A Herculean Task
by JT Godfrey
Northeast Ohio Writer
Editorial Mentorship Recipient
It's 8:00 am, and although his eyes see the faint outline of his apartment, he’s not really sure where he is. He’s moved around too much in the past five years — from his childhood bedroom to a shitty dorm room in James Hall, to a nicer dorm room in Seelye, to this apartment.
His brain doesn’t know how to process waking up here; it can’t seem to recognize that this room is the same one he woke up in yesterday, and the day before, and the day before, and every day for the past six months.
There is construction outside his window, and the dust is triggering his allergies. He has an hour to get to work, but he'd rather be in bed all day blowing his nose. He looks like the men outside; they all have the same broad shoulders and big forearms. He doesn’t use his anymore. His body is wasted on him. Still in bed, he looks at his phone; it’s 8:15 and he’s already disconnected from every possible feeling.
As a kid, Jackson had mornings like this; he just didn’t know what to call them. A much smaller version of himself would run the hottest possible water in the bathroom sink and splash it into his nearly toothless mouth. It hurt, but he had a mission. His mom, a kind woman with too many children, would take his temperature, and Jackson would always have a low-grade fever. She’d roll her eyes, but how could a thermometer lie?
Jackson’s mother would always plug the little TV in on his dresser before she went to work. She’d put in the VHS copy of Disney’s Hercules, kiss him on his cool forehead, and tell him to feel better.
At 8:20am, Mom is 600 miles away and the bed is calling his name. He fights the urge.
*
“I loved watching Hercules as a kid. I would fake sick and watch it every time I had unexplainable feelings.” he says.
“What are unexplainable feelings?” asks the therapist.
“Unexplainable feelings? You want me to explain the unexplainable? That was a joke, sorry.” He taps his feet and looks at the floor.
“The feeling would start when I'd wake up, and images would race through my mind, warning me that if I went to school, something awful would happen. Am I talking too fast? I’m sorry. Sometimes I do that.”
“You’re fine. Tell me more about the feelings,” the therapist says while tapping a pencil on a clipboard, he really doesn’t like it. The pencil has a black rose design. On the desk next to her chair there is a small glass mason jar with the rest of the pack. Third therapist, third clipboard, the pencils were new at least.
“So, I would get these images in my head, and my stomach would churn, and I’d worry that something awful was going to happen. Like, my dog was going to die, or that Richie Valentino would learn I played with a Fur-Real-Kitty, or that my great grandma was watching me from heaven at all the wrong moments. Is it ok if I put my feet up?”
She gestures with a hand, exposing a small portion of what is clearly a large tattoo covered by her sleeve. He puts his feet up on a tiny glass table. He adjusts twice before putting them down again.
“Actually, now that I'm doing it, it feels much worse.” She nods as he puts his feet back down.
“Sometimes it’d happen when I was trying to fall asleep. I’d lie there sweating, little and alone with scary racing thoughts. But the next day I’d trick a thermometer and get to watch Hercules.”
*
He has to go to work. If he doesn’t go, he’ll get fired. If he gets fired, he won’t have a big screen TV or an apartment to dissolve into. Isn’t this what all kids dream about? The freedom of adulthood?
He takes his meds, even though they don’t work. He puts on a hat, so he doesn't have to shower, and he leaves the apartment. A text comes in as he’s walking to the car:
How’s my buddy doing? Work going well?
It’s from Mom. He ignores it.
Time is moving in double time on his drive to work. He’s been experiencing temporal whiplash for months. Somehow, it's 8:45 am, and he has to speed so he doesn’t get fired. But speeding feels good. It’s the only time he’s present.
*
“Do you know the concept of the Fair Unknown? I’m sorry I don’t know why I said it like that,” Jackson says while he bites his nails.
“I’m unfamiliar,” the therapist says, putting the clipboard down on the desk by her side. This calms him, the feeling of being examined slipping away. The therapist is not like any he’s seen before. She is young and has clear vestiges of an angst their generation is known for.
“The Fair Unknown is a character that has special-ness thrust upon them...” he says, relaxing into the leather couch. “I don’t know why I used the word thrust. The Fair Unknown is a character that is unknowingly special. As a little boy I didn’t have anything like that. But Hercules did. When I was home ‘sick’ I sat drinking apple juice or Canada Dry Ginger Ale and watched this young boy that everyone hated become the son of Zeus — watched the masses love a gentle boy who just wanted to please his father.”
“Did you want to be like that? Kind and giant and loved by your father?” she says, looking at him, personalizing him. He averts eye contact.
“Love, from many…Special-ness. To be big and kind and loved.”
*
He gets to work, and it’s 9:00 am on the dot. He has a standing 9:05 sales call that he must listen to, listen but not speak. While he doesn’t speak, he catches up on articles about cancel culture and why Dave Chappelle hates it.
A text comes in from the girl he’s been seeing, Meredith. He ignores it and keeps reading.
The sales call ends, and it's 10:00 am, and his hands don’t feel real anymore. His fingers type names into a computer and scroll through LinkedIn. Sometimes he clicks on jobs he'd much rather have, but then again, he decided to major in Classics. And Brooks & Carlton Acquisitions pay him $50,000 a year to disassociate on the company dime.
Suddenly, it’s lunch, and Jackson gets to watch John Oliver. He’s slowly been convincing the men in the office that John Oliver is hilarious, thinking it will change their politics. It doesn’t.
