27. Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-seven
Matt
“How have you been feeling since Carter and Casey left?” Dr. Singh asks.
It’s a harder question than the three he’s already asked - Do you have time for us to do a session? Would you like a snack? How about a drink?
I draw my knees up, letting my bunny rest in the dip between my stomach and thighs. I adjust his big ears and start to stroke them.
“Matt? How have you been feeling since Carter and Casey left?”
I shrug.
“Do you want to use your feelings chart, maybe?”
I dart my eyes over to my notebook where my own chart is. He has the bigger one on the coffee table, too, beside all of my other resources.
I force myself to grab my wipe-off board and put the little flag up to show him that I want to answer, I just need time.
I don’t have to look at the chart. I’ve looked at it a lot since they left.
I feel like too many of the words. At the same time, not a single one of them feels right for what’s happening inside of me.
It’s like I’m a round peg and the hole is round too, so I should fit, but the hole is full of spikes.
I see the words and I know I’m feeling them, but they scrape against my skin when I try to get close.
Just like when I laughed.
It had felt so, so good to laugh.
Then the sound had died down and everyone went back to life as normal and I felt empty.
I felt emptier than ever before.
I’m careful with my marker, not wanting to get the black on my bunny.
I read over my words, NOT RIGHT TOO MANY, then lift my board to show it to him. The movement gets his attention.
“Too many words, like you’re having a difficult time reading them or narrowing the choices down?” he asks, putting a single finger up. “Or too many feelings?” He adds another finger.
I think about the chart.
I put up one finger. Then, when he’s about to speak, I put up the second. He pauses and watches as I go back down to one, then up to two again.
“Too many words and too many feelings?”
I nod.
Then I put my flag back up and write, FIT WRONG.
He relaxes, like it’s a relief to understand. “So you have a lot of feelings about them leaving, and you have a lot of words that connect to those feelings, but there’s nothing that feels exactly right?”
My face twitches, trying to remember how to smile. I nod a lot. Over and over.
He smiles for the both of us.
“That happens sometimes. I wish there was a word for that. Overwhelmed is kind of close, right? But you’re only overwhelmed by all of the emotions, not overwhelmed by the situation itself, so it doesn’t exactly fit. Just an example.”
I nod again.
“Well, then, fuck words. Let’s draw it.”
How would I draw it?
There must be something on my face that tells him I don’t understand because he laughs and says, “I know, it sounds crazy. Let’s just try it.”
I figure it’s worth a shot, so I work on wiping my board clean while he goes to his bookcase and grabs a plastic bin. He shuffles some things on the coffee table with his free hand until there’s an open space for him to take out a stack of paper and a plastic pencil box and set them down.
“There’s a cushion, if you want to use it to sit on the ground,” he says, gesturing to where a big floor pillow is at the side of the couch. “But you can stay where you are, too. You can use the back of your wipeoff board as a table. Or I can get a clipboard. Whatever you’d like.”
It seems easiest to use the table, so I place my bunny and board to the side and slide down. The floor isn’t that bad. I’m used to the hard feel of it, but he frowns at me, so I grab the cushion to make him feel better. It’s nice. Fluffy.
“So, I’m going to show you a few examples. You don’t have to do yours like these, you can draw absolutely anything you want, but just to give you an idea or two.”
He places a plain piece of paper down. Well, plain on the back. One it’s facing up on the table, I can see it has a swirl of colors on it. So many colors, circling and zig-zagging.
“That is how I felt the night we found out Carter was taken,” he explains. I can see that. I can’t explain it, I think because there isn’t just one word for it. It’s chaos. It’s the feelings chart all tangled together. But I can feel it. I can feel in my chest what he was feeling.
“And this is how I felt when Travis was able to buy him,” he says, placing the next one down. It’s a sunrise, the sun bright and yellow as it shines over a body of water. It’s not the best, he’s not an artist, but it’s enough to get the point across.
Except, there’s a storm cloud in the corner, dark and - and - I can’t remember the word I want. The word for when bad things are going to come. But it's that word.
It’s a fragile moment of relief, just a chance to catch your breath before the next storm comes.
Ominous. That’s the word I wanted. The picture is bright relief, but that cloud moving in overhead is dark and ominous.
“Do you see where I was maybe coming from with these?”
I nod. I do. I see.
“Do you think you could try to draw me how you’ve been feeling since Carter and Casey left, Matt?”
