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under all the layers of hair, flesh, and lunch meat. If I told her that my parents had split when I was a kid, it would be her excuse for all my subsequent problems.
    And that’s exactly what happened. I revealed that my parents were divorced, and session after session, after I would complain about not being able to sleep, she would ask questions about the divorce, trying to pry deeper when I assured her that my parents’ split fifteen years prior had little to do with my lack of sleep the previous night. I think I could have gone in and said anything and she’d have blamed it on my parents’ divorce.
    Week Four
    Therapist: “How are you?”
    Me: “Okay, I guess. Oh, but last week, I tried to rip my penis off. I almost got it, too, but I gave up because I got tired.”
    Therapist: “Hmm…Why don’t you tell me how you felt when you and your mom moved out of your house?”
    Week Seven
    Therapist: “How are you?”
    Me: “Not great. I learned recently that I get aroused when I watch shows like Cold Case Files and at funerals. I’m pretty weirded out about it, but part of me loves it.”
    Therapist: “Do you think it might have something to do with your parents’ relationship?”
    Week Eleven
    Therapist: “How are you?”
    Me: “I took a handful of pills on Sunday and beat up a traffic cop, two dogs, and a fence. To be fair, she was a really big and very strong traffic cop and she started it. Although I did accidentally rob her house and her car. The dogs and fence were just innocent bystanders.”
    Therapist: “What was your mom’s biggest problem with your dad?”
    Week Sixteen
    Therapist: “How are you?”
    Me: “I burned down some churches and threw a hooker off a bridge. Then I got all coked up and ate most of a couch. Also, I’m not coming here anymore.”
    Therapist: “Do you think your relationships with women have been affected by your parents’ relationship troubles? And please keep coming. I’m putting a library in my house and I’m making a killing off you. It’s cedar.”
     
    I’m generally a fatalistic person, I think in large part because of this experience. Everything happens for a reason, my parents’ divorce being the prime example. The ends justify the means, and the end in this story is pretty good. Now older and (supposedly) wiser, I have a very simple and stripped-down view of my parents’ relationship and divorce. It was bad, they split, it slowly got better, and now everything is fine. They are friends and both remain a major part of my life and my brother’s and sister’s lives. Case closed.
    It would be at this point that my therapist would ask why I use such simple clichés and sparse language to describe a complex series of events and emotions. “Don’t you owe it to yourself,” she’d probably say, “to explore these feelings rather than dismiss them with something as trite as ‘Everything happens for a reason’? A divorce is a traumatic experience for a child and yet you seem to be brushing it aside without a second thought. Why do you think that is? And anyway, aren’t you writing a memoir? Don’t you think this is something important to dig into for the book? Or have you reached your required word count and are just looking to wrap the whole thing up?” Hearing this, I’d look up at the ceiling, let out a big sigh, and then put my head in my hands for the remaining time left, cursing the science of psychology under my breath. But since I have not, in fact, reached my required word count, I’ll explain myself.
    My buddy Will, himself the child of divorced parents, jokes about his parents’ failed relationship, rhetorically asking them, “How could either of you have ever thought it would have worked between you two?” I feel the same way about my parents. To me, it’s fundamentally simple. They were (and still are) two very different people incapable of living with each other. While my dad would probably describe himself as “laid-back,” my mom