He keeps his mouth shut, listening but not talking - fitting in.
*
“What I liked about Hercules was that he had to become a hero. There was some process of transformation that I’d seen my brothers and their friends go through that turned a gentle, doughy, soft boy into a hero. At ten or eleven I was confident my brothers had bigger arms than Hercules and that one day I'd have bigger arms than them.”
The therapist laughs and its kind. He finally notices her, not in glimpses like before, takes in her full visage. This is a usual habit of his, making people blurry in his mind until he reduces their level of threat. The streaks of bleach in her cropped black hair, the nose ring; he understands why she is highly recommended.
The combination of attention and shared generational assimilation eggs him on. “I told everyone I could; my brothers, my teachers, classmates, janitors, that one day I'd be a hero. I’d beat every monster, and I would go the distance. I'd find my hero's welcome. I’d be right. where. I. belooooooooooooong,” he sings that last bit and the therapist winces just a touch, barely noticeable, but he notices.
“I’m sorry, was that too loud?”
“No, it just surprised me,” she says with a little smile.
“Oh my god, I used to sing that song so loud that our basset hound would chime in with a howl of her own. The dog wasn’t supposed to be in my bed, but when no one was home, we could sing all we wanted.”
“Sounds like a great companion,” she says while writing something down on the clipboard, now firmly back in her lap. He tries to look, and it is some unintelligible scribble with a little lightning bolt doodle.
*
From 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm, Jackson barely exists. He’s somewhere in the liminal space between dissociation and complete overstimulation. He’s making choices, saying words, but it is all autopilot. He knows a doctor might help but he’s too scared to talk to a doctor about what’s really going on. He’s on antidepressants, but this isn’t depression.
He knows where they put crazy people, and he is not about to put himself there. He doesn’t want to put Mom through that, spending her life savings flying to a hospital in Ohio every weekend. The thoughts spin. He pushes his toes into the carpet. He centers. He has a job, a romantic relationship, and an apartment. He can’t be crazy.
This goes on a loop, an internal battle of awareness, until he finally hits the bed and forgets to text Meredith goodnight. Just before he falls asleep, another text from Mom:
You have your read receipts on. I miss you, let's talk soon. I love you.
He texts back:
Sorry, busy day. Love you too.
The shame is even worse than the disconnection. They probably all hate him. His internal world is unsafe to be around.
Just before he falls asleep, he turns his read receipts off.
*
“Did you go to Penn?” he asks, pointing at the diploma above the therapist’s chair. She nods. “My mythology professor in college got her PhD there. I don't know if I told you, but I studied Classics in college. I majored in Classics because I loved Hercules so much.”
“Now that’s commitment,” she says, turning her head a bit, prompting a laugh. It is a nervous hiss but a laugh all the same.
“It was perfect for me. The Classics people were shy. I was worried I'd scare them with my size and my personality. It took me a while to become the Classics people’s friend, probably because I looked like their high school bullies. By 20 I wasn't a gentle little boy anymore.”
“How old were you when your herculean transformation happened?” She asked.
“Maybe 15… It was almost overnight, I started working out and my whole body filled out. My shoulders got broad, and my hands got muscular.” He takes a moment, and he picks at his lower lip with his teeth. “But when I was around the tiny Classics majors, I felt like I was their Hercules,” he smiles at the memory.
“That must have felt rewarding,” she says, momentarily writing something on the clipboard. He looks up at the noise. He stares at her fingers, bedecked with tiny silver rings, one with a little rose, he senses a theme. He loves a good theme.
“It did. Until one night after a little too much wine I told those bourgeoning Classicists that the only things I knew about Herakles came from the Disney movie. I was worried they’d make fun of me, everyone in the room was much better at Classics than me. Instead, they repaid my honesty with horrible news. Herakles, the mythological hero, was actually a piece of shit. He didn’t save Megara and become a god; he went mad and brutally murdered both her and their children…And he looked exactly like me.”
*
Meredith comes over and he can’t decide what they should do.
He can’t watch his favorite action movies anymore. If he does, he sees visions of his brain snapping. They can’t go out to dinner because having a knife on the table will make his hands shake.
He’s pretty sure his is a unique experience. He is either the first person to experience this or he is just like every person on the brink of madness. Neither of these realities give him comfort.
They decide to go hiking again up a tall hill. Even though it makes his hands sweat and heart bounce, all he can think of is jumping off the cliff.
Last week they were on the same trail, and he had a brutally disturbing image of pushing a passerby. His thoughts disgust him, make his stomach flip. He sees himself jumping in third person, just like every moment of his life nowadays. In his head, he tells himself that he’d rather end his own life than hurt someone else.
Meredith doesn’t stay the night. She puts in her small gold hoop earrings, gives him a kiss goodbye on the forehead, and he wants to ask her to stay. She is so beautiful, and kind, she understands.
Most nights after their dates he doesn’t sleep, he sweats and repeats and picks at his fingers. No one should have to see him like this, no one should love him.
*
“It was like I couldn’t get it out of my head. That’s when it all started, the terrifying stuff. Learning that Herakles kills Megara was stuck in my brain for months. I couldn't stop thinking about it. It was on a loop and my resemblance to him was inescapable.” He doesn’t know how far to go. When will it be too much? When will a stroke of that little black rose pencil ruin his brittle life. For a moment, he trusts. If a former punk kid became a therapist, surely, she wouldn’t rat him out.
