OUT

Chapter 25

Thursday, December 11th 2014

'So tell me, what do you want to start with?'

Jack stared back in silence at the woman who sat before him as his head flooded with thoughts. The older married man he had been with the week before. The fact that he had kissed his male housemate. The fact that he had been a dick to a girl he wasn't into that had been pursuing him. The fact that he hadn't really made any friends yet in college. His parents actively campaigning against gay marriage even though Jack wasn't sure if he himself was into men. 'My brother killed himself,' he blurted out suddenly, shocking even himself as the tears started to form in his eyes, 'and I found his body.'

For a moment the woman in front of him, the therapist recommended by the very man he would probably have to talk to her about, didn't speak. She nodded silently and waited to see if he'd continue. He didn't. For the first time Jack properly noted his surroundings. He was in a small dimly lit room, with a sunset lamp in the corner that cast a calming orange tint across the room. There was a huge bookshelf in the corner, stacked to the brim with books and little knick knacks, as well as a few potted plants dotted across the room, an incense burner, and a framed Masters' Degree on the wall that he couldn't read from this far away.

The room felt more like a yoga studio than a therapist's office. He wasn't sure what he had expected, something more clinical perhaps? White walls, and a long chaise longue couch like you see in the American movies. This looked like the sitting room of a tree-hugging stoner. It wasn't exactly what he thought therapy would be like.

'I'm sorry to hear that. Was this recently, Jack?' she finally asked, snapping him back to reality.

'Yeah...Well, no. I was twelve at the time. I'm eighteen now.'

'OK. And do you think about your brother often?'

He paused for a moment. 'Not really. I mean, sort of. Kinda.'

'Kinda?'

'I didn't really know him that well. I was so young. I don't really remember a lot of him...I just remember finding him in the barn.'

'I'm sorry to hear that this happened Jack. That's an awfully traumatic thing to experience at any age, but especially at such a developmental stage of your life. I'm sure that was very difficult for you.'

'Yeah. It was. He...he was...' They sat in silence for a moment as he gathered his thoughts. Jack didn't usually like awkward silences, but this felt different. He almost welcomed it. 'He hung himself,' he finally said after a few moments, breaking the stillness in the room, 'I found him hanging from the rafters in the barn near where we keep the lambs. He was still...and so pale.'

She nodded her head slowly as Jack spoke, and he felt himself back in the barn, back in his twelve year old self's shoes. Running to tear his brother down from the roof as he screamed in horror at the sight before him. Struggling to lift his brother's weight and untie him and instead clinging to the lifeless corpse as it hung suspended in the air. Getting sick on the ground and struggling to keep his balance as his legs turned to jelly. Screaming and crying into his brother's trousers and roaring for help. Roaring for his parents, for what felt like hours but couldn't have been longer than twenty minutes, until his father finally came and took his brother down. 'Jack?' He felt his eyes refocus and he shook his head to right himself. 'I asked if you suffer from flashbacks...Nightmares, or images flashing into your head randomly?'

'Sometimes. I remember passing someone in the street that was wearing the same aftershave my brother wore. And I remember seeing him hanging again, this time he was in a shop front, only he wasn't actually there. Like a hallucination.'

'Was this recently?' she asked, and he nodded.

'In the last year or two, yeah.'

'Well Jack, it's very normal to have these reactions a few days after a traumatic event. But for them to persist years later is something I'd be concerned about because it insinuates that this trauma has had quite the impact, which is unsurprising giving the situation. Have you talked about this with anyone before?'

'Like, professionally?' She nodded and he shook his head. 'No. I spoke briefly to a friend about it at the funeral. But that's it.'

'Not your parents?'

He shook his head again, 'we never really discussed it ever again after that day. They were very upset. I remember my dad crying a lot. I'd never seen him cry before, or since...A few hours later my mam found us and she called the ambulance. The rest is kind of a blur.'

The suicide wasn't something that was ever discussed in their household. His parents had practically erased his brother from memory because they couldn't even bring themselves to say his name without wincing. The pictures across the walls were the only remnant that he ever even existed, but most of them had been taken down. That was typical Irish families for you though - pushing the elephant in the room under the rug and pretending the massive mound wasn't there. Suppressing mental illness and acting like it wasn't a thing. Pretending it hadn't torn their family apart.

'Here you go,' said the therapist, handing him a box of tissues - he hadn't even noticed his eyes were streaming now.

'Thanks,' said Jack, forcing a weak smile and blowing his nose as he brushed the tears away with the back of his hand, 'I used to be so mad at him, you know? For leaving me. He didn't even write a note. I miss him. Or at least the idea of him, and what he could be for me if he was still with us.'

'And what would that be?'

'Someone to talk to. Someone to confide in. I don't really get on with my parents. I don't like them. My mam locked his room after it happened and the door hasn't been opened since. All his stuff is still there, like he's still alive, like one day I'll just go home and he'll be out in the yard with dad.'

'It's normal to be angry, Jack. That's a very valid emotion for such a traumatic experience. How do you feel talking about it now with me?'

'Sad.' She observed him in silence, and he hung onto the word for a moment. 'Sad,' he repeated with a nod, 'but good too? Relieved. I miss him. I get that's why my parents don't talk about it. Because it makes them depressed. But we just act like he never existed. And that makes me sad.'

'Again Jack, these are all very valid emotions. A lot of the time, people suffering from PTSD display avoidant behaviours around trauma. They'll get so anxious at even the thought of discussing or acknowledging it, that they compartmentalise it entirely. And this manifests in various ways; trouble concentrating, trouble sleeping, trouble regulating emotions...Does that sound familiar?'

'Sounds like my mam.'

'You don't have trouble sleeping? Or concentrating?' He shook his head. 'You mentioned your relationship with your parents is turbulent. Oftentimes when someone is suppressing a traumatic subject like this, it's because they-'

'Sometimes I'm afraid I'm going to kill myself,' he said calmly, cutting across her.

She furrowed her brows and after a moment she cleared her throat, 'how frequently do you have these ideations?'

'A bit...Usually late at night if I'm lying in bed and thinking.'

'Thinking about what, Jack? Your brother?'

He shook his head. She observed him silently.

Say it.

He had come here to discuss the identity crisis he was having around his sexuality, and had somehow discussed his brother's suicide for the last hour. He needed to say it.

Say it. Tell her.

'I feel like I'm a bad person. Nobody likes me. I don't even think I like me. And I don't know who I am. Sometimes it'd just be easier to not exist. To not have these worries. About the future. And what my life will be like. And if I'll be happy...Suicide would at least mean escaping that. And maybe I'd actually do it, if I wasn't such a coward.'