Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life

“If we were a tampon commercial, I’d be the one scowling about odors and leakage; she’d be doing a jeté in white jeans on her heavy flow day.”

Tate uses the analogy of characters in a tampon commercial to convey her differing perceptions of Marnie and herself. Borrowing the clichéd imagery of marketing aimed at women, which often compares someone successful to someone struggling, conveys the success Christie perceives in Marnie and the struggling she perceives in herself.

“To open up, I needed a therapist who could hear the echoes of pain in my silences.”

In this passage, Tate uses the paradox of hearing silence to convey what she needs in a therapist. The impossibility of hearing something with no sound represents the difficulty Tate believes she will have in finding the right therapist. It also foreshadows the rare insightfulness that Dr. Rosen brings to his treatment strategies.

“At age sixteen, I thought bulimia was a genius way to control my ruthless appetite, which led me to binge on crackers, bread, and pasta. Not until I got into recovery did I understand that my bulimia was a way to control the unending swells of anxiety, loneliness, anger, and grief that I had no idea how to release.”

Parallelism helps Tate convey the underlying causes of an eating disorder. First, she lists carbohydrate-heavy food items. Then, in the next sentence, she lists the emotions that inform her binging. This parallelism stresses the relationship between these tangible foods and her intangible emotions.

“I was backing away because of messages embedded in my marrow: Nice girls don’t want it. Feminists don’t need it. Good girls don’t talk about it at all, especially in mixed company.”

The repeated, italicized “it” in this quotation is a euphemism for sex. There are other, more creative euphemisms for sex; however, Tate uses this common pronoun because she is ashamed to discuss sex. Thus, using it reinforces the shame about sex Christie feels and is trying to communicate.

“I ran through the roster of feelings. Frustrated came to mind, but that was three syllables. Furious? Nope, three syllables. Three blind mice. Three times the cock crowed. Three times Jesus fell. Three was holy. Three was biblical. Why couldn't I use a three-syllable word? My top choice: adios”

As Christie struggles to find a one- or two-syllable word to express her emotions, she runs through several things associated with three, making allusions along the way. Due to her Catholic background, she briefly alludes to two stories from the Bible to validate her inclination for three-syllable words. The first is when Peter denies knowing Jesus three times before the morning of his trial and crucifixion, and the second is Jesus stumbling under the weight of the cross. Because both of these stories are about failing, alluding to them highlights Christie’s struggle to find the right words.

“I’d already confessed that my eating was a hot, steamy mess; now I admitted I couldn’t sleep. I was a newborn baby stuck in a twenty-seven-year-old’s body.”

The metaphor of being a baby follows Christie’s struggles to eat and sleep. It also emphasizes how vulnerable she is and how much she needs group in order to function.

“The familiar stuckness I’d felt most of my life shut out every other thought, every other sensation. It felt like it would always be there, obstructing my breath, my blood, my desire. Stuck, stuck, stuck. Therapy was supposed to change things, open me up. A cry was forming somewhere in my chest, like a hurricane gathering force way off the coast of Florida. The stuckness felt like my fault. How would I ever change that? I sank into self-hate as I counted ridges on my popcorn ceiling. What was the point of those Tuesday sessions if I was going to remain this stuck?”

This paragraph has a cadence formed through the contrasting sentence structures and the repetition of the word “stuck.” There are longer sentences followed by shorter ones, which creates a particular rhythm to the language. This also allows the shorter sentences to stand out and the longer ones to feel more lyrical. This technique shows the alternating emotions that Christie feels as she tries to come to terms with her lack of progress in group.

“‘Maybe you’ll meet your husband there,’ Dr. Rosen smirked.”

Dr. Rosen says this a little offhandedly as Christie accepts the job at Skadden; however, since Christie does meet John through work, this is an example of foreshadowing. Introducing the possibility that Christie might meet someone raises the stakes of her new job and elicits interest. The fact that it happens makes the foreshadowing all the more satisfying.

“Having my ritual revealed at last, in detail, was like having a layer of skin removed.”

This is a simile, a comparison using like or as, to emphasize Christie’s discomfort at sharing her eating habits with Rory. The image makes her seem vulnerable and raw, as she shares her secrets and sheds her shame.

“By then, I knew something was off in the connection between me and other people. I sensed in my gut that I didn’t know how to stay connected, how not to be cast aside.”

The last sentence of this quote contains an example of litotes: Tate has expressed the idea positively in “how to stay connected,” but when she restates it, she makes the expression negative in “how not to be cast aside.” By expressing the opposite of connecting as being cast aside, the technique reveals her fear about what will happen if she fails to make the connections for which she longs.

“Nothing in my life had empowered me—not good grades, not a thin body, not dry-humping a beautiful Latin fraternity boy—like speaking the raw truth about vomiting up my meals.”

Tate’s style includes several colloquialisms like “dry-humping.” Such phrases establish Tate’s informal tone, personal subject matter, and humor. They also characterize Tate as human, flawed, and relatable.

“All I’d ever done with anger was swallow it or throw it up. Now it was pouring out, messy and loud.”

