I'll Be Alright (boyxboy)

Chapter 19

Picture of Dr. Yuseff

Chapter 19

Often, I found myself reaching into my pocket to graze the crumpled list with my thumb. I reached for it on a bad day or when I was thinking about someone on it or even just unconsciously during therapies. I'd done it so often it felt like I had the strokes of ink etched onto my brain in various lettering, memorized, and could identify each name by the texture and shape left on the paper. An inch of delicate imprinted swoop to round out the "o" in Tobias. Large, flowy scrawl and tall sharp strokes that spell Elizabeth across my fingers. I found it oddly fitting, the way I could trace the personality in each name.

These are all the people who would care about you if you died. 

Somehow, I suspect that clever psychiatrist made me to keep it on purpose. 

At first, I wanted to throw the sheet of paper away and I didn't even know why. I just knew its very existence made me uncomfortable and almost irrationally upset. Looking at it often provoked me nearly to tears, to the point where Gabriel threatened to toss it himself when it was lights out and I was still in the corner of our room holding the list over the trashcan, conflicted. 

"Stop," he groaned, burrowing his face in his pillow. "You're literally making this so hard for no reason. Tear it up or not, it doesn't matter. Just stop standing there in the dark and go to bed, oh my God. It's so creepy. You look like Boo Radley."

I convinced myself I was only pocketing the list to give Gabriel peace. 

For days after, though, I began to really contemplate how weird that was.  It was a list of names, all people who'd been kind to me in some way. Who, by all counts, seemed to care about me. That shouldn't make me mad. I should be happy. Why am I not happy? Or at the very least grateful. I'd wonder and think and overthink, tangling myself into a lumpy colorful yarn ball of worry until I returned to feeling uneasy about the paper. The whole week, through group therapy and workshops, wellness and exercise, all I could think of was this current dilemma. It wasn't until the next week in therapy when I anxiously presented the question to Dr. Yuseff that I received an answer.

"Because it challenges your reality. I suspect that's why it bothers you," he said. I frowned, squeezing my thumbs in my fists where they were tucked below my biceps like a hug. 

"What do you mean?"

Dr. Yuseff seemed to hesitate for a moment.

"Oliver...do you mind if I ask about your mother?"

I felt the air escape my lungs at the abrupt shift in topic and immediately a swell of emotions lodged in my throat. Talking about her always made me feel like a mess, a paradox. At the sound of her name, I could float away on the wind and sink deep beneath the ground. Her memory provoked bittersweet joy and an empty, heavy pit in my stomach that threatened to eat me alive and consume me like a black hole, yanking and pulling into a caved inward and disappeared. The thought of having talking about her and feeling like this made me want to curl up into a ball, but we'd shelved the topic after I had a meltdown the first time Dr. Yuseff asked. That was a month ago. I wanted this time to be different, so I swallowed shakily and nodded. He smiled and scooted his chair a little further from his desk so he could meet my gaze uninterrupted by the knick knacks and laptop of his desk. 

"How did you feel when you lost her?" He questioned carefully. 

I dragged my upper lip between my teeth and tightened my arms around my ribs. "Um...scared, I guess. Lost. And sad."