Love Is Ǝvil

13 I Just Want You To Be Normal

"You've been silently brooding for the last twenty minutes." His therapist spoke quietly, but it sounded harsh in the silence of the room.

Marshall looked up. "Sorry." His thumb still stroked his right wrist, stroked the tattooed words and the scars underneath like he had done for the past, well, twenty minutes.

She smiled kindly. "Do you want to fill me in on your thoughts? Perhaps you could use a different perspective on whatever it is that's troubling you today."

He sighed heavily. "It's the same thing that's always troubling me."

"I assumed as much. But it doesn't seem like your brooding gets you anywhere for now, maybe a fresh perspective can help. So, what exactly is troubling you?"

"I know your perspective." Not one he was keen on.

She continued to smile kindly at him.

Another heavy sigh. "I'm not fine", he admitted to her. Saying this now was different from the other night at the gym. Her he knew and more importantly she knew him. That made everything different. It felt even more like defeat.

"That's okay. No one can be fine all the time. Sometimes life just hurts and we feel weak and everything seems like it's going to be bad forever. That's normal. Don't force yourself to be something you aren't. When you're not fine, you're not fine. That's okay."

He shook his head slightly. "Maybe. Lately I've been ... ever since ... I mean", he took a deep breath. Just because he should be talking about this and he should get a grip on this, didn't mean saying these words out loud was easy. It very much wasn't. What did she always say, when he couldn't get the words out? Start small and work through to the big things. "You remember the guy I told you about? With the tattoo on his shoulder blades?"

She nodded silently, not to interrupt his story.

"Then you remember, that he broke my rule ... or I let him break it, I don't know. Whatever. That night, I ... I cried myself to sleep. And I have been ever since." He bit his lip. "And last week, he broke another rule ... and ... and ... It takes everything I have to not write him back and see him again." Even though he was angry at Nicolas and that asshole should go to hell, he still felt a hot rush in his blood whenever he thought back to the few nights they've had. Getting ordered into a blowjob really turns you, hu. You kinky, girl! He shouldn't want that son of a bitch. Didn't he deserve better? "What's wrong with me?"

"There's nothing wrong with you", she said with her soft voice. "You like what you like. If you like to be with another man, then why would that be wrong? As far as I know, you don't really believe the homophobic rhetoric your lyrics sometimes reproduce. Or do you?"

He shook his head. "No, I don't. It doesn't matter what people like in bed or whatever. Either you're a good person or you're not, who you like doesn't matter for that. It's just ... I don't know ... It's different, when it's me?"

"Why would it be different when it's you?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. It just feels different."

"How does it feel to you?", she pressed.

"I ..." How could he say that? Just say it: you're calling yourself a girl in your head, a slut, fag, bitch, homo and you looove sucking dick. He didn't want to put it into words, to make it even more real. It's already pretty real. Ask your ass, it's still pining for that sweet dick of your boo. Even if she was a therapist and trained in understanding sick people like him, this was just too much. "It's ... Like, it's not something I would - I should do, you know. I shouldn't do stuff like this, I shouldn't be like this. That's not ... that's not who I should be."