𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧, young royals

17: Breakdown

17: Breakdown

Secrecy was at every root of my family tree.

Or you could say lies were the yarn weaving my family together. We
burried our mistakes and hedged our emotions, and we called that privacy. Without all the lies, we would've almost been just like any other regular family.

I thought it was particularly ironic that I was now sitting in a shrink's office and expected to verbalize everything that was happening in my head.  Whatever happened to keeping things private?

"Your parents have expressed to me their concerns with your emotional outbursts," spoke Boris, setting his cup on the glass table with a light thud.

"Sure they have," I mumbled, sinking into the wingback chair.

Boris was the student therapist at Hillersks, and he was the spitting cliché of a shrink. Old guy, maybe in his late fifties, with a shiny bald forehead, reading glasses, and one of those uncomfortably thick and ugly wool sweaters.  The kind of person you'd imagine sips chai every night before bed while reading scholarly articles and who probably has the words carpe diem framed in his bathroom.

"You must know," he uttered serenely, "that everything you tell me is strictly confidential. Your parents will only be made aware of whether you show up to your appointments or not."

I lifted a brow.

"Everything?" I repeated.

He nodded once.

"Unless what you confide in me brings me concern that you could harm yourself or others, I cannot display any information from our session to your parents, Wilhelm." Boris flashed me that tender, elderly smile and showed me his open palms. "Which is why I won't be taking any notes whatsoever."

"So," I sighed listlessly, "if I don't say anything, they won't know?"

Boris clasped his hands in his lap, unfazed by my suggestion as he calmly shook his head. I was almost distraught by the patient look on his face, like he could've just sat there and waited until summer to listen to me speak. It wasn't like the usual pitying looks people shot me every day.

"No," he replied, "if it's what you wish, then you don't have to say anything. You're in control here."

I nodded.

"Okay. Cool," I said, tossing my head back to stare at the ceiling.

After that, the hour went by surprisingly quickly.  I guess I got to thinking after a few minutes of awkward silence.  Thinking about my parents and what they'd expect me to say during those meetings.

Did they want me to talk about my brother and the accident?  Maybe they thought if I wouldn't talk about it with them, I might toss in the subject with a total stranger.

Or maybe they didn't care what I said as long as whatever magic works in a therapist office did its deed on me.  As long as it fixed me.  I frankly doubted it would.

My problem ran deeper than words.  White blood, that was my problem.  Always at war, always countering what's bound to catch up to me in the end.  I'd been this way all my life, choking on a noose off my family tree.  Yet rivers in my veins, bound to no-where, swiveled in endless circles, a strict flow of following into past footsteps. That's the way it was in my family, and even at school, with all these traditions and hierarchies, we were prisoners of that current.

Erik had been, too.  At the end of the day, we had no choice.  Maybe that's what my parents wanted me to figure out in this office.