John was a regular of Erin’s who was a highly sought-after Freudian psychoanalyst with a roster of famous clients. Psychologists do it, Julie’s friend Erin pointed out. Why was it that people who were raised to love and respect themselves were the most likely to find more people to love and respect them? What kind of justice was that? It incensed her to her core.Īt first she had been empowered by the decision to charge money for her emotional doula-ing services, but over time it did something bad to her brain and soul to put a price on human connection. Some people were treated as worthy their whole lives and those people weren’t attracted to people who required them to prove their worthiness or serve a purpose. Couldn’t she be loved just because? It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. And for years she gave that shit away for free.

Why did she have to be special ? Being special was work. What had once been a marker of being special and chosen was now a dirty reminder of how she always had to sing for her supper. She was the only mirror they ever allowed themselves to gaze into. it was parsley!), and despite a lifetime of hiding behind their heavily armored egos, they were able to drop the mask and access something softer around her.

She was cooked! Literally cooked! How could they have left her on the balcony like that all weekend?) They cried in her arms when their withholding parent died (I didn’t even know her!), buried their faces into her chest when their overbearing parent died (She didn’t even know me!), crawled into her embrace when some trivial but crucial memory from their childhood resurfaced (It wasn’t cilantro. (She baked to death! My brother said she looked like a rotisserie chicken that had been left in the case for weeks. I didn’t even know I felt this, they said after a full minute of sobbing about their childhood pet who slept in their bed until they went away to college and, shortly thereafter, died in the most horrific way. I’ve never told anyone this before, they said within minutes of meeting her, before launching into something they had kept shut up inside them for decades. That had been Julie’s problem from the start-nobody, nobody, ever wanted to walk out into the light with her, even though they all needed and relied on her to break open their emotional seals. No one had ever loved her out in the open.

Question mark guy