“What terrifying things?” the therapist said while prepping her clipboard. This was probably evidence of his madness and he doesn’t care.
“I think they’re called intrusive thoughts. Like awful and disturbing images.”
“Like when you were a kid…” she looks at her clipboard, “...the unexplainable feelings?”
“Yeah, but worse, because it wasn’t that bad things would happen to me, it was that I would hurt people.” He makes eye contact with her then. Notices the kindness she is conveying, everything in his body made him divert, change the subject, deflect, make her forget.
“The Classics kids made it worse. In my mythology class everyone called me Herc. A friend told me later that every person in that class had a crush on me. Everyone laughed a little too hard at my jokes and never challenged my debate points in class discussions. I feel like I’m bragging. I promise I’m not, but I do that sometimes, is that a thing?”
The therapist shakes her head. He exhales deeply and returns to the anecdote.
“One time in class, I bent down to help a person who had dropped a bunch of papers on the floor in front of me and audibly heard a person in the back row say, ‘fucking hell.’ I know that doesn’t sound real, but I promise it is! God, you probably think I'm an asshole!”
“No, that’s funny,” she says, shifting the pencil gently on the paper, adding a little squiggly line around the lightning bolt.
Jackson steadies, enough deflection.
“But what I’m trying to say is, I belonged. I had found my hero’s welcome with these tiny dorks. I was this giant in every smoking circle, and they loved me and thought I was funny, and smart, and sexy. If it were a movie, I'd be literally glowing around them. But I also wanted to be anything but Herakles.
“I started picking at my fingers every time I thought about it, and it was like my brain was on this constant loop and I had no one to talk to about it because it made me feel crazy and I knew where crazy people went. I thought about going to therapy, I’ve been a couple times. But I was worried I’d talk about the intrusive thoughts, or the feeling of disconnection and they’d throw me in a mental hospital or something. I don’t come from a background where mental health is very well understood. You are either normal or insane.”
*
It seems that every moment he isn’t disappearing into spinning dizziness, he has an intrusive thought. He knows that’s not possible, but he read once that your brain comes up with anywhere between 75,000 and 100,000 thoughts a day, and you only remember the scary ones. Google tells him that he should come up with a mantra. He tells himself 100 times a day, I am not Herakles.
*
“But all I kept thinking was my entire life I looked up to a violent monster. And not only did I look up to him, I became him, physically. From then on, I was a snap away from being a violent monster, that any moment my brain would break, and I would become a weapon. And I knew deep in my heart that everyone, these tiny perfect nerds that I loved more than anything, kept just an inch of distance because they know it too. They knew the danger of men like me.”
He waits for her to interrupt but she doesn’t. She crosses a Doc Martin across her leg and listens. The words keep tumbling out, he didn’t know he had access to the articulation.
“Deep down I am terrified because I have this body and there is an underlying violence to my very existence. On one end I reject the masculine world that tells me it is good to have, to protect. I know when they say protect, they truly mean dominate. On the other, the feminist ideals which I truly believe and connect with tell me that all the bodies like mine before me dominated and subjugated. How can they be right about the world and wrong about me?” Full days of spiraling, months of contemplation, years of constant uncomfortability unravelling to reveal his final thesis. The tears fall fast, and his breathing picks up.
“I am terrified that there is no world in which I can be Hercules. That I can only be Herakles, dominator, subjugator, violator, killer — a man. So, if there is no world in which I can be Hercules, I would rather disconnect from the world entirely. I haven’t talked to my friends in months, I can’t tell anyone, I can’t be the person I want to be.” He won’t stop crying and he can’t keep talking. He doubles over and the tension in his back, the ringing in his ears finally stops. He just weeps.
Dr. Douglass takes a moment before handing him a tissue.
“Jackson, do you love people?”
“Of course.”
“And these intrusive thoughts are the exact opposite of love, they disgust you, the idea of possibly hurting people. It wrenches your stomach, ruins your day?”
“Yes.”
“I believe that this is part of a larger pattern, that this change in your intrusive thoughts is novel, but what you’ve struggled with… unexplainable feelings… that is a lifelong struggle. Without treatment, your ability to manage them has gotten worse. Have you ever heard of OCD?”
“If you could see my apartment, you’d know that I don’t have it.”
She laughs at him, this time shaking her head. He notices the tiny hoop earrings and his thoughts go to Meredith. Her love made him want to feel like a human being with breath in his lungs again.
“Cleanliness is just one form of OCD; it is also most popularized by the media and oftentimes exaggerated. But there are many other forms of obsessive thinking and compulsions. Oftentimes, people with harm centered OCD push people away from themselves, hurt themselves, and disconnect compulsively.”
“So, this isn’t like a crazy person thing?”
“Jackson, feeling disconnected– what I would call derealization, the panic attacks, the intrusive thoughts — these are all common in those who go untreated or incorrectly treated. You are tremendously brave for sharing with me. It’s heroic what you are doing now.”
Jackson takes a beleaguered breath and fixes his posture; the tears have stopped for now. “You are a safe and normal human being who is going through a period of disorder,” Dr. Douglass says. “Nothing in this conversation made me fearful of your safety or my safety, or anyone's safety. If anything, I admire your courage, to suffer for this long without proper help must have been debilitating. You made a very positive step towards a happy and healthy life today; you should be proud.”
