting vision to arrive. There was nothing. I was blank. I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling. Suddenly I felt cold and alone. It dawned on me that there was nowhere, inside or out, where I felt safe.
Then the coach asked, “How are you doing, Mariah?” A wave of sadness rushed through me and poured out in a deluge of tears. My entire being was heaving, sobbing; I was unsure if I would ever be able to stop.
Eventually the storm of tears subsided. I don’t think I had cried openly the entire time I had been in the relationship with Tommy. Crying with him would’ve taken too much cleanup, and the emotional cost was too expensive. He’d surely punish me if I cried. He was the one who cried during some of our more explosive fights. And I would end up consoling him, completely abandoning my needs, my pain. It was ruthlessly manipulative.
Don’t tell me you’re sorry you hurt me
How many times can I give in?
How many battles can you win?
Oh, don’t beg for mercy tonight.
Tonight, ’cause I can’t take anymore
—“Everything Fades Away”
However, the crying exercise was a release, albeit a tiny one. I’d been holding so much for so long. I began to breathe, a little.
My acting coach hovered over me, and I could smell essential oils, patchouli perhaps, seeping from her pores. She placed her hands on my shoulders and began to gently push them down toward my ribcage.
“Let go of the fighting stance and just breathe,” she whispered. I hadn’t realized how high and tight I was gripping my body. My breakdown was encouraging to her; I had freed some of my suppressed feelings. Now she told me she wanted me to “feel free in the body.” I was a bit wobbly when I stood to watch her demonstrate the exercise. She closed her eyes and began rolling her shoulders from side to side, letting her head fall back and around with them. Then her hips joined in an aimless sway. She lifted her arms up and began flailing them like those weird inflatable tube men at the car wash. “Free in the body!” she chanted. “Come on, get free in the body, Mariah.” I was watching her do her erratic, ecstatic dancing and just couldn’t make the leap. Just as I couldn’t dance for Addie, to prove I was Black, I knew I was too Black to do interpretive dance with her, even if it was a private session.
What I remember most clearly was the acting coach telling me I had difficulty accessing my anger. I thought back to something the therapist had once told me: often sadness is anger turned inward. Of course I kept it all inside—how else would I have survived? I realized I couldn’t express anger because I was never allowed to. Who was I ever safe to be angry with? Not my brother, certainly not my sister, not Tommy, not my mother, not anyone. There was no safe person and no safe place in my life. There never had been.
That woman-child failing inside
Was on the verge of fading
Thankfully I woke up in time
—“Close My Eyes”
The crush of Tommy was relentless. After countless painful and dramatic fights, and after I began some genuine soul searching, Tommy and I began to broach the notion of temporary separation in therapy. It took a lot of personal work and getting in touch with myself to even touch the concept. I was so scarred on so many levels. The emotional struggles with Tommy had been nonstop, and I couldn’t yet even begin to know the effects of the trauma, but getting to where we could discuss a reprieve from the pain was major. He had pulled a lot of strings to tie me up. I really didn’t know how I would be able to escape him while he was still alive. He could be incredibly vindictive. And his network was so far-reaching. I had a very real feeling my entire safety was at risk. With a little support and a few new tools, I was able to clearly see that living with him was killing me. I needed to create a place for me to breathe.
I was certain I needed to escape Tommy’s fury and access my own, and this would take some help and strategy. Because we were in therapy, I didn’t have to be the one to “bring it up.” It was the therapist who told Tommy he would lose me forever if he didn’t try to give me a little space. So it was discussed as a temporary Band-Aid to “treat it like a separation.” She was trying to convince him to let me go hang out with other people, for God’s sake—for my sake.
After so much prodding and much ado, Tommy agreed to try the therapist’s advice and made a deal to take certain steps to see if we could find a way to continue to live together. I remember the therapist saying, in her motherly way, “Mariah has to start going
