All The Good Things

Chapter 13 - "Don't ask me."

Three Months Later

"How does one even define 'fun'?" Ash questioned as she looked up at the stark white ceiling of her therapist's office. "Fun at its core is personal. It's different for each person. I'm certain that things you would define as 'fun' are very different from things that I would define as 'fun'. But then we are back to our original question: what do I like to do for fun? We're going in circles."

She glanced at her therapist and found her staring straight back at her with a patient look. Ash was familiar with this look. It was the one Dr. Ellerson gave her whenever Ash was monologuing in order to avoid the real issue. It could be infuriating how competent her therapist was.

It had been three months since Ash had started therapy and she was still learning how to be completely honest.

For the first month of therapy, she had thought she had been making huge strides in dealing with her issues as she had recounted her whole past to Dr. Ellerson. She had thought that the simple act of telling someone everything would fix her.

Then they had entered the second month and Ash had discovered that telling her story had been the easy part. Dr. Ellerson wanted her to dig deeper into the residual emotions under the story and that was when Ash's coping mechanism of monologuing to avoid the issue had been brought into the spotlight.

Logically, her brain knew, and told her often, that she had a mountain of issues she needed help dealing with. But she had discovered the actual act of being honest and addressing the feelings behind it ran on a different track in her brain.

She would reason with herself in the days leading up to her weekly therapy appointment and arrive fully intending to open her mouth and let the truth spill out, but there was a rut in her brain that made it difficult to get the words out. Instead, she would focus on a word's meaning to avoid going deeper until she ran out of steam, and then Dr. Ellerson would ask the question again.

"What do you do for fun?" Dr. Ellerson asked her again.    

Ash let out a long breath as she stared back at the ceiling. She thought through all the things she did throughout her week. It didn't take her long to confirm what she had already suspected.

"I don't think I do anything for fun."

She went back further in her memory, wondering if she had any memories of having fun. But when she thought back to when she was still living with her dad she could only remember the fear and the basic human instinct to survive.

She thought about her early school days but she had been more concerned about avoiding the teacher's questions and her classmates' taunts. She had worked to be invisible.

It was the same once she had started working. Her only goal at her jobs was to keep the job to earn money in order to get away from her father.

A strange emotion began to rise up in her chest as she searched for past fun and came up empty-handed. It was a mixture of loss and sadness. It was uncomfortable and she didn't like it. She sat up.

"Who says you need to have fun anyways?" she said. "There are more important things in life to focus on."

Dr. Ellerson clasped her hands together and rested them on the desk. Ash caught the movement and her shoulders dropped. In the last three months, she had learned Dr. Ellerson's physical tells and the 'clasped hands' had become one she disliked.

The 'clasped hands' signaled that Dr. Ellerson knew that Ash was avoiding deeper emotions but Dr. Ellerson would be patient and wait. That was another one of Dr. Ellerson's qualities that Ash wasn't always fond of. Dr. Ellerson was patient. It made it hard for Ash to avoid her feelings, which she supposed was probably a good trait of a therapist.