*
Jackson leaves for work on time. He closes the door to his car and gets a text from Mom:
Dad and I are coming to Cleveland on the third, I convinced him to stop on our way to Florida. He’s not happy about the extra time, but it’s for our BABY!
Lol. See you then.
He texts back:
Of course, can’t wait to see you.
She texts back immediately:
I love you!
He texts back:
I love you too.
We’ll go to my favorite coffee shop.
*
Dr. Douglass uses Jackson’s attachment to Herakles and Hercules as a bedrock for his treatment. They decide that a mantra might help. They try several over the many weeks of their sessions and one sticks. He says it over and over again. It becomes his morning, his day, his night for months.
He goes in and out of periods of dissociation and panic, grounded by the words. He mumbles it while chopping vegetables with Meredith in the kitchen and his hands shake, or when they watch a movie and he winces, or when they go on hikes and reach the summit, or when they tuck into bed at night– but every utterance makes life become more natural, less heroic.
He breathes and loosens his back muscles, and he remembers who he is. He goes through the exercises. He writes down his thoughts. He says the things he needs to say to get better. He cries.
Labors to love, labors to grieve, labors to heal, labors, labors, labors.
*
“How is everything going?” Dr. Douglass asks.
“I am starting to feel more present. But to be honest the shame of this is killing me. I don’t know if I can ever tell anyone who isn’t you what I’m going through. I’m scared that no one will accept me if I show them this part of me.”
Dr. Douglass pauses for a moment. She goes over to her desk and pulls out something small and golden from the drawer. She hands Jackson a small lightning bolt pin. She looks in his eyes and says, “you are brave enough to make sure that’s not true.”
*
Jackson sits down with his mother at Propaganda Coffee. She doesn’t like the name, but he explains the irony of it.
“I don’t like the beard,” she says while taking her first sip of something with oat milk in it. “And I don’t like oat milk, what’s wrong with normal milk? You drank normal milk your whole life and look how big and strong you are.” Jackson laughs, he forgot how lovingly abrasive New Englanders can be, how monstrously demonstrative. “Is oat milk something everyone else does too?” Mom says, not making eye contact.
“Yes, my generation hates milk and loves therapy. Look, you are learning so much on this trip already.” He smiles, and she doesn’t laugh. “What’s wrong?” He asks, noticing her furrowed brow.
“I’m worried you are in therapy because you think I fucked up as a parent or something.” He breathes in that statement for a moment, and tears well in her eyes. “I was always worried how nervous you were, and now thinking back on it, I’m worried I messed up. Like, I should have been tougher or kinder or taken you to see a doctor or something.”
Jackson hands his mother a napkin, and she wipes her eyes. “Mom, this is nothing that you could have ever seen. Honestly, I'm in therapy to be able to share what’s in my head more. It’s all internal stuff. I deal with panic attacks, intrusive thoughts, I’ve been diagnosed with OCD and it’s not–” she cuts him off.
“Honey, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Mom, there is no way you could have known. You aren’t a mind reader. You could only work with the information I gave you. And I know how to talk about it more now.”
She takes a moment to clear her throat and sip her coffee. “You know when you were born I had really bad postpartum depression and I thought I was going crazy? Like the whole world felt disconnected in the worst way. Everything was fuzzy, and I had this big baby to take care of that needed me. I didn’t have it with your brothers and other women would talk about it and they sounded insane. It was so scary because I would have these visions that somehow, I was going to get mad or scared and not be able to take care of you.” Mom sips her coffee to stop the tears. “That I would hurt you or something.”
“How did you work through it?”
“I went to see a specialist, I had to drive all the way to Worchester with you. She told me I just needed to love you and that loving you every day was the only thing to make it better. I knew that it was going to be alright, that I was going to get over it because I loved you. It helped that you were so cute, that you loved me so much and that I loved you with everything I had. When it comes down to it, I just got over it because you needed me. And I need you too.”
She cries and they hug and make fun of the gluten free muffins.
Jackson walks her to her car. Just before she closes the door she says, “I like the pin, Herc.” They exchange a loving smile.
*
For the first time in months Jackson feels human, fallible yet perfect. The intrusive thoughts come and go, Dr. Douglass and he create strategies and systems to handle them.
He and Meredith fall in love. He finally introduces the real him.
One day Jackson and Meredith hike for as long as Jackson’s legs would let him, they talk about college and their friends and their hopes. Jackson tells her about therapy and she holds his shaking hand and tells him that she knows she is safe. They find a perfect tree and empty a backpack full of snacks, wine, and books.
Jackson rubs his thumb over Meredith’s dress. He’s done this before. Usually, he’d shiver as the calluses on his fingers caught the fabric. Today her dress is so light and soft that he just enjoys the cellular identity of his fingertips.
He feels his hand gently rise and fall in rhythm with her deep relaxed breaths. Now he is steady. His mind is clear at the base of the tree. There is no internal monologue, nothing in his consciousness is intrusive. There are no actions, only senses; the pull of fabric on his fingers, and the warmth of the sun bleeding through the branches, warming this Eden they found.
If this wasn’t love, then Jackson knew the true definition would always escape him. He is loved and he loves, and all is gentle. He whispers his mantra:
I am right where I belong.
