Haunted by the past

Chapter Eighteen

The daily sessions with the doctor were slow. Little happened, he didn’t force her, but always seemed to leave her with a poignant question that made her think. Maddie didn’t want to think, but as the days became weeks she started to enjoy painting. She wasn’t good, but there was something rewarding about slapping oodles of black paint on paper, and even more satisfying was painting stick men, allocating them a character...usually her family, then smothering them with black paint.

                “Is that normal doctor?” She sat in his office and twiddled her thumbs.

He sighed in reply, “do you think it is?” When she merely shrugged, he added, “it’s a way of coping, a way of pushing them away.”

                “And you think this is another sign of me pushing away the past?”

He smiled wryly, “is it?”

                “I’ve spent enough time running from them.”

She wouldn’t let herself separate the elements of her family; they were one large blot on her landscape of her life.

 

She’d been at the unit for five weeks. Her leg and pelvis were healing well and she was up on her crutches far more than she had been. Maddie had also developed allies in Rose and Selena, both were broken, just like her, and once you stripped away the external things - money, clothes, age etc, they were all in exactly the same position. Rose had been in and out of centres like that one all her life, she had a form of personality disorder, and every time she approached crisis point, she would be readmitted, nipping it in the bud, so to speak. Selena had tried to kill herself, she’d been in a desperate place, but that was a while ago, this was her last stop before going back out into the world. Her breakdown had been due to school pressures, then her parents split. In group therapy she admitted that she’d tried to take her own life as she felt as though she was a burden to her parents, instead by doing what she did, well she’d caused them even more heartache and pain. And guilt.

                “Do you identify with that sentiment?” Doctor Michaels asked Maddie. She was the only one who didn’t share in group therapy.

When her eyes looked up at him he could see the same anger there that regularly appeared but never truly surfaced, she was an expert in bottling things up. “Do I feel a burden on my parents? Well Doctor Michaels, for that to be true they’d have to give a shit about me in the first place.”

He nodded then turned to the group, “what do you guys think?”

They discussed things for a while in the flowery way that group therapy did in Maddie’s eyes, then it was time to finish.

                “Maddie,” he called to her as she stood with her crutches desperate to escape. “Can you stay behind for a moment?”

She groaned, lowering herself back into her chair, hating that she broke into a childish scowl. He merely laughed. When they were alone he turned back to her, “ok, you win. Group therapy is no good for you.” When her eyes widened with scepticism he laughed, “I’m not an ogre, and I am happy to admit when things aren’t right...I get it, the thing is you are still unwilling to confront things Maddie, you know that, and that is what this is all about. I have a challenge for you. I want you to write down ten reasons why you think you’re here, why you aren’t home. We’ll discuss them tomorrow. Ok?”

Back in her room she sat on her bed and wanted to cry, homework was for children, but then tears, moaning would mean she was acting like a child...Ten reasons. It couldn’t be that hard.