“That’s a trauma response.” Amelia sat across from him during their next session, her legs crossed under her on the couch and her chic, flowing pants billowing elegantly over the sides like silk. They were a slightly darker shade of lavender than her hair and her shirt, and he marveled at how well she managed her monochrome color palette. That was actually really difficult to do if you didn’t have high color acuity. “The need to rush like that, I mean. It’s coming from anxiety.”
“What do I do about it?”
“You’re intellectual, but also creative and visual. Let’s try this approach: you can visualize removing it from yourself and looking at it impartially. That’s one way.” She set her pad in her lap and mimed plucking something off of her back, holding it in her hands and handling it almost as if she were trying to corral a massive ball of unwound yarn. “This is what mine feels like when I hold it. It lives on my upper back, like I’m wearing a little creature in a backpack. It sits between my shoulder blades and tenses up when triggered. If you were to peel yours away from yourself and take a look at it, what does it look like for you?”
His brows knit together. “I’m not sure it looks like anything. But it feels…itchy.” He scratched at the scar on his neck. “And it lives in my stomach.” The more he thought about it, the more he felt vaguely nauseous.
“That’s good. That’s a start. Now imagine it. Tell me with your artist words. How would you draw a representation of your anxiety?” She tilted her head and tapped her pen against her notebook. “Actually, you’re the rare client who won’t shy away when I ask them to really do that. Get out your sketchbook.”
His left eye twitched at the thought, but he sighed and dug into his satchel anyway. After uncapping his pen and flipping to a blank page, he readied himself and waited.
“Talk me through it, Theo. Tell me how you felt when that happened. Let’s find it in your body and figure out what it looks like. If you identify it, you can be more aware of it.”
He scowled at her but complied. Hewaspaying for this, after all. This was supposedly some of the best therapy money could buy. Dr.Amelia Harper was world-renowned and she’d written actual textbooks used to train other therapists. Surely she knew what she was doing.
“Fine.”
“Let your mind go blank.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, and he followed suit. They sat there in meditative silence, relaxing in the quiet for a few minutes before Amelia spoke again. “Focus only on the paper, and what you feel in your body when you think about your anxiety.”
When Theo opened his eyes, his hand moved the pen smoothly across the page. He let his gaze go slightly unfocused like he often did when he was first visualizing a sketch, straddling the liminal mental boundary between his creative vision and its physical representation.
“Where does it live?”
“It lives in my stomach, like that’s its lair,” he murmured, sketching a human figure roughly his size and shape. He thought back to the graduation dinner and fished around in his memory for the latent seed of panic he’d felt. “It expands when something brushesagainst it, draws itself out like a plume of smoke. But it’s more than that; it has more form than just smoke. It sticks. It’s thick and viscous, like tar. It crawls up my back, twists itself around the sides of my ribs, over my shoulders, wraps around my neck.” His hand was fully automatic now, his eyes completely unfocused. He didn’t see the pad of paper before him at all, only the image in his mind.
“Does it talk to you?”
“Yes,” he breathed. “It whispers things to me.”
“Like what?”
“That I’m not good enough. That I’ve failed. That everyone canseethat I’ve failed, or that I’m a hack. That my art is actually shit. That I don’t deserve any good things I might have. That my life is a waste and I don’t deserve to live it. That I’m trash. That I’m a garbage person.”
“Do you think that’s true?”
“No. Yes. Sometimes.” He frowned as he drew until a thought wormed its way through the static—and he grunted. “Audrey doesn’t think so, but she alsoreallyloves garbage. Says she finds treasure buried there all the time that was just tossed when it shouldn’t have been—when it was still perfectly good, or even pristine. Scavenges a lot of it while dumpster diving.” The corner of his mouth swept upward and his entire face warmed, softened, relaxed. “It’s one of my favorite things about her, actually. Her ability to see through to the true heart of something and find the value in it when others don’t.”
“That’s an interesting observation.”
He hummed. He might have wanted to comment on Amelia’s amused tone, but what he was doing right now was far too engrossing. He couldn’t quite pull his attention away. Instead, he kept sketching.
“What else does your anxiety say?”
“That something bad will happen to me, or that I’ll die soon, oreven worse: something bad will happen to people I love. Something bad will happen to Audrey. I’d rather die again myself than let anything bad happen to her.”
“What was going through your mind with her at the dinner when you had the ring in your pocket?”
The thing was taking clearer shape now. “I wanted to propose that night because I was afraid maybe something would happen and Audrey would leave. But it’s not her fault I’d think that. She tells me all the time she would never leave me, she loves me too much, and she can’t lie. She’s terrible at it, and I learned to pick out liars a long time ago. What she tells me is true. I know this intellectually. But it’s stillmymind that has trouble believing it.” His hand kept moving, kept circling, shading, lining, forming, filling.
“What else, Theo? Any other reasons?”
“Yes.” His brows knit together more firmly. He could feel the mountain range rise between his eyes, hardening his expression. Darkness began to overtake the pad. “I had the thought that I needed to marry her because that way, I could take care of her if I died. I could give her an inheritance with my trusts, or if not that, then with my investment income. I could keep her safe that way.”
“Do you think you’re going to die soon?”
“No. Yes. Sometimes.” He chewed absently on his bottom lip as he drew. “Sometimes I think about dying, and I’d never forgive myself if I left her, especially now. She has no one, except for me and her foster mom down in Florida and a few friends. They’re good, solid friends, and they love her, but not like howIlove her.” He shook his head sharply. “I know her. Maybe not every single detail, not yet, but Iknowher. I know her in my bones, in my soul, and I love her so deeply I feel it there too. I love her with my whole body and heart and soul, andIwant to take care of her.
“I have more than enough. I have too much. I want to share it, but she won’t let me. What if something happens? What if somethinggoes wrong? What if I throw a blood clot and die? If I did that and we weren’t married, I can’t take care of her if I’m gone. What if she can’t pay those loans off and she loses her job and goes hungry again? What if she’s alone again?” He tried to shove down a sob, but failed. The despairing thought was overwhelming. A tear escaped his right eye and slid down the length of his scar, dropping onto the sketch and blurring some of its darkness.