His brain doesn’t know how to process waking up here; it can’t seem to recognize that this room is the same one he woke up in yesterday, and the day before, and the day before, and every day for the past six months.
There is construction outside his window, and the dust is triggering his allergies. He has an hour to get to work, but he'd rather be in bed all day blowing his nose. He looks like the men outside; they all have the same broad shoulders and big forearms. He doesn’t use his anymore. His body is wasted on him. Still in bed, he looks at his phone; it’s 8:15 and he’s already disconnected from every possible feeling.
As a kid, Jackson had mornings like this; he just didn’t know what to call them. A much smaller version of himself would run the hottest possible water in the bathroom sink and splash it into his nearly toothless mouth. It hurt, but he had a mission. His mom, a kind woman with too many children, would take his temperature, and Jackson would always have a low-grade fever. She’d roll her eyes, but how could a thermometer lie?
Jackson’s mother would always plug the little TV in on his dresser before she went to work. She’d put in the VHS copy of Disney’s Hercules, kiss him on his cool forehead, and tell him to feel better.
At 8:20am, Mom is 600 miles away and the bed is calling his name. He fights the urge.
*
“I loved watching Hercules as a kid. I would fake sick and watch it every time I had unexplainable feelings.” he says.
“What are unexplainable feelings?” asks the therapist.
“Unexplainable feelings? You want me to explain the unexplainable? That was a joke, sorry.” He taps his feet and looks at the floor.
“The feeling would start when I'd wake up, and images would race through my mind, warning me that if I went to school, something awful would happen. Am I talking too fast? I’m sorry. Sometimes I do that.”
“You’re fine. Tell me more about the feelings,” the therapist says while tapping a pencil on a clipboard, he really doesn’t like it. The pencil has a black rose design. On the desk next to her chair there is a small glass mason jar with the rest of the pack. Third therapist, third clipboard, the pencils were new at least.
“So, I would get these images in my head, and my stomach would churn, and I’d worry that something awful was going to happen. Like, my dog was going to die, or that Richie Valentino would learn I played with a Fur-Real-Kitty, or that my great grandma was watching me from heaven at all the wrong moments. Is it ok if I put my feet up?”
She gestures with a hand, exposing a small portion of what is clearly a large tattoo covered by her sleeve. He puts his feet up on a tiny glass table. He adjusts twice before putting them down again.
“Actually, now that I'm doing it, it feels much worse.” She nods as he puts his feet back down.
“Sometimes it’d happen when I was trying to fall asleep. I’d lie there sweating, little and alone with scary racing thoughts. But the next day I’d trick a thermometer and get to watch Hercules.”
*
He has to go to work. If he doesn’t go, he’ll get fired. If he gets fired, he won’t have a big screen TV or an apartment to dissolve into. Isn’t this what all kids dream about? The freedom of adulthood?
He takes his meds, even though they don’t work. He puts on a hat, so he doesn't have to shower, and he leaves the apartment. A text comes in as he’s walking to the car:
How’s my buddy doing? Work going well?
It’s from Mom. He ignores it.
Time is moving in double time on his drive to work. He’s been experiencing temporal whiplash for months. Somehow, it's 8:45 am, and he has to speed so he doesn’t get fired. But speeding feels good. It’s the only time he’s present.
*
“Do you know the concept of the Fair Unknown? I’m sorry I don’t know why I said it like that,” Jackson says while he bites his nails.
“I’m unfamiliar,” the therapist says, putting the clipboard down on the desk by her side. This calms him, the feeling of being examined slipping away. The therapist is not like any he’s seen before. She is young and has clear vestiges of an angst their generation is known for.
“The Fair Unknown is a character that has special-ness thrust upon them...” he says, relaxing into the leather couch. “I don’t know why I used the word thrust. The Fair Unknown is a character that is unknowingly special. As a little boy I didn’t have anything like that. But Hercules did. When I was home ‘sick’ I sat drinking apple juice or Canada Dry Ginger Ale and watched this young boy that everyone hated become the son of Zeus — watched the masses love a gentle boy who just wanted to please his father.”
“Did you want to be like that? Kind and giant and loved by your father?” she says, looking at him, personalizing him. He averts eye contact.
“Love, from many…Special-ness. To be big and kind and loved.”
*
He gets to work, and it’s 9:00 am on the dot. He has a standing 9:05 sales call that he must listen to, listen but not speak. While he doesn’t speak, he catches up on articles about cancel culture and why Dave Chappelle hates it.
A text comes in from the girl he’s been seeing, Meredith. He ignores it and keeps reading.
The sales call ends, and it's 10:00 am, and his hands don’t feel real anymore. His fingers type names into a computer and scroll through LinkedIn. Sometimes he clicks on jobs he'd much rather have, but then again, he decided to major in Classics. And Brooks & Carlton Acquisitions pay him $50,000 a year to disassociate on the company dime.
Suddenly, it’s lunch, and Jackson gets to watch John Oliver. He’s slowly been convincing the men in the office that John Oliver is hilarious, thinking it will change their politics. It doesn’t.
He keeps his mouth shut, listening but not talking - fitting in.
*
“What I liked about Hercules was that he had to become a hero. There was some process of transformation that I’d seen my brothers and their friends go through that turned a gentle, doughy, soft boy into a hero. At ten or eleven I was confident my brothers had bigger arms than Hercules and that one day I'd have bigger arms than them.”
