“Do you have any questions?”Hudson asked.
Tean shook his head.
“What made you decide to come in today?”Hudson asked.
Tean ran his hands over his khakis, stretching the fabric over his knees.“Last year, I was involved in a shooting.”He cleared his throat.“I shot someone.”And then, like falling: “I killed someone.The police investigated, of course.I was protecting Jem, and there were never any charges.But I am…not handling it well.”
“That sounds very heavy.Thank you for trusting me with it.”Hudson paused, maybe to give Tean a chance to speak.When Tean didn’t, he said, “When you say you’re not handling it well, can you tell me more?”
“I’m not sleeping.When I do, I have nightmares.Sometimes even when I’m awake, I see it in my head, but it’s like I’m there.”Tean pushed a hand through his hair.“There are times that I feel like I’m dissociating.”
Hudson nodded.“Is any of that happening right now?”
“No.”
“If you feel like you need to take a breath, or you need to ground yourself, let me know.We can always pause our conversation at any time.”Another of those gaps came again.“You said you’ve been struggling with this for a year.What made you decide to address this now, specifically?”
In spite of his best efforts, Tean felt a smile cut across his face.A hard smile.A cutting smile.“I assaulted a man.I nearly lost my job.I’ve been pushing Jem away.”
“When you say—”
“But the real reason is because I have a…an ex.And he keeps trying to contact me.And I don’t know what to do.”
Hudson hesitated for a moment.
“That’s what I want to talk about today,” Tean said into the pause.“The rest of it, yes.I know I need to deal with it.But today, I just want—I just want to know how to handle this.”
“Okay,” Hudson said.“We can talk about whatever you want, but I think it’s important that we don’t avoid those other items you brought up.”
“Of course.”Tean tried to laugh again.“They’re all connected anyway.”
“Do you want to tell me what’s happening with your ex?”
“It’s…complicated.He’s married.To a woman.He has children.For a long time, we were sexually involved.And emotionally involved.And I just had to…take whatever he would give me.And then I couldn’t do it anymore.”
“That sounds like it must have been very isolating.”
“We stopped talking for most of the last year,” Tean said, “and in part, that was the…the shooting.But recently, his son had some problems.Jem and I helped.And now Ammon—that’s his name—keeps calling.He calls me at work.He calls me at home.He’s shown up at the house, and he knocks on the door until Jem threatens to call the police.I picked up the phone one time and told him to leave me alone.Obviously that didn’t work.”
“Do you know why he wants to talk to you?”
“He wants to tell me why he…why he did what he did.He wants to tell me he was protecting his son.He wants to thank me.He thinks, because I helped him—because I helped his son—everything can go back to the way it used to be.”
“And what do you want?”
The sudden surge of tears caught Tean off guard.He blinked them away, but his voice was still rough when he said, “I want not to have wasted so much of my life on him.”He tried to stop there, but the words kept pouring out.“I’m so angry.His son is gay, and—and a lot of bad stuff happened because Ammon wouldn’t help him.Wouldn’t be honest with him.Ammon is who he is.He’s not going to change.I get that.But talking to Daniel, knowing that Ammon is—is perpetuating this horrible cycle.It makes me furious.”He tried to laugh, but instead, the tears rushed in again.“I honestly think I’d still be sitting at home, trying to deal with everything else myself, if he hadn’t kept calling, making me angrier and angrier, until all I could think about was how I wanted to tell him, wanted to make him understand that I never wanted to talk to him again, never wanted to see him again, nothing.”
“Do you think ending contact with Ammon will help with the other things that are going on in your life?”
“I don’t know.I know seeing him would make things worse.”
“Why’s that?”
“It just would.”
The scratch of Hudson’s pen came in answer.“What does ending all contact look like for you?Do you want to block his number?”
“Yes.”