Tate metaphorizes anger as vomiting in this quote, which links it to her pattern of disordered eating, shame, and purging. Like vomiting, expressing her anger is a reflex she can no longer control or hold back, mainly because she no longer wants to.

“Underneath all that anger and frustration was an ocean of hurt and sadness. Waves of loneliness, just as Dr. Rosen long ago predicted.”

The second sentence of this quotation is an effective sentence fragment. A sentence fragment is a phrase or clause that cannot stand alone. “Waves of loneliness” is a noun phrase that could be the subject of a sentence, but there is no verb, verb phrase, or predicate to make it one. This is technically grammatically incorrect; however, in this case, the rhythm of the short phrase creates emphasis.

“He held my face as he kissed me and washed away the stain of my relationship with Jeremy—the hairballs in the drain, the bad blow job, and the constant grinding of my flesh against the stone of his isolation.”

Tate expresses her frustrations with Jeremy through concrete imagery. This creates a clear picture of all of Christie’s efforts to make that relationship work and Jeremy’s inability to connect with her.

“I don’t want to suck dirty dick.”

This oft-repeated phrase is memorable for a few reasons, including the alliteration of “dirty dick.” It is also pithy and clear, showing both humor and the seriousness of Tate’s resolve.

“My eyes teared up. He said it again very slowly. You. Don't. Have. To. Suck. Dirty. Dick. Then added: ever again.”

Tate uses periods to create a slow rhythm to communicate Dr. Rosen’s emphasis as he gives Christie permission to set this boundary for herself. The periods create pauses, which mimic the time it takes for Tate to internalize her new approach to relationships and acting on her desires.

“So this was how it happened. This was how you built an intimate relationship. Word by word. Story by story. Revelation by Revelation.

Just like group.”

Similar to parallelism, parallel structure is when the exact same sentence structure is repeated, such as “Word by word. Story by story. Revelation by revelation.” This structure stresses the slow and steady nature of relationships that Christie is beginning to learn in this quotation.

“We kissed on his brass bed, our tired bodies heavy from the early morning and the hours of pedaling. He pulled off my shorts. The noonday sun streamed brazenly across his clean white sheets. His skin tasted like salt, and I wanted to gulp. He filled me up. I came and came again.”

The phrase “He filled me up” (179) acts as a double entendre in this passage. It can be read literally, as in Alex sexually penetrating Christie. However, it can also be read figuratively, as in Alex is helping Christie feel whole, seen, and valued.

“My body was spinning in space, somewhere between Russia and Chicago, throbbing through the jet lag that made me feel drunk.”

This sentence appears when Christie is back in Chicago and Alex is breaking up with her. The feeling of jet lag represents her physical and emotional dislocation; she hasn’t had time to settle in, either in Chicago or her relationship, and now she is forced into a space of discomfort and uncertainty.

“Shame consumed me. Shame that I was coming undone over a five-month relationship. Shame that I was literally losing my shit over a beautiful man I'd slept with 27 times. Shame that after nearly 380 therapy sessions—more than 34,000 minutes of therapy with an Ivy League educated therapist—my heart was still defective, could not attach.”

Tate creates an anaphora by starting each of these sentences with the word “shame.” Anaphora is often used to create a group out of disparate items, and Tate shows that each of these elements comes from the same place. She is hurting, and each item in this list is tied to the shame at the center of that pain.

“We still had sex about once a week, and my face always met the pillow. One-hundred percent flipping. And every single time, my voice failed—it sat quivering and useless on the pillow next to my head.”

Tate appeals to pathos through the words “quivering and useless,” as she struggles to find her agency and her voice while sleeping with Brandon. This phrase is full of vulnerable emotion. She externalizes her voice and makes it pathetic to communicate how difficult it is for her to ask for what she wants.

“I visualized my heart and saw slashes from each group session I showed up for, from each man I dated, from each squabble with Dr. Rosen or with a group mate. Each ‘fuck you’ to Dr. Rosen was a nick. Each screechy voicemail, each temper tantrum during a session, each dramatic hair pull and broken dish. Nicks, gashes, hash marks, chips, gouges, striations. My heart, a messy, pulpy thing, was scored from each attempt, each near miss, each lunge towards other people, those who loved me back and those who didn't.”

This passage is the culmination of the symbolism of the scored heart, and Tate uses extended imagery to denote how far she has come since the start of the novel. She correlates her actions to physical changes in the imaginary clay of her heart to highlight just how much change has occurred.

“For the first time, I understood that sex was a big deal for me not because it involved private parts or because the nuns told me it was one of God's major preoccupations or because my mother told me I'd wind up in hell if I did it before marriage. It was a big deal because with sex, I gave John my body in a singular way, and he gave me his. Together, we shared the pleasure of that exchange. And even though he was kind, committed, and loving, it was super hot.”

This is an epiphany or realization that comes from the experiences Christie has had throughout the text. In this passage, sex changes from something Christie used to force connection or validation to an outgrowth of a healthy relationship. She finally seizes Agency and Fulfillment in Sex at the same time.