The therapist laughs and its kind. He finally notices her, not in glimpses like before, takes in her full visage. This is a usual habit of his, making people blurry in his mind until he reduces their level of threat. The streaks of bleach in her cropped black hair, the nose ring; he understands why she is highly recommended.
The combination of attention and shared generational assimilation eggs him on. “I told everyone I could; my brothers, my teachers, classmates, janitors, that one day I'd be a hero. I’d beat every monster, and I would go the distance. I'd find my hero's welcome. I’d be right. where. I. belooooooooooooong,” he sings that last bit and the therapist winces just a touch, barely noticeable, but he notices.
“I’m sorry, was that too loud?”
“No, it just surprised me,” she says with a little smile.
“Oh my god, I used to sing that song so loud that our basset hound would chime in with a howl of her own. The dog wasn’t supposed to be in my bed, but when no one was home, we could sing all we wanted.”
“Sounds like a great companion,” she says while writing something down on the clipboard, now firmly back in her lap. He tries to look, and it is some unintelligible scribble with a little lightning bolt doodle.
*
From 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm, Jackson barely exists. He’s somewhere in the liminal space between dissociation and complete overstimulation. He’s making choices, saying words, but it is all autopilot. He knows a doctor might help but he’s too scared to talk to a doctor about what’s really going on. He’s on antidepressants, but this isn’t depression.
He knows where they put crazy people, and he is not about to put himself there. He doesn’t want to put Mom through that, spending her life savings flying to a hospital in Ohio every weekend. The thoughts spin. He pushes his toes into the carpet. He centers. He has a job, a romantic relationship, and an apartment. He can’t be crazy.
This goes on a loop, an internal battle of awareness, until he finally hits the bed and forgets to text Meredith goodnight. Just before he falls asleep, another text from Mom:
You have your read receipts on. I miss you, let's talk soon. I love you.
He texts back:
Sorry, busy day. Love you too.
The shame is even worse than the disconnection. They probably all hate him. His internal world is unsafe to be around.
Just before he falls asleep, he turns his read receipts off.
*
“Did you go to Penn?” he asks, pointing at the diploma above the therapist’s chair. She nods. “My mythology professor in college got her PhD there. I don't know if I told you, but I studied Classics in college. I majored in Classics because I loved Hercules so much.”
“Now that’s commitment,” she says, turning her head a bit, prompting a laugh. It is a nervous hiss but a laugh all the same.
“It was perfect for me. The Classics people were shy. I was worried I'd scare them with my size and my personality. It took me a while to become the Classics people’s friend, probably because I looked like their high school bullies. By 20 I wasn't a gentle little boy anymore.”
“How old were you when your herculean transformation happened?” She asked.
“Maybe 15… It was almost overnight, I started working out and my whole body filled out. My shoulders got broad, and my hands got muscular.” He takes a moment, and he picks at his lower lip with his teeth. “But when I was around the tiny Classics majors, I felt like I was their Hercules,” he smiles at the memory.
“That must have felt rewarding,” she says, momentarily writing something on the clipboard. He looks up at the noise. He stares at her fingers, bedecked with tiny silver rings, one with a little rose, he senses a theme. He loves a good theme.
“It did. Until one night after a little too much wine I told those bourgeoning Classicists that the only things I knew about Herakles came from the Disney movie. I was worried they’d make fun of me, everyone in the room was much better at Classics than me. Instead, they repaid my honesty with horrible news. Herakles, the mythological hero, was actually a piece of shit. He didn’t save Megara and become a god; he went mad and brutally murdered both her and their children…And he looked exactly like me.”
*
Meredith comes over and he can’t decide what they should do.
He can’t watch his favorite action movies anymore. If he does, he sees visions of his brain snapping. They can’t go out to dinner because having a knife on the table will make his hands shake.
He’s pretty sure his is a unique experience. He is either the first person to experience this or he is just like every person on the brink of madness. Neither of these realities give him comfort.
They decide to go hiking again up a tall hill. Even though it makes his hands sweat and heart bounce, all he can think of is jumping off the cliff.
Last week they were on the same trail, and he had a brutally disturbing image of pushing a passerby. His thoughts disgust him, make his stomach flip. He sees himself jumping in third person, just like every moment of his life nowadays. In his head, he tells himself that he’d rather end his own life than hurt someone else.
Meredith doesn’t stay the night. She puts in her small gold hoop earrings, gives him a kiss goodbye on the forehead, and he wants to ask her to stay. She is so beautiful, and kind, she understands.
Most nights after their dates he doesn’t sleep, he sweats and repeats and picks at his fingers. No one should have to see him like this, no one should love him.
*
“It was like I couldn’t get it out of my head. That’s when it all started, the terrifying stuff. Learning that Herakles kills Megara was stuck in my brain for months. I couldn't stop thinking about it. It was on a loop and my resemblance to him was inescapable.” He doesn’t know how far to go. When will it be too much? When will a stroke of that little black rose pencil ruin his brittle life. For a moment, he trusts. If a former punk kid became a therapist, surely, she wouldn’t rat him out.
“What terrifying things?” the therapist said while prepping her clipboard. This was probably evidence of his madness and he doesn’t care.
“I think they’re called intrusive thoughts. Like awful and disturbing images.”
