John
For so long, therapy remained unchanged. Sitting in painfully quiet rooms with a well-meaning empath, the time ticked by so slowly. Then things changed. The room where Aaron and I met for therapy was full of the sound of my voice. I had so much to talk about.
"Spiderman’s still one of my favorites. I asked for other comics because I didn’t want to go through them too fast but then I learned how many comics are out there in the world.”
“Yeah, the Spiderman universe can keep you busy for years.”
“Branching out is still good. One from my new collection is called a ‘manga’ and I’m not too sure about it but the new illustration style is interesting. I’m not really into Iron Man either—"
"Wait till you see the movies,” Aaron said. “They might change your mind.”
“There’s movies?” My eyes widened at the possibilities. “Is Spiderman in them too? Who plays Spiderman? Wait, show me a picture on your phone because there’s no way I’ll recognize the actor’s name.”
I could read and write and had a passing familiarity with many common subjects. I just couldn’t recall any specifics about my own life. Movies and entertainment weren’t really my strong points either.
“Let’s finish our session first,” Aaron suggested. “The Marvel universe has become too huge to cover in a nutshell. What else do you want to talk about?”
"Do you mean is there anythingnon-comic book related to discuss?”
“Yeah.”
Huh, just like old times. We suddenly lapsed into silence while I thought.
See, here’s the thing about these sessions. Therapy’sa bitch.Nobody goes because it’s fun or easy. They go because it’s necessary.
I went because it was necessary, even though I said barely anything during therapy for months. I never even considered turning down a chance to improve my mental health. Anybody would be fucked up after surviving the basement. Not going to therapy after that would be like escaping from the depths of hell and not accepting ointment for your first-degree burns. That made no logical sense. I’d feel crazy if I refused therapy.
Sure, I sometimes did crazy things and panicked. But I wasn’t crazy, no matter what the nicknames said. I was fucked up, which meant I had enough problems and didn’t want to add crazy to the list.
But the more I filled the room with stories about what Temple and I did, what we discovered about me, what we wanted to do in the future to prepare me for leading a normal life, the more obvious it became what parts I wasn’t talking about.
“John,” Aaron began gingerly.
I hated that tone. I needed to prevent whatever well-meaning words surely followed.
“Are you jealous I didn’t share my painful back story with you first? Do you want me to talk about my feelings and cry so you feel like you’re doing your job and are a real boy?”
“A real boy?” Aaron echoed. Since we had a Disney/Pixar movie week on my floor, I knew Pinocchio.
“A real therapist,” I amended but couldn’t stop being a jerk. “A real boy therapist.”
Since Aaron was still in training, he should count himself lucky I gave him a textbook example of deflection to help him learn.
“What do you want to talk about?” he asked calmly.
“Comic books,” I said decisively.
Aaron stared hard for what felt like minutes. I imagined how nice it would feel to be outside drawing instead of being here. Stupid necessary therapy and stupid necessary privacy meant being stuck indoors.
“Okay,” Aaron said. He set his notebook down on the desk and opened a drawer to grab his cell phone. “Don’t freak out when I show you what Spiderman looks like. I’m starting with the worst one on purpose.”
"Wait, really?"
"Giving you the opportunity to talk means I did most of my job as a real boy therapist. The rest is following your lead."
"Right,” I said. “Good.” … “My life is ahead of me anyway. We haven’t found out anything new about my supernatural connections or who I used to be, so I can’t tell you about my old life. And what happened in the basement, well, that wasn’t any kind of life."
"You don’t need to explain yourself to me,” Aaron said.
