The Truth About Beauty

Chapter Three

The therapy suite reeked of fresh paint and wood polish.

I was nestled into a cocoon of rusty-brown leather sofas and centred between crimson lamps, while beneath my feet lay a plush grey rug, fluffed like a cat’s tail, matching the furniture that was scattered within the four walls. In fact, the whole room harboured a suspicious homely style, as if that was the only thing that would keep lunatics like us sane.

“So, Mr Evans...Austin, tell me why you think you’re here,” the balding therapist started off after introducing himself as Dr Ali.

I shrugged nonchalantly, inspecting invisible dirt underneath the crevices of my fingernails. I was quite disappointed by the lack of originality this guy had begun with. “It wasn’t my choice, believe me.”

Instead of procuring the disgusted reaction I was expecting, Dr Ali just nodded, and then scribbled something down onto his paper, as if that simple sentence had opened up a portal into my thought process. Briefly, I looked up to see the expression on his face, before reverting back to my nail-beds.

“Why? Don’t you want to be here?”

I scoffed. “I want to be cured of my depression.”

“But you don’t want to be here?” Dr Ali persisted, looking at me through thin-black framed glasses.

Patiently, I glanced at him under my eyelashes and gathered a stony expression.

“If it gets rid of feeling so crap all the time, then yes, I want to be here.”

“Why don’t you stop fiddling with your hands and look at me, then?”

I blinked several times, shocked at the bluntness of his words, before putting my palms in my lap, shifting in the cushions and staring at him expectantly.

“Right, now, why don’t you explain a little bit of what happened?”

I raised my eyebrows. “What?”

“The event that triggered this “crap feeling” as you put it.” He continued, putting the biro onto the table and relaxing back into the lounger.

Shrugging, I directed my attention back to my interlinked fingers, fidgeting with them to distract from the truth.

“My mom committed suicide,” I muttered, unable to look at him.

Rather than hearing the scratch of pen on paper, I just heard a sigh which sounded almost sad. Wait, was he pitying me?

“I don’t need your sympathy,” I blurted out in a rush. “I’ve had enough of that to last a lifetime.”

Dr Ali folded his arms and watched me. “I wasn’t going to offer you any sympathy, Austin. But that’s intriguing, don’t you think? You don’t want someone to feel emotions towards you about the situation, and yet ever since the event, you’ve been drawing more attention to yourself than I’ve seen anyone do in a long while.”

I just stared at him.

 “Yes, I read papers too, Austin.”

I was about to mutter some sarcastic response, but the therapist quickly grabbed the paper and noted something down, whispering the words “Interesting” to himself as he did so.

“Why do you do that?” I confronted, feeling the blood start to boil in my veins.

He barely acknowledged my question, just said, “What?” while still looking down at the paper.

“Make me feel like a test animal or something.”

He rested the pad back onto the table and smiled wryly. “It’s making you feel something that’s important. I need you to talk to me, Austin, so stop with the games and start telling me everything in your mind. How else am I supposed to cure you?”