Page 83 of Vivacity
He describes his younger self in the most starkly beautiful language, and I’m incandescent with wonder that the emotionally walled-off man I met just a couple of months ago has already found the courage and open-heartedness to connect so deeply, so beautifully, with the burdened parts of himself who’ve been running his system for all these decades.
And we talk about me, too, because Ethan is worried that he’s making it all about him. I laugh at that, because I suspect this man hasn’t dominated a conversation with his introspective observations probably ever. And he doesn’t get this, but it makes me so happy to see him do that, not just because it means he trusts me, but because with every memory, every realisation shared, he’s processing his trauma in a way that’s manageable for his nervous system.
But he insists, so I tell him all about my family. My upbringing. I tell him about Camille scouting me at Stanford and my decision to put pause on pursuing my clinical studies and instead follow an infamous, married fuckboy around the playgrounds of the Med for years and years while being handsomely rewarded.
I’m just glad he’s not familiar with the Enneagram, so he can’t laugh at how ridiculously Seven-ish I am.
I tell him, too, about my reasons for being so fascinated by IFS, for wanting to pursue it professionally. I attempt to explain why I find it such an incredibly powerful, empowering modality, why I believe so wholeheartedly in the way it can change lives. And, this time, rather than facing a wall of cynicism, I’m preaching to the choir.
This time, he gets it.
Because I’m me, and I have more Achiever parts than I’d like to admit to Athena, a clinical practice won’t be enough for me. I have a dream to start an app while I continue my studies, an app that pulls together all sorts of therapeutic and coachingand somatic modalities into a trusted directory that hooks individuals up with professionals.
I even have a secret dream to include an optional personality profiling section for the ultimate in therapy matchmaking. Take Athena, for example. She recently began working with a new coach, Amy, and she loves her. The reason? Her coach is a raging Three, just like her. Sometimes, it’s helpful and healthy to work with people who are your opposites, who have perspective into your blind spots. But sometimes, we want someone who’ll get us. Amy gets why Athena wants to work all day long and achieve more, more, more. She understands the strength of the impulses that drive that relentless achievement, and she also understands the fears and the pain points that come alongside it. They’re kindred spirits.
I gloss over the personality profiling aspect a little with Ethan, except to explain that I’d use a variety of tools to triangulate people’s unique character (becausetriangulatesounds more professional and less creepy thanobsessively psychoanalyse them from every angle). Still, he seems impressed. More than impressed. I’d go so far as to say he finds the entire concept inspiring.
‘If anyone can pull this off, you can,’ he tells me, his hand over mine as we lie on the gigantic white daybed next to his pool one afternoon. ‘It’s the perfect intersection for your skills, I can tell. And if you ever need a backer, you just let me know.’
And this is why I love holidays. Because you don’t talk about this kind of shit when you’re grabbing lunch from the cafeteria or having a quick bang on your boss’ desk. That’s real life (though, admittedly, the desk-banging is a niche aspect of that), and when you’re living your real life you’re simply too stuck in your rut to think much about your dreams.
Somehow, lying on a soft white mattress under the Caribbean sun makes everything seem possible, whether it’s launching apps or reprioritising your life’s relationships.
Maybe noteverything. One morning, I chuck my phone across the daybed with an angry growl. Ethan, who’s reading the paper, looks over, amused.
‘What’s up with you?’
‘Fucking Connections. I crapped out.’
He gets himself upright, a move that has his abs rippling in a deeply gratifying way, and picks up my phone so he can take a look at the screen.
‘Which one didn’t you get?’
‘I didn’t get purple or blue. But it was purple that fucked me up.’ I throw an arm over my face in self-disgust. ‘Give me a homophone any day of the week—I’m thequeenof homophones, because I always read the clues out loud. But it’s that dratted kind that gets me. Every. Bloody. Time.
He reads aloud. ‘What “trip” might mean. Journey. Fall. Drug. Switch.Ha! Very clever.’
‘Yeah. Too clever for me.’ I remove my arm from my face and push myself up onto one elbow. ‘Do you know what I’d give a lot of money for? Like, a lot.’
‘Tell me.’ He puts down the phone and scoops me against him with an arm hooked around my waist.
‘I would kill to see their database.’
‘Who? TheNew York Times?’
‘Yup. Think about it. Think about the tagging system. Like this gigantic semantic web.’
‘She rhymes now.’
‘That’s how badly I want to see it. Imagine playing with it. Imaginebuildingit. God, it blows my mind.’
Ethan’s looking at me as if I’ve lost my marbles and yet he’s quite fond of me, anyway. He probably has a point. My obsessionwith peeking under the hood of this game makes sense to me. After all, my entire brain is a giant meaning-making machine. But for normal people, it may be a little much.
‘Imagine the matrix, babe!’ I practically shout. ‘Okay, imagine in their matrix, they have the wordbear. Like the animal. So that could also be tagged as a homophone forbare, like naked. Let’s see. It could be a finance term—bear market. A verb—to bear. It could even be in words that begin with conjugations of the verbto be.They really like fucking around with prefixes and suffixes, you know.
‘Imagine seeing all those tags cross-referenced with thousands upon thousands of others. And don’t get me started on the red herring tags they must have. Honestly, it makes me horny just thinking about playing with it. I’m not kidding.’
He’s full-on laughing now, his fingers stroking my back. ‘You’ve thought about this a lot.’
