The Last Time I Was Me. Cathy Lamb

with a good report maybe I could keep from getting too screwed with the judge.

      I didn’t move.

      She stared at me. I stared back. When you are used to working with male, egotistical advertising pricks who believe the earth was made for the pleasure of them and their dicks and everyone else is squash vermin, you get in the habit of not being intimidated.

      “I can feel your anger,” she told me, her voice ringing off the walls.

      “Gee, what are you, psychic or something?”

      “Stuff it, Jeanne. Your hostility is like burning hot rocks.”

      “Gee again. That’s why I’m here. Anger and hostility. Can I move now?”

      “No.”

      I waited. Perhaps she was taking time to feel my hostilic anger.

      “You’re barely hanging on.”

      “No shit.”

      “No, there is no shit,” she snapped. “None at all. You’re a repressed chick. You’ve dug yourself into a psychological cave by not allowing your emotions out. It’s all your fault.”

      I paused at that one. My fault?

      “Your pain and anguish have shaken you like an internal earthquake and you’ve grabbed hold of your loss in a deathlike grip. Fury is the emotion that comes out when people are scared. You let your problems run your life by packing them away in your anger. They stay because you won’t examine them and throw them out. When the problems grew and grew to unimaginable heights, like a mountain range, you hid from them, convincing yourself you could handle life, no problemo. But you hit a crisis valley and you were shoved right off a cliff and your life exploded.”

      Well, she certainly boiled things down quickly, didn’t she? And in such geographical terms, too! “You’re a genius,” I told her. “Brilliant. May I come in now? That purple beanbag is looking pretty good to me.”

      I started to walk toward her.

      “Stop.”

      I stopped. Sighed. This was a bad day.

      “Hit,” she said.

      “I’m sorry?”

      “Hit.”

      “Should I hit you?” I asked. “How hard?”

      She glared and pointed at the punching bags hanging from the ceiling like giant bloodred splotches.

      “Hit the bags until your anger is gone.”

      I dropped my purse on the ground.

      “That would take days. No, it would take months. No, it would take years. Will I be charged by the hour? And, if you go home to go to bed while I’m still hitting, do I still get charged?”

      She crossed her arms across her chest. “Start. Hit. Now.”

      I shrugged. I would pretend it was Slick Dick’s face. I really missed my mountain bike.

      “Stop.”

      I eyed the she-demon. “Whatever could it be now?”

      “Take off your shoes. Shoes carry bad energy with them. All of our anger and frustration rolls right down our bodies to our feet and our feet expel that impotence and blackness like an upside-down volcano into our shoes. Leave the shoes, leave the lava and flying rocks of your past behind.”

      I glanced down at my black and lavender heels.

      I have a tragic relationship with my vast shoe collection, this I know. My shoe obsession started after I lost Johnny and Ally. Before that, Johnny and I had worn tennis shoes, hiking boots, or flip-flops, spending as little as possible because we were broke college students. Those shoes were, and always will be in my mind, the best.

      But when I started a new job at an advertising agency about six months after they died, still believing that the pain of my overwhelming grief could stop my heart from beating at any second, I bought a pair of new black heels. The heels distracted me when I got stressed, so I bought a pair of red heels, next a taupe pair, and soon I got daring and slightly hysterical and bought four-inch-high pink heels with little red daisies on the sides.

      The heels distracted me when I thought of Johnny and Ally. I know that sounds bizarrely shallow, but I had nothing to hold onto. I would think, “I want to die I want to die I want to die,” and I’d peek down at my bright red or striped or polka-dot heels and I’d start thinking of which pair of shoes I wanted to be buried in and for some reason, that shook me out of my severe and pervasive depression a bit.

      At least enough to go on living through the next hour or until I could get to a mall and distract myself again.

      “Take off the volcanoes of anger, Jeanne,” Emmaline ordered. “Get away from the hot lava flow of frustration.”

      I swallowed hard and started feeling hot and very insecure at the same time, but I flicked off the heels. I stood flat-footed and felt more and more vulnerable by the second, a whole bunch of emotions I didn’t want to have to deal with running into my head at breakneck speed.

      I did nothing in front of the red blob, for long minutes, but the blob morphed into everything I was mad about. I whacked that thing and darn near broke my wrist.

      “Don’t be a wimp.” I had not realized Emmaline was right in back of me. “Hit it again.”

      I hit it again.

      “Again.”

      This was not too bad. I hit it again and again, like a boxer, using both hands.

      “Use your feet,” Emmaline ordered.

      I kicked it with my feet.

      “Kick the negatives out of your soul,” she insisted. “Kick those soul-crushing negatives from your kidneys and liver and pancreas and prostate, and let it flow from your feet.”

      I stopped at that. “I don’t have a prostate.”

      “Whatever,” she boomed. “Kick the prostate you don’t have outside of your body.”

      I focused on the bag again, then kicked the negatives out of the prostate that I didn’t have.

      “Use your butt.”

      I was sweating now but feeling better. I dropped my purple silk blouse to the floor, and charged backward into the bag. It swung back and almost knocked me over. I hit it again, it swung back and into me, back and forth we went. It became my red-blob enemy.

      “With your elbows,” Emmaline called out, her voice strident now. “Again with your fists.” I swung and swung. Sweat dripped off my forehead. This went on for way too long. Hit, hit, hit. Sweat.

      “Stop.”

      I sank to the floor, panting. I wondered if she had decided if she liked me or not. I decided I didn’t care. Slick Dick’s face had been beaten to a mangy pulp and that’s all I cared about.

      “Come to the center of the room, the center of peace.”

      I struggled to my feet, followed obediently behind her, much like a wussy dog.

      “Sit in the purple beanbag.” I was too wiped out to argue. I sat.

      She settled in the black one.

      “Let’s get rid of the black mold over your heart,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “It’s destroying you.”

      Mold over my heart. A sumptuous thought. I needed a beer. I needed many beers. Maybe after this little session I would drop into the brewery and drink straight from a keg lying on my back.

      She reached out and ran a finger across my forehead and studied my sweat. For fun, I ran a finger across my forehead and studied my sweat, too. Clear. I was somewhat surprised. I half expected it to be black. Maybe with a little mold.

      Emmaline