Reverse Therapy

It was my mistake, thinking I could impress you with all of the things that I thought I had learned--about myself, about the way women are disinclined to ask for things, about the anxieties that I carry with me about ambition and success thanks to the mythology of the 80s, about the ways in which I do not automatically press when I hear something that feels, to me, like a criticism or attack. But you punctured that pretty quickly. I don't listen. I'm still just as broken (defensive, scared of what you might say) as I ever was. I can't learn. It was only my pride telling me lies that made me think anything had actually changed.

Or maybe that's not what you said at all, I just can't hear it.

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F.B.

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