How We Found Us | ✔️

Chapter Thirty

Doctor Daniels sat in her high backed chair, one leg crossing over her knee, with a notepad balanced on top. For almost an hour, I sat in front of her, spilling my soul to her. I'd seen her three times a week, for two weeks, after we returned from the cruise. There needed to be an outlet other than Riley in which I could unleash my fears.

"I don't understand why it bothers me so much that George is getting married!" I said after I finished telling her about the cruise, for the thousandth time. For some reason I never called Georgie, Georgie when I was in session. It didn't seem right. Like it was too informal for a therapy session.

Doctor Daniels nodded and noted something in her notepad. It always made me nervous when she did that, like she was secretly planning to ship me off to the looney bin. My hands wiped against my jeans, hoping to keep the sweat from building on the palms. She wrote again before looking back to me and nodded.

"Why do you think that is?"

I snorted. She always did that. Bounced my questions back at me. It was her way of trying to get me to come up with the answers myself. During our first session, when I called her out on it, she said she couldn't give me the answers. That would be too simple and wouldn't help me. While she could help guide me, I ultimately had to come up with the solutions myself. The problem was, I honestly didn't know why it bothered me to see Georgie getting married.

"I keep trying to figure that out." I sighed. "But its like every time I ask myself the question, I feel guilty."

"Why guilty?"

Doctor Daniels was a nice woman. I genuinely liked her, even with her hair looking too tightly wound in her high bun. I hated her hair. It didn't suit her round face. It made her look like she should be a librarian, not a shrink. There was never a strand out of place. The cherry hair was smoothed to perfection against her skull. Every session was the same. Even her outfit had little variation between the black, beige, and brown pantsuits.

"Riley says it's because I'm angry at myself for being jealous."

"Do you think Riley is right?"

"Sometimes." I shrugged. "He's been trying to help me take my mind off it, and then I feel guilty for that. Like I'm bothering him with my stupid problems."

"Your problems aren't stupid, Chloe."

I chuckled. "That's what Riley says."

Doctor Daniels smiled and made another note in her notepad. I was positive if I ever glanced at that pad it would be filled either with doodles or multiple phrases that all meant Chloe Rossen was completely, unquestionable, insane. Her eyes lifted from the notepad to me. I wasn't sure how to describe her eyes. They weren't quite a brown, but they weren't really gold. Maybe amber would adequately explain the color. It was funny. Ever since I read the book Eleanor gave me for Christmas, I often studied a person's eyes when given time to stare at them. Not because of their color, per say, but also their shape.

The eyes belonging to my therapist were more oval then they were round. There had to be at least traces of Asian heritage in those eyes. Her eyes didn't match the rest of her fair skin and dark cherry hair.

"We're almost out of time, Chloe."

"Can I ask you one question that you will answer and not throw it back at me to come up with the solution on my own?"

"As long as I don't think you need to find the answer yourself, then yes."

"How can I be happy for George, but also jealous?"

Doctor Daniels took a deep breath and tapped her pencil eraser against her thick lips. I glanced to the clock, there was less than ten minutes left in the session. It would be our last week with multiple sessions as my school load picked up too much. There was a part of me that wished we could continue with multiple sessions in a week, I felt loose after them. Free.

"It would be simple for me to say it's a matter of you wanting what you think you can't have," she said. "Right now, you think you deserve every minute of the unhappiness you feel. You've told me several times you don't deserve your friends. This means you also don't think you deserve love. If you can't have friendship, how can you have love? Both are equally imperative in a relationship. What you see in George, is something you want. It's something you desire more than you realize. Your jealousy is a manifestation of that. Because you don't think you deserve what he has, it makes you angry. Angry for wanting it and angry for being upset he has it. It's easy to be torn between two emotions especially for your best friend. You covet what he has, even if you don't know it. There's nothing wrong with what you're feeling, Chloe."

"It feels wrong." I wiped the tear threatening to roll against my cheek.

"Because he's your best friend. You don't want to be angry with him for moving on with his life, for growing up when you feel you're stagnant. I see hundreds of students like you every year, Chloe. There is one thing I know for sure, you're normal. All these feelings in you are one-hundred-percent normal. As soon as you can accept that and stop punishing yourself for having feelings, then you'll start to recover. Until then, there's not much either of us can do. I can be here to listen and try to help you sort through the confusion, but ultimately you have to accept yourself first."

I closed my eyes to cover my rolling them. "That's kind of a lame answer. I have to accept myself before I can move on? Bullshit."

Doctor Daniels chuckled. "I've heard that response before too. Here's what I know, Chloe. You're frightened. Frightened because of George growing, frightened of what Riley makes you feel, frightened of being alone because you think you're pushing everyone way. You're also stubborn. The only reason you're still coming here is because Riley brings you. If he stopped, you'd stop. That doesn't mean I'm not still helping you, I'm sure I am. It simply means you aren't yet ready to accept certain aspects of your life. These are aspects that you will eventually have to face. Even if you're not ready to."

The timer on her desk rang, signaling the end of her session. I both hated and loved that sound. It meant I was free to escape the dreary confines of her awesome. And it made me scared because the session was over. Her office was only dreary because of the pain I left behind in it.

"I'm selfish," I muttered.

Doctor Daniels closed her notepad, smiling as she stood to set it on the desk. I pulled the hair off my shoulders and wiped my hands over my cheeks, making sure no rouge tears remained.

"You're not necessarily selfish, Chloe. You're a twenty-year-old woman who simply doesn't know who she is yet. Deciding on a major was only your first step, and a big one. Now you have to figure out what it means to be Chloe Rossen and who she's going to be."

I turned to the door and stopped when my hand rested on the cold handle. Doctor Daniels was putting my file away and pulling another from the locked cabinets behind her desk.

"For the record," I said, "you are helping me."

"Then stop feeling like you're not worth my trouble. Or Riley's trouble. Or George, or Cassandra, or anyone else's trouble." She waived. "Eventually I hope to make it easy for you to do just that."

Honestly, I was hoping it would become easy to do that as well. I was tired of being sad and tired of feeling alone even when I knew I wasn't.