48. Mason
Mason
It’s been a week since I vandalized my dad’s building, a week since I’ve seen or spoken to him, a week of silence and no repercussions.
I guess that’s why I’m not surprised when I walk into the kitchen this morning and find an envelope sitting on the counter with my name on it.
He figured he just wanted to take the time to conjure up the best way to punish me. What I didn’t figure was this being the route he decided to take.
I stare at the single page and read it again.
Therapy begins tomorrow at 10 a.m.
You will attend twice a week while you’re home. Once you return to Texas, I’ve arranged continued sessions.
Consider this your payment for the damages you caused.
No conversation. No asking what’s really going on. No wanting to mend this fucked-up relationship between us—nothing. Just more business—his image, my image—that in turn is still his image.
I crumple the paper in my fist until it’s a ball and then throw it across the room.
Rose walks in behind me, heels clicking against the hardwood floors.
She pauses when she sees my face. “Mason…”
I look down. “Don’t.”
She sighs, like dealing with me and him is exhausting to her. “Your father is trying to help you.”
“He’s trying to help himself,” I mutter.
If he wanted to help, he’d be a better dad.
“He’s giving you an opportunity,” she presses. “Do you know how many people would be grateful for—”
I cut her off, voice sharp and annoyed now. “If you say one more thing, I’m gonna lose whatever respect I’ve ever forced myself to have for you.”
Her mouth tightens, and we just stare at each other for a moment. Then she turns and walks away without saying anything else.
I stand there in the quiet kitchen, leaning against the counter with the empty envelope in my hand still, trying to understand why this is the life I got handed.
I got up this early to go on a run, not to get spat in the face with having to go to therapy required by a man who needs it more than anyone else.
* * *
Therapy is pretty much exactly what I expected—a place made to make you feel comfortable enough to get you to spill all your trauma to some stranger.
My therapist is a woman in her forties, maybe.
Her dark, black hair is always pulled back in a slick ponytail that looks like it hurts.
She has this calming presence, I assume is a job requirement, and she always has her notebook on her lap, ready to write down anything I say that can tell her what’s wrong with me.
I’ve already been here a few times, and probably have said all of ten sentences total to her.
I don’t have anything to talk about.
I don’t want to be here.
I don’t need this.
I don’t need therapy.
What is it gonna do? Magically make me be okay with having a shitty father who has never loved me? Magically erase all the fucked up things that have happened in my life? Magically give me back a childhood I never got to experience?
Yeah, okay. This is beyond pointless.
“How have you been since last week?” she asks.
I shrug. “Fine.”
“Would you like to finally talk about what happened at your father’s office?”
“No…not really.”
“Mason,” she says gently, “you broke personal items and destroyed a lot of property. That level of anger doesn’t come from nowhere.”
“It came from him,” I say flatly.
“From your father?”
“Where else would it come from?” I snap. It’s not at her, just at the absurdity of that question.
Of course it’s from him.
“What has he done to make you so angry?”
I clench my jaw, needing somewhere for the irritation to go. The urge to either explode or shut down completely is showing up quickly today.
She sits there and watches me, waiting for an answer, one I don’t feel like giving her.
“He’s a piece of shit. Put that in your notes.”
“You’re pretty angry today, Mason. More than I’ve seen before.”
I lean back on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. “Yeah. No shit.”
“Why?”
“Because I am every day,” I tell her. “Because the one person that made my life bearable is dead, and the one person that makes it hell is still alive…still making it his mission to make it worse.”
Her expression softens. “You miss your mom…”
I hate how obvious and pathetic she makes it sound. She’s not even asking me; she’s just stating it like it’s written on my forehead, like I’m a little kid still, crying for his dead mother to come back home.
“Whatever,” I say flatly.
She waits again for me to say more, and the silence that fills the room feels so suffocating—God, I hate it.
I shift in the chair, jaw clenched. “You know what…sometimes I think I’m more mad at her than anything.”
“Tell me about that.”
I laugh bitterly. “Tell you about what? About being mad at my dead mother? Hating myself for being mad at her? Fuck…I don’t know why I’m mad at her sometimes. I’m just mad at her for leaving me. For staying with him when she was still alive. For all of it.”
I get up, not being able to sit still, and pace the room behind the couch. “She was the only one who ever protected me, yet she kept me around him my entire childhood…for what? Stability? At what fucking cost? My sanity?”
She stays quiet, knowing that if she speaks now, I might stop.
“Did she actually love me? How could she not see what he was doing to me? To her? To our family?”
I lean against the couch, tapping my foot against the base.
“Why would someone like her be with a man like that?” I say, the words coming out faster now. “I will never understand it. He destroys everything he touches. Everything!”
She still doesn’t interrupt, so I keep going.
“And she let him destroy me,” I say, my voice shaking with the anger I’ve held in for years. “She knew what he was. She knew…and she stayed.”