I eye the stack of fresh papers, then the pencil box. I nod, tentatively this time. I can at least try.
“Would you mind if I put on a sound machine while you work? Silence can be very loud sometimes, but sometimes it can be nice. Do you want sound?” he asks, putting one finger up. “Or silence.” Another finger to make two.
I consider it before signing, What? and putting one finger up.
“What sounds?” he asks. I nod. “Well, the speaker is connected to my phone, so really any sounds you’d like.
I can list some that are most popular with other clients, though.
Let’s see.” He tilts his body and pulls a phone out of his back pocket.
I open the pencil box as he does whatever he needs to do on it, surveying my choices.
There’s a mix of colored pencils, markers, and crayons.
“There’s a forest at night, ocean waves, a babbling creek, a waterfall, a thunderstorm, basically all nature sounds.” He tilts his head at me. “You know what? You pick. No reason for us to assign fingers or write the whole list or anything. Here.”
He hands over his phone. The playlist is called Calm Down.
Kind of on the nose, but I guess I’m biased.
I’ve been exploring Ace’s iPod more, looking at the other playlists he has on there.
Nothing really holds up against playlist names like Femme Fatale Gone Country and Keaton’s Taste in Music Sucks.
I don’t know who Keaton is, but I sort of see where Ace is coming from on that one. Keaton’s taste in music is too loud, too furious, too sad. Keaton’s taste in music feels black and brittle.
I hope whoever Keaton is, he doesn’t feel black and brittle. Or, if he does, I hope him knowing Ace makes his life a little brighter. Ace is sunshine, after all. He’s magic.
“We don’t have to listen to anything either, if you don’t want to,” Dr. Singh offers.
I shake my head, focusing on the actual contents of the playlist. I pause on the fourth one down, considering. I’ve always liked rain, but I’m not sure I want thunder - even just pretend thunder - so I skip that one. Two more down, though, is the rainforest. I think the rainforest would be nice.
Actually having to explain to him that I choose the rainforest feels like a lot of work, though, so I take a chance and select the option without explicit permission.
I think I trust him enough to tell me if that’s the wrong thing to do.
That’s what we’re supposed to be doing here, isn’t it? Building trust, communicating.
He just smiles as the music begins to play, saying, “Rainforest. Good choice,” as he accepts his phone back.
I shrug and duck my head.
He keeps the sound going.
He picks up a battered book of crosswords from the corner of the coffee table, crosses one leg over the other, and grabs the pen from behind his ear. I watch him, waiting for… something.
Except, he’s just… doing the crossword, I think.
Yeah.
Yeah, he’s definitely just doing the crossword.
Okay.
So, I need to draw how I feel.
I try not to think of the feelings chart. I try not to think of words. I try not to really think at all.
How have I been feeling? Emptied, mostly.
Sort of blank. I keep feeling like a ghost. Like I’m stuck between being dead and being like the others.
I’m not all the way gone, not swallowed up by the darkness yet, but I’m not in the light either.
I thought maybe I could be, after helping Nolan with Maison, but that was stupid. That was just pretend.
There are birds in the rainforest noise. They sound happy. Free.
Free, like Carter and Casey.
Free, like Nolan - and probably Bryce - will be soon.
Free, like someone like me, someone dead, someone not real, can never be.
On the feelings chart, there isn’t free - but there’s liberated.
Liberated is a shade of yellow. That’s probably fitting. I bet the feeling of liberation is like sunshine on your skin. I bet it’s warm.
I don’t feel yellow at all.
I pick up a pencil and begin to color the paper. I’m careful, using the same pressure for every smooth stroke across the page. When I’ve finished it, there are no darker and lighter areas, no shades. It’s just an empty space of a static gray.
This is what I feel like. I live here. I am caught in the in-between. The gray area. Not black, but not white either. Not dead, but not alive. It’s a tightrope with a blindfold on. One wrong step could make me slip, the half-ghost becoming a full one.
But I will slip, eventually. No one can walk a tightrope blindfolded. Not for long, at least. There’s no scenario where I escape to something lighter. I am in the in-between, but there’s only one direction for me to go.
I will just be gray, until I’m swallowed up by the black instead.
Something wet lands on the paper, darkening the grey. I have a surreal moment where I think that it heard my thoughts somehow. Like it’s agreed that there is no hope and is ready to drag me further into the dark.
Then I realize I’m just crying.