Air

Flashback

"Your Father is paying a lot of money for these sessions" she says this with a kind of disbelief in her voice, like she can't believe that my mother or anyone for that fact would be foolish enough to pay her any kind of money.

She continues however "he's paying a lot of money for you to open up and so far I'm having about as much luck as I did that one time in the south of France with a stubborn mussel." It's truly amazing, a miracle even, that these pointless and unsuccessful therapy sessions are paying for this woman's life of luxury - where eating stubborn mussels in the south of France becomes a comparison to conclude to when sitting in front of a supposedly troubled girl.

I look around at her completely hoarded and mismatched living room. The stacks of intricate cloth bound books, probably costing a small fortune at one time, now acting as make shift tables, decorative art deco glass wear and decanters containing liquors from a life time ago and stubbed out cigarette butts. I imagine when not living her life of luxury, Irene too sits in this worn out blue cord arm chair that I'm now cross legged and swallowed up within and smokes away at her own feelings and bottled up words. Her long and wispy greying ginger hair, half bun, half falling down her spine. Held in place by only a black biro or perhaps, I imagine, sometimes it's an ornate chopstick that she has picked up on her travels to other countries or into other's rooms and lives and minds. I imagine Irene to know the secrets of the world, to be useless at this therapy malarkey not because she hasn't got insight or experience but because she should be doing something else entirely. Like tea leaf reading or raising Indian elephants. She has that aurora about her, this kind of sense that reaches out in empathy, because Irene has seen the world and felt all the things there ever are to feel and you sat awkwardly in this blue cord chair are just another molecule that fuels and feeds her exotic and amazing lifestyle.

"You want to know what happened to that mussel?" she brings me back from my trance and for the first time ever in a session I look her directly in the eye. She looks genuinely taken aback and lifts her chained glasses that always hang disorganised around her neck to the bridge of her nose as though to take in the improvements of todays session.

Session 10 – week 5: Iris makes eye contact.

A part of me hates wasting two hours of my week. Another part of me secretly enjoys wasting the hefty sum of money that my dad feels obliged to put forward – because he seems to justify living with the motto 'when you can't be arsed to talk to them, pay for them' But then there's this other part of me, the bit that I don't admit to anyone, sometimes not even myself, that thinks 'isn't it nice to be able to sit here in this worn out chair that needs some serious upholstering and just breathe?' This cramped room in many ways makes me feel warm and safe. It's different to my house where bad memories and visions stay compressed into the corners of the rooms.

I Like the relaxed sense of being that I get. It overwhelms me that I can just sit here and breathe breath that doesn't feel as though it takes effort. Breath that isn't forced and laboured and counted.

I think that was your fault too Alex, I've never been so aware of life until now, so aware of how painfully alive I am, and how painfully dead you are.

"What?" my voice comes out dry and cracked, I cough it down like trying to stomach a pine cone. "What happened to your mussel?"

"Well you see, when I finally got to the inside it was a thing of beauty. Best one I've ever eaten" she looks at me with a huge smile, like she's just solved sciences greatest mystery, her glasses now hung back where they belong against her chest. I try to see her point, the point to anything really because when I ask myself what the point of anything is I find it hard to comprehend and so I'm finding it especially difficult to see what a mussel has anything to do with my current situation.