𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐮𝐬𝐭 ~ 𝐄𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧

𝐅𝗼𝐮𝐫𝐭𝐲 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞

Things had been nice and quiet in the Evans household. Sebastian was given his own room for when he felt comfortable to sleep alone, he had helped Chris paint his and Ellie's rooms.

Sebastian felt good.

He felt safe. Wanted. It was an odd feeling.

Lisa had been paying for Sebastian to go to a therapist, someone outside of the family he could talk to if he felt she would be the only one to help. Or the only one who might be able to understand.

Sebastian remembers his first session with Amanda. He was very scared and confused. He didn't want Lisa to be paying for him to go and see someone. But, nonetheless, Lisa didn't listen to anything he said and put her name down to pay.

"How're you, Sebastian?" Amanda asks, tilting her head. "How are you since everything that's happened?"

Sebastian sighs and shrugs. "Me? I'm fine. Yeah, I'm fine. Aside from the not sleeping, the jumpiness, the constant overwhelming crushing fear that something terribles about to happen." He responds truthfully, swallowing the lump in his throat. "The constant fear that he's gonna get out and that he's gonna find me."

She nods. "It's called hyper-vigilance. The persistent feeling of being under threat."

"But it's not just a feeling." Sebastian continues. "It feels like a panic attack.. like I can't breathe.."

"Like you're drowning?" She asks. "So if you're drowning and you're trying to keep your mouth closed until that very last moment. But.  if you choose to not open your mouth, to not let the water in.."

"You do anyway." Sebastian says. "It's a reflex. It's in everybody's bones."

"But. If you hold off, until that reflex kicks in, you have more time, right?"

"Well yeah, but not much."

"But more time to fight your way to the surface." She counters.

"More time to be in pain! It feels as though your heads about to explode." Sebastian exclaims. He was confused as to why she was doing this. She wasn't even writing down anything.

"If it's about survival. Isn't a little agony worth it?" She asks, picking up her pen and spinning it around her fingers.

"What if it gets worse?" Sebastian asks. "What if it's agony now and it's just hell later on?"

"Think about it this way. Steve Harvey once said," Sebastian's therapist suddenly says, tapping her pen against her clipboard. "If your going through hell, keep going. Why stop in hell?"

"Why did you tell me that?" Sebastian asks. "Why did you keep going? I gave you an answer, didn't I?"

"I tell that to all my patients." She replies. "I tell them that to get them to think. To think about all the times when things got hard, as though they were going through hell, and stopped and stayed there. Why would you do that if you want things to get better?"

Sebastian furrows his brows in thought.

She smiles. "Have you ever heard of the term.. 'Regression to the mean?' It's a bit of a technical way of saying things will always even out."