Light in the Shadows (Find You in the Dark #2)(8)
Author: A. Meredith Walters

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.

And for what? Because I thought, in my twisted head, that Maggie had betrayed me. I hadn’t been able to see that she was confused and scared and had really only been trying to help me. And that is where the guilt came in. Because it started that I had been thinking about Maggie and how for a brief second it had been the two of us, together, ready to take on anything. Then my mind went to that night. And all I could see was the darkness. The moment when all I wanted to do was die. And I had lost it. The panic attack swept me away in its merciless tide.

My anger picked up a notch. Why couldn’t I just think of Maggie? Why couldn’t I simply remember her without all the other nasty stuff, like guilt and shame and the soul sucking anguish? I only wanted to think of how much I loved that beautiful girl before I had turned our worlds upside down.

Maybe this was my punishment for being so weak and selfish. Karma was a vindictive jerk.

Because Maggie was my trigger. And it wasn’t a good one. And I hated that my f**ked up mind had taken something so wonderful and warped it into…well….something ugly. Something that only served to remind me of what I couldn’t have. Something that I was trying desperately to be healthy enough for but deep down worried I never would be. No one had ever accused me of being a Pollyanna. I was not a glass half full kind of guy. But Dr. Todd was hell bent on changing that. And damn it, I needed him to.

I growled in frustration and tugged at my hair. I struggled to take a deep breath and loosened the grip I had on my scalp. I could do this. I could work through this maze of crap.

After a few minutes I sat up and let my hands hang limp between my knees. “Tell me something positive about that event in your life. Think, Clay. Think really hard. The thing about the shadows is that they’re not all darkness. You need to have light to have shadows. So just look for it,” Dr. Todd encouraged me.

That was his mantra. Finding the light in the dark shadows inside me. He really should have T-shirts made or something. It made me think of a gospel choir raising their hands to the sky singing, “I’ve seen the light! Hallelujah I’ve seen the light!”

But I got what he was saying. But there were times it was impossible to do (with my natural pessimism and all). But I did as he asked this time. I thought hard about the good stuff.