Love?

I’m reading and studying when Mr. Stewart comes in today. I take my feet off of my desk, set the book aside, and look at him. I’m happy to see him; he appears in an upbeat mood.

“What, what’s wrong?’ he asks me. And his face vacillates between his beautiful open smile and his dead prison eye.

Against my better judgment, S. has seen his picture on the public prison site. S. needs some sense of who I talk about at home. His first response to this picture was, “he’s trouble, and he’s dead.” This was my own first assessment. Nobody home; nobody there.

But he is there, he is home, he is just horribly wounded.

“Nothing is wrong… why do you think something is wrong?”

“Well, the way you looked at me…”

“I was happy to see you, what do you think I was feeling?”

“You looked at me funny.” I think, in fact, I just looked at him and saw him, not something that most people do in most situations. S. suggests I was just distracted by what I was doing, and instead of my usual therapy open look, I gave him something disengaged. Apparently, I do this.

He settled down, and gave me open face. So I asked him the first question I had planned, “what was going on with you last Thursday (in group).” He had been right on target, open and engaged. Of course, I was pleased by this. I wanted him to acknowledge it.

“What, what did I do?” Again he assumes he has been bad. Instead of taking the burden off of him, I ask him what he did. He needs to process and have some belief in what he did.

He does tell me what I observed. His mood was good, he got the conversation, and most important, he was able to talk about it without being, “an angry asshole.”

And although I can’t remember the third incidence of his fear of badness, it occurred in the first seven minutes.

There are two things important happening here. The first is he cannot evaluate his own behavior in an insightful way. Apparently he did not leave group that day, knowing he had contributed and been an active thoughtful member. I suspect all he left with was the FEELING. And I hope the feeling was satisfied, and impressed with himself. But I wonder.

The second is harder for me to grasp, because it is my own shit. I see his beauty and his compassion and the respect he gives to me. This is not required. It is not anything he needs to do to get out of prison. He tolerates me stirring in his psyche once a week, and jerking his emotions around.

He has fallen into thinking of himself as a convict, as somebody who is intrinsically bad.

And here I am, avoiding my own shit, again. I am hurt that he comes into my office, after this amount of time, and believes that the first thing I’m going to do is castigate him for something. How have I not communicated clearly to him that I find him worthy of love?

I should probably stop here, because the last sentence is the edgy bit. But I’m not going to stop here.

I’ve reviewed with S. again, and he is more clear this time with his thoughts, and I’m repressing less. I now remember what Mr. Stewart thought was me badding him. I believe that part of the uproar with his siblings is understanding his potential (I hate this phrase, but it is pretty accurate.) I said I had, “empathy with his siblings and his ex-girlfriends.” As I formulated my next sentence, he gave me his immediate interpretation.

“Because I am such a fuck up.” A statement, not a question.

Grrrrrrrr, NO. I think I was pretty clear in what I said next. I reiterated that I thought he had much of good, and watching him crash and burn was untenable. But we are kept with his automatic response that he is bad.

****
We are talking, and I take my water bottle up, and I’ve filled it to the edge. I now dribble a very cold wad of water down my cleavage. And of course, I swear, grab a Kleenex, and go to swab myself out. But of course, I’m in prison, and he is a man. As I turn away from him to do this personal bit of hygiene, I see his reaction. He turns himself and looks down, giving me the respect and the privacy of this moment.

He will not remember this, I don’t think. And if he does, he will not think about the meaning. The meaning being he gave me respect, more important than the possible titillation of watching me reach into my sweater. He is, after all, a young man imprisoned for most of a year without contact with women. And still he give me this without thinking, because he is good.

I think of myself as very good at narrating what happens between people. But S. asks me if I’ve clearly expressed any of this. I’m not sure I have. It seems so clear to me, but maybe not to the other.

He carries the label of habitually violent criminal. Something I had not quite absorbed. Although this speaks to his behavior, and his quest for drugs, it does not speak to his soul, his shiny bit. He is worth saving.