“Dude, are you fucking your bodyguard?”
“Yup,” he says, popping the p. “Are you fucking your brother?”
“No,” I say honestly, and hope my dejected tone doesn’t betray how much that admission blows.
The next morning, Naz is fully dressed and ready to go by the time I shuffle out for caffeine.
“How are you functional right now?” I croak, squinting in the late morning light filtering in all the windows.
“Lots of water. And protein.” He winks, and I do, in fact, remember our conversation about Naz and his bodyguard.
“Don’t ask if I don’t want to know, right?”
He grins and picks up his duffle bag. “See you in a few days.”
He starts to walk towards the door but pauses and turns back. “Do I need to worry about you committing some kind of, like, murder-suicide thing before the concert next week?”
I scoff. “I’ll try to hold off until after.”
He nods. “Good man.” As he reaches the door, he yells out, “Love ya’, buddy!”
“Love you, too.”
And just like that, I’m alone again. Still exhausted, with a headache, and no closer to knowing what to do with myself. Looking around, I think about Ari in LA instead of here with me, and realize I’ve probably already lost him. But I still don’t feel like I can let go.
Are there rush-order therapists?
TWENTY
WILL
Less than a week later, after some advice and recommendations from Jesse, plus a healthy dose of the privilege that wealth and connections have afforded me, I’m anxiously picking my cuticles while talking through my first ever therapy session. Technically, it’s not even a full session, it’s a consultation that began with a work-through of the extremely long and invasive survey I filled out about my background, lifestyle, habits, etc.
The therapist’s face is calm in the little rectangle on my laptop screen, framed by a welcoming space with soft grey painted walls, framed accomplishments, and watercolor paintings. Farther in the background, there’s a bookshelf neatly stacked with colorful spines and framed photos. Next to the bookshelf, propped on a comfortable-looking dark blue tufted chair, is a pillow embroidered with the wordsScream Here.
Overall, the setting seems to match the therapist I’m consulting with to a T. In the last hour, they’ve sat and listened to my story with calm patience, projecting warmth and understanding. They’ve laughed with me when I felt the need to break the heaviness with humor and asked non-judgmental questionsin an effort to learn more about who I am as a person. They made it very clear that by the end of our hour-and-a-half initial meeting, I won’t have answers or solutions. That’s not how therapy works, they said. It’s a journey. A process that takes time and emotional labor to work through all the nuances of what challenges us. The most we can hope for from our first consultation is a basic understanding of what some of those challenges might be, and some awareness of what it will take to begin that journey. This clarity will hopefully help me determine if Ezra, as they asked me to call them, is the right person to guide me down the path.
“I want to start by talking about Ari,” they say gently, “specifically because it’s your relationship with him that was the catalyst for you seeking a therapist.”
Sitting back, I exhale through my nose and clench my fists in my lap.Here we go, I think, but nod for Ezra to continue. I’ve never been to any kind of therapy, but Jesse told me to expect to be confronted with a lot of hard truths. So I’m braced for the inevitable conversation that my attachment to my foster brother is not only unhealthy, but immoral.
Color me surprised when they say almost the opposite.
“You are incredibly lucky to have each other,” Ezra says. “I have a lot of respect for the initiative you’re taking to help your relationship grow into something stronger and healthier.”
I blink.
“Just you being here tells me something important,” they continue. “It tells me you are capable of reflection. That you’re willing to examine your own role in the dynamic instead ofassuming the problem exists entirely outside of you. That’s not nothing, Will. And that’s not narcissism.”
My jaw tightens, and I nod once, grateful for the way they’ve acknowledged one of the concerns I brought up about my selfish behavior regarding Ari.
“You didn’t come into this with the expectations of finding someone to fix your situation, or to fix him,” Ezra says. “You entered into this space by saying, I’m afraid I’m hurting someone I love and I want to fix myself. That says a lot about who you are as a person.”
I swallow down the lump that forms in my throat.
“Your attachment to your brother isn’t the real issue here,” they say calmly. “Deep bonds—especially ones formed under traumatic circumstances—can be incredibly stabilizing. They can be lifesaving, even.”
My fingers slowly uncurl themselves, half-moon shapes in my palms filling out as the blood flows into my hands again.