My palms are getting sweaty from the heat and irritation rising in my body.
“She stayed long enough for him to get his hands on me, get in my head, get in every part of who I am.” I let out a laugh that almost sounds hysterical. “Then she died and left me alone with him to finish the job.”
My eyes sting, and I blink hard like I can shove it all back down, but it’s too late; it’s out now.
“Didn’t even stay to protect me from him. That man hates me and has made that very clear my entire life. What did I ever do to him? Just exist? What makes me so fucking unlovable? What makes me never enough for him? I’m never fucking enough to him! No matter what I do to try to please him.”
The therapist’s voice is softer when she speaks. “That’s a lot of pain to carry alone.”
“Don’t—don’t do that,” I say, shaking my head, rejecting any pity.
“Do what?”
“Make it sound like I’m some tragic story,” I snap, wiping at my face aggressively. “I’m not.”
She gives me a second to gather myself before she says anything else.
“You’ve been surviving for a long time, Mason. But you don’t have to do it the way you’ve been doing it.”
My shoulders shake with a bitter laugh. “What way is that?”
“The way where you turn everything into anger,” she says. “The way where you punish yourself for being hurt.”
I walk over to the door and lean against the wall, feeling agitated. “Great diagnosis. Is there some pill to fix that?”
“No,” she says simply.
“Of course there isn’t,” I mutter.
She sets her notebook down on the side table instead of writing anything else.
“But there are ways to understand why you cope the way you do,” she continues. “Ways to stop hurting yourself in the process.”
I scoff. “I’m not hurting myself.”
She looks at me for a long second. Not judging, just…
observing, challenging that statement. “You’ve talked about turning to alcohol when the pain feels overwhelming.
You’ve described violence. Isolation. Self-loathing.
Those are all ways of hurting yourself, Mason, even if they don’t leave visible marks. ”
I push off the wall, irritated. “So what, now I’m just an addict and a violent mess with daddy issues? That about cover it?”
She doesn’t take my bait. “I think you’re a man who learned very early that anger was safer than sadness,” she says. “Anger gives you control. Sadness makes you feel small.”
“That’s bullshit,” I say through my teeth.
“Is it?” She leans back. “You told me your father hates you. Do you believe that?”
“Yes,” I answer immediately.
“Why?”
Because he’s never said he loves me. Because everything I do is wrong. Because he only shows up when I embarrass him. Because he hurts everyone smaller than him.
“Because if he did, he wouldn’t treat me the way he does.”
She nods. “And your mother?”
“What about her?” I ask defensively.
“You said she was the one person who made life bearable growing up.”
“She was.”
“And yet,” she says carefully, “you’re angry at her too.”
This bitter laugh leaves me. “Congratulations. You’re just saying what I’ve already said.”
“Can both things be true?” she asks. “That she loved you deeply—and that she failed to protect you?”
I open my mouth to argue, but nothing comes out at first. I don’t want them both to be true.
“I don’t want to hate her or be mad at her.” I pause, not even wanting to voice that. “I feel like if I let myself be mad at her, then I lose the only good thing I had growing up.”
Her voice softens. “Sometimes anger is grief’s last defense.”
I run a hand through my hair and exhale slowly. “I don’t know how to do this,” I admit. “I don’t know how to feel all this shit without drowning in it.”
“That’s not something you learn overnight. Especially when no one ever taught you how.”
I shake my head. “I don’t even know why my dad made me do this. He would just say this is weak—feeling, talking about feeling, trying to heal. He would say that I’m weak for needing it. Maybe that’s why he did it, to prove that I am.”
She meets my eyes. “What do you think?”
“I think I’m tired.”
She nods. “Then maybe this isn’t about fixing you. Maybe it’s about giving you somewhere to put the weight you’ve been carrying.”
I don’t respond.
After a moment, she glances at the clock. “We’re almost out of time.”
I straighten up instantly at that, relieved and annoyed at the same time.
“As much as I’d love to stay and bare more of my soul to you,” I mutter, “I’ve got places to be.”
She smiles faintly, like she knows that’s bullshit.
“Before you go,” she says, “I want you to think about one thing this week.”
I pause at the door. “What?”
“What would it look like if the anger wasn’t the enemy—what if it was a cue?”
I snort. “That sounds like something you put on a motivational poster.”
“Maybe,” she agrees with a faint smile. “But think about it. Signals and cues are easier to recognize than emotions you don’t understand yet.
Signals alert us that something is happening, and then we use the tools that work best for us individually to help give the brain and body what it’s actually needing instead of turning to something destructive that just turns all the signals off. ”
I open the door and salute her as I turn to leave. “I’ll try, I guess.”
As I step out into the hallway, my phone buzzes in my pocket.
Bash: Checking in
My fingers hover over the screen, debating whether to lie or not.
Mason: Still breathing…barely