“Like when you were a kid…” she looks at her clipboard, “...the unexplainable feelings?”
“Yeah, but worse, because it wasn’t that bad things would happen to me, it was that I would hurt people.” He makes eye contact with her then. Notices the kindness she is conveying, everything in his body made him divert, change the subject, deflect, make her forget.
“The Classics kids made it worse. In my mythology class everyone called me Herc. A friend told me later that every person in that class had a crush on me. Everyone laughed a little too hard at my jokes and never challenged my debate points in class discussions. I feel like I’m bragging. I promise I’m not, but I do that sometimes, is that a thing?”
The therapist shakes her head. He exhales deeply and returns to the anecdote.
“One time in class, I bent down to help a person who had dropped a bunch of papers on the floor in front of me and audibly heard a person in the back row say, ‘fucking hell.’ I know that doesn’t sound real, but I promise it is! God, you probably think I'm an asshole!”
“No, that’s funny,” she says, shifting the pencil gently on the paper, adding a little squiggly line around the lightning bolt.
Jackson steadies, enough deflection.
“But what I’m trying to say is, I belonged. I had found my hero’s welcome with these tiny dorks. I was this giant in every smoking circle, and they loved me and thought I was funny, and smart, and sexy. If it were a movie, I'd be literally glowing around them. But I also wanted to be anything but Herakles.
“I started picking at my fingers every time I thought about it, and it was like my brain was on this constant loop and I had no one to talk to about it because it made me feel crazy and I knew where crazy people went. I thought about going to therapy, I’ve been a couple times. But I was worried I’d talk about the intrusive thoughts, or the feeling of disconnection and they’d throw me in a mental hospital or something. I don’t come from a background where mental health is very well understood. You are either normal or insane.”
*
It seems that every moment he isn’t disappearing into spinning dizziness, he has an intrusive thought. He knows that’s not possible, but he read once that your brain comes up with anywhere between 75,000 and 100,000 thoughts a day, and you only remember the scary ones. Google tells him that he should come up with a mantra. He tells himself 100 times a day, I am not Herakles.
*
“But all I kept thinking was my entire life I looked up to a violent monster. And not only did I look up to him, I became him, physically. From then on, I was a snap away from being a violent monster, that any moment my brain would break, and I would become a weapon. And I knew deep in my heart that everyone, these tiny perfect nerds that I loved more than anything, kept just an inch of distance because they know it too. They knew the danger of men like me.”
He waits for her to interrupt but she doesn’t. She crosses a Doc Martin across her leg and listens. The words keep tumbling out, he didn’t know he had access to the articulation.
“Deep down I am terrified because I have this body and there is an underlying violence to my very existence. On one end I reject the masculine world that tells me it is good to have, to protect. I know when they say protect, they truly mean dominate. On the other, the feminist ideals which I truly believe and connect with tell me that all the bodies like mine before me dominated and subjugated. How can they be right about the world and wrong about me?” Full days of spiraling, months of contemplation, years of constant uncomfortability unravelling to reveal his final thesis. The tears fall fast, and his breathing picks up.
“I am terrified that there is no world in which I can be Hercules. That I can only be Herakles, dominator, subjugator, violator, killer — a man. So, if there is no world in which I can be Hercules, I would rather disconnect from the world entirely. I haven’t talked to my friends in months, I can’t tell anyone, I can’t be the person I want to be.” He won’t stop crying and he can’t keep talking. He doubles over and the tension in his back, the ringing in his ears finally stops. He just weeps.
Dr. Douglass takes a moment before handing him a tissue.
“Jackson, do you love people?”
“Of course.”
“And these intrusive thoughts are the exact opposite of love, they disgust you, the idea of possibly hurting people. It wrenches your stomach, ruins your day?”
“Yes.”
“I believe that this is part of a larger pattern, that this change in your intrusive thoughts is novel, but what you’ve struggled with… unexplainable feelings… that is a lifelong struggle. Without treatment, your ability to manage them has gotten worse. Have you ever heard of OCD?”
“If you could see my apartment, you’d know that I don’t have it.”
She laughs at him, this time shaking her head. He notices the tiny hoop earrings and his thoughts go to Meredith. Her love made him want to feel like a human being with breath in his lungs again.
“Cleanliness is just one form of OCD; it is also most popularized by the media and oftentimes exaggerated. But there are many other forms of obsessive thinking and compulsions. Oftentimes, people with harm centered OCD push people away from themselves, hurt themselves, and disconnect compulsively.”
“So, this isn’t like a crazy person thing?”
“Jackson, feeling disconnected– what I would call derealization, the panic attacks, the intrusive thoughts — these are all common in those who go untreated or incorrectly treated. You are tremendously brave for sharing with me. It’s heroic what you are doing now.”
Jackson takes a beleaguered breath and fixes his posture; the tears have stopped for now. “You are a safe and normal human being who is going through a period of disorder,” Dr. Douglass says. “Nothing in this conversation made me fearful of your safety or my safety, or anyone's safety. If anything, I admire your courage, to suffer for this long without proper help must have been debilitating. You made a very positive step towards a happy and healthy life today; you should be proud.”
*
Jackson leaves for work on time. He closes the door to his car and gets a text from Mom:
Dad and I are coming to Cleveland on the third, I convinced him to stop on our way to Florida. He’s not happy about the extra time, but it’s for our BABY!
