Rip - Becoming Whole

Outcomes

Rip agreed with the psychiatrist's diagnosis of PTSD but not with that of anxiety, disordered eating and depression. He was no coward he told him, he had no desire to be thin and he knew what depression looked like. He had seen his mother go through phases where she was barely able to lift her head of her pillow. He will never forget how they had led her away into the ambulance looking like a zombie, while he and his grandmother, holding baby Nicky in her arms stood helplessly by.

Enraged, he told him in no uncertain terms that he hadn't got a clue what he was talking about and should go back to college. Poor Mr Dutton yet again had to manage his urge to drag the boy out of the doctor's office and bend him over the bonnet of his truck to give him a good licking. At this stage at least he was able to see it for what it was though, fear, but he had no idea what of.

Rip knew what had him scared. It was one thing to admit to a therapist who at this stage, he trusted to keep it to herself that he was afraid all the time, so much so that at times he was scared of living itself. But it was an entirely different thing to admit this to a doctor who had the power to lock you up. And it was just as uncomfortable to admit this in front his uncle. Rip's apparent fearlessness was something he knew his uncle liked about him and he wanted to keep it that way. He imagined there was little else likeable about himself. Mr Dutton had called him a Jackass a few times when yet again he had to tend to another of his nephew's wounds, that the boy got himself because he hadn't exercised due caution but there was always that glint in his uncle's eyes, secretly approving of Rip's willingness to go and test his own limitations.

The doctor of course did not even bash an eyelid. He was well used to youngsters like Rip and instead calmly explained his reasoning for his diagnosis. Anxiety he explained was about being afraid in situation when there was nothing to be afraid of because somehow they were reminders of a past experience that had been frightening at the time, he told them. Witnessing the murder of one's parent would do, he suggested coldly. Rip's anxiety he explained was merely part of his post-traumatic stress disorder. It had nothing to do with cowardness or the lack of courage at all. Quite the opposite really as people who had anxiety needed to be courageous all the time to just simply get through the day. They couldn't afford to be cowards, he told him. 'People who don't ever feel afraid, don't know what it means to be brave. Fear and being brave belong together, like heads and tails of the same coin," he insisted.

Putting the boy firmly in his place, he further advised that in his professional opinion, it is often the case that people who are anxious hide their fears behind angry outbursts and foolhardy acts of courage and risk taking. "Such as telling a man twice their size to go back to college for example", the psychiatrist smirked.

'Such as threatening to walk across a field with a volatile horse in it,' Mr Dutton would have liked to add but didn't. Come to think of it he could have volunteered an endless amount of such examples. He had to think about Rip riding Thunder, daringly, fearless, reckless even. He had never thought of it like that. He never asked himself that question. What is the boy trying to prove and more importantly, to whom?

"Teenage boys but many men too, and of course it's not exclusive to males either, are known to be prone to this," he suggested. "Society doesn't approve of us being vulnerable," he told Rip. Biting his lip, Rip had to think of Chrissy, who had made similar observations. Despite that however, he decided not to like the man.

Following the doctor's explanations Rip was slightly more agreeable about the diagnosis but did not entertain his insistence that medication would be beneficial to him. He wasn't having a bar of it. No way was he going to take anything that would 'alter' his mind and turn him into a zombie, he told him, or a monster he would have liked to add but didn't. He hadn't even liked it when he tried to smoke some weed that time.