Write! with Peter Hering

“A mess?”
“Yes, everything was a mess; my life, my marriage, my two-bedroom apartment,” I said, forcing my words out and wanting them to brand their anger into his cleanly shaved face.
“And now it’s gotten messier, and more complicated, and it feels like it’s starting to devour me.”

Excerpt from: “Marriage: Just dial 911 and hope for the best!”
Stefanie S. Hope

“His mother?”
He nodded.
“I don’t want to talk about his mother.”
“Does it make you angry?”
He knew it did. I’d repeated my story hundreds of times – after every one of her visits – usually after she’d forced me to spend two days sifting through the haversack of old childhood toys she dumped on the remnants of our relationship, thinking we might still have some use for them. Insane.

Excerpt from: “Marriage: Just dial 911 and hope for the best!”
Stefanie S. Hope

“Well,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I’d already assumed that it was a culmination of experiences that drove you from the marriage. But there must have been that one thing that pushed you over the edge, so to speak.”
There were more than just a few. I recall continuously being pushed over the edge, or least being driven close enough to it to see the abyss.
“His mother,” I finally blurted out, spewing out a firestorm of pitiless hate. It took me a moment to compose myself. “His fucking mother.”
My psychologist remained cool. I’d expected some kind of reaction from him, but he let me wallow in the density of my hate. And then he smiled. And urged me to continue.
“Let’s talk about his mother then.”

Excerpt from: “Marriage: Just dial 911 and hope for the best!”
Stefanie S. Hope

“I don’t know when it started going ‘wrong’,” I said, admiring my nails; they were long and red and made me look, well, sexually addictive. “I don’t think we ever really know; it’s a combination of things. And usually it starts with something annoying and small; trite even.”
My psychologist scribbled away, at times feverishly, as if I was a reincarnation of Descartes and he was trying to retain everything I was saying for the after-world.
“So, what was that one small and annoying thing that he did?” he asked, uncramping his writing hand.
“If it had only been one thing, I may have been able to look past it,” I said, recalling the agony of discontentment. “But we’re talking a laundry list here.”

Excerpt from: “Marriage: Just dial 911 and hope for the best!”
Stefanie S. Hope

“I was only published locally, my column never made it nationally,” I admitted. “It wasn’t good enough for The Boston Globe.”
He snickered. Must have been his favorite paper.
“I remember reading you column a few times,” he said, putting down his instruments of mass understanding and looking me in the eye. “One of your columns actually helped me navigate my period of, shall we say, adult indecision.”
We both laughed.
“Oh, really?” I said, stopping myself from becoming emotional. I never trusted people who liked my writing. But this time, I pretended I did. “I didn’t know shrinks had any ‘periods of indecision’.”
His eyes were wide and lucid. Beautiful. They penetrated me.
“We’re the worst offenders, Ms. Hope,” he finally said. “Believe me.”

Expert from: “Marriage: Just dial 911 and hope for the best!”
Stefanie S. Hope