Lol. See you then.
He texts back:
Of course, can’t wait to see you.
She texts back immediately:
I love you!
He texts back:
I love you too.
We’ll go to my favorite coffee shop.
*
Dr. Douglass uses Jackson’s attachment to Herakles and Hercules as a bedrock for his treatment. They decide that a mantra might help. They try several over the many weeks of their sessions and one sticks. He says it over and over again. It becomes his morning, his day, his night for months.
He goes in and out of periods of dissociation and panic, grounded by the words. He mumbles it while chopping vegetables with Meredith in the kitchen and his hands shake, or when they watch a movie and he winces, or when they go on hikes and reach the summit, or when they tuck into bed at night– but every utterance makes life become more natural, less heroic.
He breathes and loosens his back muscles, and he remembers who he is. He goes through the exercises. He writes down his thoughts. He says the things he needs to say to get better. He cries.
Labors to love, labors to grieve, labors to heal, labors, labors, labors.
*
“How is everything going?” Dr. Douglass asks.
“I am starting to feel more present. But to be honest the shame of this is killing me. I don’t know if I can ever tell anyone who isn’t you what I’m going through. I’m scared that no one will accept me if I show them this part of me.”
Dr. Douglass pauses for a moment. She goes over to her desk and pulls out something small and golden from the drawer. She hands Jackson a small lightning bolt pin. She looks in his eyes and says, “you are brave enough to make sure that’s not true.”
*
Jackson sits down with his mother at Propaganda Coffee. She doesn’t like the name, but he explains the irony of it.
“I don’t like the beard,” she says while taking her first sip of something with oat milk in it. “And I don’t like oat milk, what’s wrong with normal milk? You drank normal milk your whole life and look how big and strong you are.” Jackson laughs, he forgot how lovingly abrasive New Englanders can be, how monstrously demonstrative. “Is oat milk something everyone else does too?” Mom says, not making eye contact.
“Yes, my generation hates milk and loves therapy. Look, you are learning so much on this trip already.” He smiles, and she doesn’t laugh. “What’s wrong?” He asks, noticing her furrowed brow.
“I’m worried you are in therapy because you think I fucked up as a parent or something.” He breathes in that statement for a moment, and tears well in her eyes. “I was always worried how nervous you were, and now thinking back on it, I’m worried I messed up. Like, I should have been tougher or kinder or taken you to see a doctor or something.”
Jackson hands his mother a napkin, and she wipes her eyes. “Mom, this is nothing that you could have ever seen. Honestly, I'm in therapy to be able to share what’s in my head more. It’s all internal stuff. I deal with panic attacks, intrusive thoughts, I’ve been diagnosed with OCD and it’s not–” she cuts him off.
“Honey, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Mom, there is no way you could have known. You aren’t a mind reader. You could only work with the information I gave you. And I know how to talk about it more now.”
She takes a moment to clear her throat and sip her coffee. “You know when you were born I had really bad postpartum depression and I thought I was going crazy? Like the whole world felt disconnected in the worst way. Everything was fuzzy, and I had this big baby to take care of that needed me. I didn’t have it with your brothers and other women would talk about it and they sounded insane. It was so scary because I would have these visions that somehow, I was going to get mad or scared and not be able to take care of you.” Mom sips her coffee to stop the tears. “That I would hurt you or something.”
“How did you work through it?”
“I went to see a specialist, I had to drive all the way to Worchester with you. She told me I just needed to love you and that loving you every day was the only thing to make it better. I knew that it was going to be alright, that I was going to get over it because I loved you. It helped that you were so cute, that you loved me so much and that I loved you with everything I had. When it comes down to it, I just got over it because you needed me. And I need you too.”
She cries and they hug and make fun of the gluten free muffins.
Jackson walks her to her car. Just before she closes the door she says, “I like the pin, Herc.” They exchange a loving smile.
*
For the first time in months Jackson feels human, fallible yet perfect. The intrusive thoughts come and go, Dr. Douglass and he create strategies and systems to handle them.
He and Meredith fall in love. He finally introduces the real him.
One day Jackson and Meredith hike for as long as Jackson’s legs would let him, they talk about college and their friends and their hopes. Jackson tells her about therapy and she holds his shaking hand and tells him that she knows she is safe. They find a perfect tree and empty a backpack full of snacks, wine, and books.
Jackson rubs his thumb over Meredith’s dress. He’s done this before. Usually, he’d shiver as the calluses on his fingers caught the fabric. Today her dress is so light and soft that he just enjoys the cellular identity of his fingertips.
He feels his hand gently rise and fall in rhythm with her deep relaxed breaths. Now he is steady. His mind is clear at the base of the tree. There is no internal monologue, nothing in his consciousness is intrusive. There are no actions, only senses; the pull of fabric on his fingers, and the warmth of the sun bleeding through the branches, warming this Eden they found.
If this wasn’t love, then Jackson knew the true definition would always escape him. He is loved and he loves, and all is gentle. He whispers his mantra:
I am right where I belong.
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JT Godfrey is a writer and humorist in Cleveland, OH. JT's work has been published in the Rappahannock Review, WildRoof Journal, and Big Whoopie Deal. In addition to prose writing, JT serves as a comedy writer at Imposters Theater.
Read about JT's editorial mentorship experience here. |
