Light in the Shadows
Page 9

Had I mentioned that today was a not a good day?
When Dr. Todd had finished reading, he looked up at me. “Well, you definitely picked a doozy to focus on,” he said in a way that made it difficult for me not to laugh. I appreciated his dry humor.
“Well, you know what they say. Go big or go home.” My lips quirked in an effort to smile. I probably looked as though my mouth were spazzing out.
Dr. Todd gave me an answering smile and looked back down at my notebook. “I'm glad to see that you were going in the right direction with this activity. Tell me what made you have the reaction you did.” Ahh, so now I was going to talk about my feelings. I just loved when therapy became so clichéd.
“Well, I think it's pretty f**king obvious how I was feeling. I had a goddamned anxiety attack. I wasn't hearing the birds f**king chirp and seeing rainbows, okay!” I bit out angrily. Dr. Todd closed the notebook with a snap.
“No, I'd say not. Don't get defensive, Clay. Now please tell me, what were you feeling?” he asked me again. I took a deep breath and tentatively started to think about the situation I had just shared in my journal. I had to be careful. I couldn't lose it again. I had come too far, I would learn to deal with this shit or it would kill me!
“Angry,” I said shortly, settling on the truth. I could have dodged the question, but after my little episode, I was too exhausted and way past hiding what I was thinking.
Dr. Todd frowned. “Angry, huh. At who?” I wanted to groan. That was a loaded question.
“Maggie. Me. Ruby. My parents. Take your pick.” I was feeling petulant. I knew this wasn't earning me any therapy brownie points but I was so raw I could bleed. I wanted to bleed. I wanted the pain that only a razor could bring. It would be a hell of a lot better than facing the demons that raged inside me. The demons that on days like today seemed to never be far from completely obliterating me.
Dr. Todd didn't say anything, he just watched me as I processed what I had just said. “I'm angry. With everyone. My parents are easy. They f**king suck. They've never been parents. They just stuck my ass in here to rot.” I gave a humorless laugh. “They wanted me to lose it. They wanted an excuse to get rid of me. Too bad for them, I'm gonna get out of here and live my life,” I said vehemently and I saw Dr. Todd try to cover his smile.
He nodded. “You're feelings are definitely understandable. But more importantly, you are seeing that you are in control of your life, not your parents. You having control is what will help you move forward.” Sometimes Dr. Todd sounded like Ghandi or something. I could get annoyed by it, or I could hear his words for what they were. The truth.
“I'm mad at Ruby for making it so easy to deny what I was doing to everyone around me. If she had just laid it on the line, told me she knew what I was doing...” My words trailed off and Dr. Todd cut in.
“You would have gotten help? Stopped cutting?” he asked me pointedly. I arched my eyebrow, seeing what he was doing. He was trying to make me see how irrational that anger was. He was walking a very fine line. I could either get ragingly pissed or acknowledge the validity of what he was saying. It could go either way really.
For the moment I ignored the delicate balancing act and continued with my train of thought. “I'm mad at myself for being such a f**king waste. For screwing up everything in my life. For not holding it together and letting my parents win,” I ended softly. I ground my clenched fists into my eyes, feeling a headache start behind them.
“And Maggie?” Dr. Todd asked quietly and I dropped my hands into my lap. Maggie. I was mad at her. Really flipping angry.
I grit my teeth. “I’m angry at her for making me feel, for a few moments, that I could have a normal life!” I said too loudly. I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself down. When I felt I could keep going without blowing a gasket, I started talking again. “I’m mad at Maggie for giving me something that nearly killed me to lose when I invariably f**ked everything up. For showing me what perfect looked like right before I destroyed it. I'm angry as hell because she built back up what I had broken, she gave me everything; a life, a future. And now it's gone.” My voice cracked and I felt traitorous tears slip down my face. I wiped them away furiously. Damn it! I hated it when I devolved into this.
I took another deep breath, feeling my body shaking with emotion. Now that I had admitted it, I felt...better. See there boys and girls, therapy does work.
Dr. Todd was looking at me, that impenetrable calm firmly in place. How I wondered what was really going on in that head of his. Was he really that serene or was he just as f**ked up as the rest of us? What I wouldn’t give to know.
“That was hard to admit, Clay. Thank you.” He leaned forward so his elbows rested on his knees. “You're feelings about Maggie are intense. They are all tangled up with pain and loss. You can't separate the love from the hurt and that's what is triggering you. You say she was the best thing in your life, yet you have made her the focal point for all of your misery. We have to pull apart those two things. You can have one without the other. You have to keep working on your reframing. To recognize the positive where your mind wants to look at only the negative.”
Thinking about the situation I had written about in my notebook, I wasn’t so sure that advice was possible. I mean, how the hell was I supposed to find the positive in trying to kill myself? It wasn’t a trip to Disney World for Christ’s sake! It was me; taking a piece of a broken mirror and cutting my arms open to the point that I had to have forty-five stitches on both arms. I had heard the doctor in the hospital tell my parents that I had almost hit bone. I hadn’t been fooling around. I had wanted to die.